IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/socmed/v133y2015icp223-232.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The politics of relative deprivation: A transdisciplinary social justice perspective

Author

Listed:
  • Fu, Mengzhu
  • Exeter, Daniel J.
  • Anderson, Anneka

Abstract

Relative deprivation was defined by Townsend (1987, p. 125) as “a state of observable and demonstrable disadvantage, relative to the local community or the wider society or nation to which an individual, family or group belongs”. This definition is widely used within social and health sciences to identify, measure, and explain forms of inequality in human societies based on material and social conditions. From a multi-disciplinary social science perspective, we conducted a systematic literature review of published material in English through online database searches and books since 1966. We review the concept and measurement of relative ‘deprivation’ focussing on area-based deprivation in relation to inequities in health and social outcomes. This paper presents a perspective based in Aotearoa/New Zealand where colonisation has shaped the contours of racialised health inequities and current applications and understandings of ‘deprivation’.

Suggested Citation

  • Fu, Mengzhu & Exeter, Daniel J. & Anderson, Anneka, 2015. "The politics of relative deprivation: A transdisciplinary social justice perspective," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 133(C), pages 223-232.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:133:y:2015:i:c:p:223-232
    DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2014.12.024
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277953614008326
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.socscimed.2014.12.024?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Silber, Jacques & Verme, Paolo, 2012. "Relative deprivation, reference groups and the assessment of standard of living," Economic Systems, Elsevier, vol. 36(1), pages 31-45.
    2. Angela Testi & Enrico Ivaldi, 2009. "Material versus social deprivation and health: a case study of an urban area," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer;Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ), vol. 10(3), pages 323-328, July.
    3. Norman, Paul & Boyle, Paul & Rees, Philip, 2005. "Selective migration, health and deprivation: a longitudinal analysis," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 60(12), pages 2755-2771, June.
    4. Kawachi, I. & Kennedy, B.P. & Glass, R., 1999. "Social capital and self-rated health: A contextual analysis," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 89(8), pages 1187-1193.
    5. Sen, Amartya, 1983. "Poor, Relatively Speaking," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 35(2), pages 153-169, July.
    6. Mukherjee, Diganta, 2001. "Measuring multidimensional deprivation," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 42(3), pages 233-251, November.
    7. Sen, Amartya, 1985. "A Sociological Approach to the Measurement of Poverty: A Reply [Poor, Relatively Speaking]," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 37(4), pages 669-676, December.
    8. Caterina Ruggeri Laderchi & Ruhi Saith & Frances Stewart, 2003. "Does it Matter that we do not Agree on the Definition of Poverty? A Comparison of Four Approaches," Oxford Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 31(3), pages 243-274.
    9. Pattussi, Marcos Pascoal & Marcenes, Wagner & Croucher, Ray & Sheiham, Aubrey, 2001. "Social deprivation, income inequality, social cohesion and dental caries in Brazilian school children," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 53(7), pages 915-925, October.
    10. Bécares, Laia & Cormack, Donna & Harris, Ricci, 2013. "Ethnic density and area deprivation: Neighbourhood effects on Māori health and racial discrimination in Aotearoa/New Zealand," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 88(C), pages 76-82.
    11. Salmond, Clare & Crampton, Peter & King, Peter & Waldegrave, Charles, 2006. "NZiDep: A New Zealand index of socioeconomic deprivation for individuals," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 62(6), pages 1474-1485, March.
    12. Kawachi, Ichiro & Kennedy, Bruce P. & Wilkinson, Richard G., 1999. "Crime: social disorganization and relative deprivation," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 48(6), pages 719-731, March.
    13. Z. M. Berrebi & Jacques Silber, 1985. "Income Inequality Indices and Deprivation: A Generalization," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 100(3), pages 807-810.
    14. Drukker, Marjan & Kaplan, Charles & Feron, Frans & van Os, Jim, 2003. "Children's health-related quality of life, neighbourhood socio-economic deprivation and social capital. A contextual analysis," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 57(5), pages 825-841, September.
    15. Townsend, Peter, 1985. "A Sociological Approach to the Measurement of Poverty--A Rejoinder [Poor, Relatively Speaking]," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 37(4), pages 659-668, December.
    16. A. Atkinson, 2003. "Multidimensional Deprivation: Contrasting Social Welfare and Counting Approaches," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 1(1), pages 51-65, April.
    17. Coburn, David, 2004. "Beyond the income inequality hypothesis: class, neo-liberalism, and health inequalities," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 58(1), pages 41-56, January.
    18. Krieger, N. & Chen, J.T. & Waterman, P.D. & Rehkopf, D.H. & Subramanian, S.V., 2003. "Race/Ethnicity, Gender, and Monitoring Socioeconomic Gradients in Health: Comparison of Area-Based Socioeconomic Measures - The Public Health Disparities Geocoding Project," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 93(10), pages 1655-1671.
    19. repec:bla:econom:v:70:y:2003:i:278:p:197-221 is not listed on IDEAS
    20. Exeter, Daniel J. & Boyle, Paul J. & Norman, Paul, 2011. "Deprivation (im)mobility and cause-specific premature mortality in Scotland," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 72(3), pages 389-397, February.
