Implementing a Group-Specific Multidimensional Poverty Measure: The Case of Persons with Disabilities in Peru

ABSTRACT

We contribute to the literature on multidimensional poverty and people with disabilities by developing a group-specific, comprehensive, and policy-relevant measure of multidimensional poverty adapted to exploring deprivations within the group of persons with disabilities in Peru. Based on the Alkire-Foster method, we calculated multidimensional poverty estimates using data from the first Specialised National Survey on Disability in Peru collected in 2012. Our measure included eight dimensions, four of which were operationalised using disability-specific indicators, of which, in turn, three involved deprivation criteria specific to different categories of disability. Our results showed that 41.1% of the population with disabilities in Peru suffer deprivations in at least three out of the eight dimensions, whereas rural populations, women, indigenous peoples, persons with severe disabilities, and persons with communication disabilities face the highest levels of poverty. Additionally, we identified rural indigenous women as the poorest subgroup within the overall group of persons with disabilities in Peru with a poverty incidence of 88.1%. Our results suggested that eradicating multidimensional poverty among persons with disabilities in Peru will involve implementing reasonable accommodations to existing policies and creating new disability-specific policies focused on the poorest subgroups within this population.

Keywords:

• Capabilities
• disability
• multidimensional poverty
• group-specific measures
• Peru

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to Micaela Salcedo for her support as research assistant in this project. Also, we would like to thank the three anonymous reviewers who made insightful comments to previous versions of this article.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

About the Authors

Jhonatan Clausen is a lecturer in development studies and history of economic thought at the Department of Economics at Pontifical Catholic University of Peru, PUCP, where he is also Director of Research at the Institute of Human Development of Latin America. He is a member of the Expert Committee on Poverty Measurement at the Peruvian National Institute of Statistics. He is the co-editor (with Séverine Deneulin and Arelí Valencia) of Introducción al Enfoque de las Capacidades: aportes para el Desarrollo Humano en América Latina (2018, Manantial-FLACSO-PUCP).

Nicolas Barrantes is a lecturer at the Department of Economics at Pontifical Catholic University of Peru, PUCP, and researcher at the Institute of Human Development of Latin America at PUCP. He is also part of the teaching staff of the Master's Programme in Human Development at the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences (FLACSO Argentina).

Notes

1 http://www.washingtongroup-disability.com/washington-group-question-sets/short-set-of-disability-questions/.

2 http://www.washingtongroup-disability.com/methodology-and-research/conceptual-framework/.

3 See also https://www.mppn.org/participants/countries-en/.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the Vice-rectorate of Research of the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru (Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú) under the 2016 Concurso Anual de Proyectos de Investigación.