Why we should care about poverty and inequality: exploring the grounds for a pluralist approach

ABSTRACT

Policy debates surrounding poverty and inequality often focus on practical solutions and seldom explore the normative underpinning that would justify our concerns with these phenomena. Why should we care about poverty, or about inequality? From a philosophical standpoint, can we separate the two, such that it is possible to be deeply concerned about poverty but unconcerned about inequalities? Do our reasons for caring about one contrast with our reasons for caring about the other? While there is a growing empirical literature exploring the mechanisms connecting the two, the philosophical literature has seldom focused on their relationship. Firstly, this paper provides a clear map of the philosophical debate, clarifying the normative assumptions that underlie positions conceptually prioritizing inequality and poverty respectively. Secondly, the paper suggests ‘a pluralist approach’, that stresses the overlap of our normative concerns with poverty and inequality and highlights parallel problems that restrictive interpretations of these concepts face, pointing to the importance of considering broader phenomena and processes (such as deprivation and exclusion) that illuminate the relationship between the two.

KEYWORDS:

• Poverty
• inequality
• social justice
• normative justification
• inclusive growth

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. I cannot do justice here to the array of utilitarian positions that have elaborated on these themes. Given the centrality of the utilitarian influence in economic debates, I pointed at the inherent difficulties in resolving tensions between utility and justice. For further discussion of possible utilitarian solutions and rule utilitarianism see Hooker (2014).

2. Relative poverty is conceived as a level of deprivation that changes in line with changes in the general living standard (e.g. by considering poor to be those whose household income, adjusted for family size, falls under a certain agreed threshold of a country’s median income). This is one of the agreed international measures used throughout the European Union. Instead, the concept of absolute poverty refers to a level of deprivation that does not change as the general living standard changes over time and is often associated with acute deprivation.

3. A long-standing discussion which cannot be explored here revolves around the extent to which our feelings can ground normativity and provide the basis justifying our concern (Korsgaard, 1996). According to this Kantian objection, ‘[m]oral feeling succeeds the moral concept, but does not produce it’ (Kant, NF 19:150, 6757).

4. There is a vast literature on this topic. See Fleurbaey 2007; Creegan, Warrener, and Kinsella 2009; Taylor-Gooby 2013; Walker 2014.

5. One of the strengths of Pogge’s position is that it supports the urgency of acting against poverty even for those who only recognize the stringency of negative duties. There is, however, also substantial support to the idea that a human right to basic necessities imposes both negative and positive duties (Sen, 1982; Ashford, 2007; Cruft, 2005; Shue, 1996). A large part of the philosophical discussion around rights-based approaches has concerned this identification of positive and negative duties, a topic which cannot be fully explored here (Geuss, 2001; O’Neill, 1996; Shue, 1996).

6. Vertical inequality refers to inequality in material resources as measured between all individuals or households in a distribution, while horizontal inequality is defined as inequality between groups, typically population subgroups defined by cultural characteristics – e.g. by ethnicity, religion or race (Stewart, Brown, & Cobham, 2009). Rawls’s difference principle fundamentally concerns vertical inequality. Criticisms developed by authors holding a relational view of equality point at the limits of resourcism emphasizing the cogency of concerns with horizontal inequalities. It is important to stress that underlying commitments of the philosophical literature to either horizontal or vertical inequality can be extrapolated, but they are, for the most part, not directly addressed. Disentangling the general unclarity surrounding these notions in the philosophical literature would be of particular interest in order to engage and contribute to the ongoing debate in social policy. This is, however, beyond the scope of this contribution.

7. For how these arguments apply both at the domestic and international level see Beitz, 2001; De Vita, 2007.

8. Notably, capability approaches are compatible with different principles of distribution (from strict egalitarianism to the Rawlsian difference principle). Nussbaum has developed a list of core capabilities which offers universal standards to set a social minimum that is ‘worthy of the dignity of the human being’ and endorses a ‘sufficiency view’ of capabilities (Nussbaum, 2000, p. 5). At the same time, the multidimensional analysis offered by capability approaches underpins attempts to conceptualise and measure poverty and inequality which are closely related to the claims explored here. For instance, the Equality Measurement Framework (Burchardt & Vizard, 2011) as well as Oxfam’s Inequality Framework (McKnight & Prats, forthcoming) represent multi-dimensional approaches that monitor inequalities in the position of individuals and groups in terms of their substantive freedoms.

9. This is not to say, for example, that poverty does not also result from natural disaster or natural conditions, but as Lotter (2011) notices, zoo animals might suffer from cruelty or neglect but not poverty. Wild animals starve but do not live in poverty. Poverty, thus, seems to be related in some way to humanity.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Irene Bucelli

Irene Bucelli is a Visiting Research Fellow at the Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion, at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Her research analyses the normative underpinnings of concepts used in social and public policy and is concerned with different forms of economic, social and educational inequalities. She has published articles in the Journal of Philosophy of Education and conducted research for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and Oxfam.