MULTIDIMENSIONAL POVERTY RESOLUTION

Below is the text of the multidimensional poverty resolution as shared with the California State Legislature in 2019. To learn more about how this text can be adapted to your local advocacy, please contact us at communications@4thworldmovement.org

WHEREAS, Since the publication of the first official U.S. and international poverty estimates, researchers and policymakers have continued to debate the best approach to measure poverty. 

WHEREAS, Policy practitioners are striving to consult people with direct experience of poverty in designing policies to address poverty, but the measurement of poverty itself has not benefited from the guidance of people who have experienced it. 

WHEREAS, Neither the Federal Poverty Line, the Supplemental Poverty Measure, nor the international measurement of $1.90 per day were developed with full and meaningful participation of people who have experienced poverty, and their reliance on only monetary measurement fall short of capturing the fundamental nature of poverty.  

WHEREAS, The establishment of the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals, set by the United Nations General Assembly in 2015, made the question of how to measure poverty increasingly important. 

WHEREAS, In response to this urgency, ATD Fourth World, a global movement aimed at ending poverty and protecting human rights and dignity, partnered with the University of Oxford to design and implement a participatory research project with over 2,000 participants, a majority of whom have themselves experienced poverty. 

WHEREAS, This research launched the “Poverty in All Its Forms: Determining the Dimensions of Poverty and How to Measure Them” international participatory research project, with research teams in Bangladesh, Bolivia, France, Tanzania, the United Kingdom, and six regions or cities in the United States: Appalachia, New York, New Orleans, Boston, Oakland, and Gallup, New Mexico.

WHEREAS, The Multidimensional Aspects of Poverty (MAP) has been developed from this research and, since March, 2019, has been made available for researchers and practitioners to advance knowledge about the nature and characteristics of the poverty “dimensions” through the report Pushed to the Bottom: the Experience of Poverty in America.  

WHEREAS, Because those who have lived in poverty were central advisors in the task of defining poverty and creating the MAP dimensions, its use will not only promote a less technocratic analysis of poverty, it will also improve our understanding of poverty and our policy responses to it.  

WHEREAS, The State of California is urgently seeking solutions to poverty and supports the concept of involving impacted communities in defining problems and policy solutions; now, therefore, be it

RESOLVED, That, by the adoption of this Resolution, the California State Legislature commits to consider the Multidimensional Aspects of Poverty (MAP) in designing policy interventions to poverty and urges the President of the United States and the United States Congress to use MAP to evaluate poverty, its impact and its solutions within the United States and in our international aid evaluation and decision making; and be it further

RESOLVED, That the Secretary of the Senate transmit copies of this resolution to the President and Vice President of the United States, to the Speaker of the House of Representatives, to the Majority Leader of the Senate, to each Senator and Representative from California in the Congress of the United States, and to the author for appropriate distribution.