Where Are We in the Global Poverty Measurement? The Human Minimum Model as a Veritable Option

Abstract

A dominant conception of poverty among many researchers is that it is a form of deprivation. There is, however, more focus on the idea of poverty as physical deprivation than there is on psychological deprivation. I argue that poverty is as much a psychological deprivation as it is a physical deprivation and propose a new index that explicitly takes the psychological into account in poverty measurement. I show that most extant literature tends to focus more on physical deprivations which poverty causes. I discuss some poverty indices which are employed to measure levels of poverty and highlight their inadequacy. Employing the conversational method, I tap into Odera Oruka’s ideas to offer the Human Minimum Measure (HMM) as a model that might also be desirable if the reality of psychological deprivation is taken seriously.