Traditionally, poverty and well-being have been measured primarily through monetary indicators such as household consumption or expenditure. However, recent decades have seen growing recognition that focusing on monetary resources alone, or on any single indicator for that matter, is insufficient to capture the complexity of lived experiences, and that comprehensive measurement requires the integration of multiple dimensions of human development. Multidimensional measurement conceives of poverty and well-being as an experience of overlapping deprivations or achievements, with roots in participatory studies in which people were asked about their lives. A person who is poor can suffer from multiple disadvantages at the same time. For example, they may have poor health or be malnourished, lack clean water or electricity, may have had little schooling, or be unemployed or precariously employed. Multidimensional measures identify whether or not people are living in poverty based on whether they experience a critical mass of possible deprivations - and they analogously identify well-being as a critical mass of achievements. This seminar will provide an overview of the pioneering conceptual, methodological, empirical, and policy work on multidimensional well-being and poverty measurement done at Oxford University's Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI), with particular emphasis on its uptake by over 50 national governments and various UN agencies around the world. The seminar will closely examine Bhutan's Gross National Happiness Index as a prominent case study, demonstrating how this approach has both shaped national development policy and inspired international interest. Participants will gain insights into how multidimensional approaches can inform more effective and human-centered development policies.
Speaker's Bio:
Jakob Dirksen is Senior Research and Policy Officer at the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI) within the Department of International Development at the University of Oxford. He conducts academic research on multidimensional poverty measurement and analysis and associated areas – and he supports governments and United Nations agencies around the world in the development and application of multidimensional poverty indices as permanent official statistics and all-of-government policy tools. Jakob is also an Analysing and Challenging Inequalities Scholar and the Principal Researcher for the Perceptions of Inequality Research Programme at the London School of Economics's International Inequalities Institute.
Location:
Room XLG1 Chemistry LT, Christopher Ingold Building, XLG1, 20 Gordon St, London WC1H 0AJ
