Measuring Human Recognition for Women in Malawi using the Alkire Foster Method of Multidimensional Poverty Counting

Policy indicators rarely account for the contribution of societal inter- and intra-personal interactions to economic development. We propose an index of multidimensional Human Recognition Deprivation (HRD), which measures to what extent individuals (e.g., women) are viewed and valued as human beings. Based on Castleman’s Theory of Human Recognition and Economic Development, we employ the Alkire-Foster method of multidimensional poverty counting to construct a HRD index. The Index is based on indicators of humiliation, dehumanization, violence, and lack of autonomy within three domains of interaction namely: the self, household, and community domains. Similar to multidimensional poverty, we extract the deprivation headcount ratio, deprivation intensity, and the overall deprivation index. The Alkire-Foster method allows us to identify human recognition deprivation within and across domains of interaction. The methodology has a range of robust properties including decomposing by domains and sub-groups (e.g., female farmers and off-farm women). As a policy tool, it allows policy investigators to set different domain cut-offs and weights to identify crucial policy fields and populations for intervention. We develop the index for women using data from Malawi.