Twenty-five:
A tool for understanding global goals and statistics
Version of 31 January 2007
Matt
Berkley
This
document is to help people understand some international goals, such as the
United Nations’ Millennium Goals, and some numerical claims about human
progress, particularly in economics.
The idea is
to help resolve some misunderstandings, ambiguities and puzzles. Clarity
about what is being said, and the basis for what is being said, might help
overcome some disagreements about past outcomes of policies, and future policy
directions.
Some
distinctions I make below are conceptual. The presence of a word in the
list is not meant to imply that what it refers to is measurable.
For
instance, it is important to understand whether someone is claiming to have
measured
a) the level of people’s consumption, or
b) the adequacy of their consumption.
Since
people don’t agree about the value of different foods, people are unlikely to
agree about what adequate consumption is. Also, what counts
as consumption in a broader sense is a bit subjective. I consume air,
whose quality is important to me. I “consume” the park where I
walk. I consume knowledge, some which might help me live
longer. I consume water, but of what quality? How much dirty water is of the same value as
clean water?
So we might
think that any claim to have measured the adequacy of people’s consumption as a
whole is false. Still, it may be useful
to distinguish the concept of “level” from the concept of “adequacy” in order
to understand what is behind the words of a researcher or politician.
To ask a social scientist whether they are claiming to have measured the level
of consumption or the adequacy of consumption may be
useful. To ask a politician whether they are aiming at higher
levels of consumption, or higher adequacy, may be useful as well.
As in many
areas of life, what may first seem complex can be understood more easily by
grasping central principles. In this case, as in many areas of
social science, a key element is imagination. Another is
empathy.
Perhaps
many people are frightened by statistics not just because of the numbers, but
because of the words. If you see an abstract noun, try and develop a
way of understanding what it means in real life. A discussion about
“consumption” isn’t fundamentally about some complex thing in a mysterious machine
called the economy. It is supposed to refer to real life, so
you can ask yourself, or others, what kinds of things it is supposed to refer
to in real life. It is more important
to understand what is being discussed than to try to improve on something badly
defined.
Consumption
amount, or level, is a different concept from consumption adequacy, and both
are different from consumption expenditure. That may all sound obvious, but in economics
surveys on what people spend are sometimes erroneously described as data on
consumption, and then erroneously described as poverty statistics. What you spend (expenditure) is not what you
consumed (consumption), and neither of these are what you lack (poverty).
As I type
these words, I am imagining real people. I do not think it is
possible to think about social science meaningfully in any other
way.
The aim of
this document is to help people decode economics and some other social
science. Behind politicians’ statements about “poverty” going up or
down there are real facts (as well as, perhaps, some real exaggeration), and
this document may provide pointers to understanding what the facts
are. The facts are about real people, and the person
who can imagine some of them doing different
things as the abstract nouns change, may have a good grasp of what is important
without knowing anything technical.
When you
are faced with a large-scale social science goal or statistic, the following
may be helpful:
OX4 3AY
+44 (0)7968
251395