    21. Havard, Sabrina & Deguen, Séverine & Bodin, Julie & Louis, Karine & Laurent, Olivier & Bard, Denis, 2008. "A small-area index of socioeconomic deprivation to capture health inequalities in France," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 67(12), pages 2007-2016, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Simandan, Dragos, 2018. "Rethinking the health consequences of social class and social mobility," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 200(C), pages 258-261.
    2. Uriel Leviatan, 2017. "Physical Social Capital and Psychosocial Social Capital as Mediators Between Socio-economic Inequality and Expressions of Well-being and Health in Israeli Kibbutz Populations," Psychology and Developing Societies, , vol. 29(2), pages 160-199, September.
    3. Fu, Mengzhu & Exeter, Daniel J. & Anderson, Anneka, 2015. "“So, is that your ‘relative’ or mine?” A political-ecological critique of census-based area deprivation indices," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 142(C), pages 27-36.
    4. Cho, Sun Mi & Park, Chan-ung & Song, Min, 2020. "The evolution of social health research topics: A data-driven analysis," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 265(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. D. Jayaraj & S. Subramanian, 2007. "Out of School and (Probably) in Work," Journal of South Asian Development, , vol. 2(2), pages 177-226, July.
    2. Rafi Amir-ud-Din & Faisal Abbas & Sajid Amin Javed, 2018. "Poverty as Functioning Deprivation: Global Estimates," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 140(3), pages 1077-1108, December.
    3. Mark Peacock, 2017. "An Embarrassment of Riches and a Surplus of Shame: Amartya Sen on Poverty and Deprivation," Poverty & Public Policy, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 9(4), pages 444-464, December.
    4. Hargreaves, James R. & Morison, Linda A. & Gear, John S.S. & Makhubele, Mzamani B. & Porter, John D.H. & Busza, Joanna & Watts, Charlotte & Kim, Julia C. & Pronyk, Paul M., 2007. ""Hearing the Voices of the Poor": Assigning Poverty Lines on the Basis of Local Perceptions of Poverty. A Quantitative Analysis of Qualitative Data from Participatory Wealth Ranking in Rural," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 35(2), pages 212-229, February.
    5. Stefano Landi & Enrico Ivaldi & Angela Testi, 2018. "Measuring Change Over Time in Socio-economic Deprivation and Health in an Urban Context: The Case Study of Genoa," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 139(2), pages 745-785, September.
    6. Ekaterina D. Slobodenyuk & Svetlana V. Mareeva, 2020. "Relative Poverty in Russia: Evidence from Different Thresholds," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 151(1), pages 135-153, August.
    7. Alkire, Sabina & Seth, Suman, 2015. "Multidimensional Poverty Reduction in India between 1999 and 2006: Where and How?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 72(C), pages 93-108.
    8. Martin Ravallion, 2016. "Toward better global poverty measures," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 14(2), pages 227-248, June.
    9. Bao, Yan Xi & Liao, Ting Xuan, 2021. "Capability Approach: Reconciling the Absolute Core and the Multidimensional Relative Poverty Measures," MPRA Paper 111333, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    10. Edward Anderson & Lucio Esposito, 2014. "On the joint evaluation of absolute and relative deprivation," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 12(3), pages 411-428, September.
    11. Goedemé, Tim & Decerf, Benoit & Van den Bosch, Karel, 2020. "A new poverty indicator for Europe: the extended headcount ratio," INET Oxford Working Papers 2020-26, Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford.
    12. Gulnaz Hameed & Abdul Saboor & Atta Ullah Khan & Ikram Ali & Mohsin Khan Wazir, 2017. "Impact of Community Development in Poverty Reduction: Reflections of Azad Jammu and Kashmir Community Development Program," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 130(3), pages 1073-1086, February.
    13. Verity Watson & Chris Dibben & Matt Cox & Iain Atherton & Matt Sutton & Mandy Ryan, 2019. "Testing the Expert Based Weights Used in the UK’s Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD) Against Three Preference-Based Methods," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 144(3), pages 1055-1074, August.
    14. Christophe Muller & Asha Kannan & Roland Alcindor, 2016. "Multidimensional Poverty in Seychelles," Working Papers halshs-01264444, HAL.
    15. Chris Sarlo, 2007. "Measuring Poverty – What Happened To Copenhagen?," Economic Affairs, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 27(3), pages 6-14, September.
    16. Alaimo, Leonardo Salvatore & Ivaldi, Enrico & Landi, Stefano & Maggino, Filomena, 2022. "Measuring and evaluating socio-economic inequality in small areas: An application to the urban units of the Municipality of Genoa," Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 83(C).
    17. Sabina Alkire & Maria Emma Santos, 2010. "Acute Multidimensional Poverty: A New Index for Developing Countries," Human Development Research Papers (2009 to present) HDRP-2010-11, Human Development Report Office (HDRO), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
    18. Alkire, Sabina & Santos, Maria Emma, 2014. "Measuring Acute Poverty in the Developing World: Robustness and Scope of the Multidimensional Poverty Index," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 251-274.
    19. Fotis Papadopoulos & Panos Tsakloglou, 2015. "Chronic material deprivation and long-term poverty in Europe in the pre-crisis period," ImPRovE Working Papers 15/16, Herman Deleeck Centre for Social Policy, University of Antwerp.
    20. Richard P.C. Brown & Eliana V. Jimenez, 2008. "Remittances and Subjective Welfare in a Mixed-Motives Model: Evidence from Fiji," Discussion Papers Series 370, School of Economics, University of Queensland, Australia.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:133:y:2015:i:c:p:223-232. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/315/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.