Multidimensional poverty in urban and rural areas of Iran assessed as an indicator of fair development

Introduction: Development is a concept that simultaneously implies the change of multiple structures in various aspects of social life and requires a multidimensional process that pursues multi-species goals. Goals change with the introduction of new social variables and needs and increase the responsibilities of development managers. Development has ensured the efforts of a society to achieve its value goals, and its sustainability depends on providing relative welfare, complete security and sufficient awareness for all its members. In fact, sustainable development requires social justice and balanced attention to the cultural, political and economic aspects of the society. This should be done in such a way as to make the human resource development process hopeful.
Development and justice are among the concepts whose legitimacy cannot be doubted. Justice and its position and relationship with economic performance have been explored in the literature of development economics. Over the past four decades, the theoretical and empirical areas of development have witnessed the growing intertwining of national development issues and scientific advancement in social justice. Thus, in the current situation, the relationship between social justice and national development is explained as an organic relationship. Fairness of conditions is an important variable that determines the desired economic performance. The purpose of this study is to study multidimensional poverty in Iran as an indicator of equitable development. A review of successful development experiences shows that they have a wise approach to designing development plans that are consistent with social justice. Therefore, in this study, the concept of equitable development is studied first, and then the multidimensional poverty index is calculated.
Methodology: Since poverty is a multifaceted phenomenon, the study of all its aspects and dimensions requires accurate knowledge. The Alkire and Foster method is one of the most widely used ways of calculating multidimensional poverty. It has also been used by the United Nations to introduce a multidimensional global poverty index. In this study, the index is examined in the five dimensions of education, health, employment, housing and standard of living.
Considering the same weight for each dimension and the same weight for each of the indicators within each dimension, poor households have been found to be deprived of more than one third of the indicators. Then, after the identification of the poor people, Alkier and Foster poverty indices have been calculated using the raw cost-income data of urban and rural households in Iran during the years 1990 to 2020.
Results and Discussion: Calculating the multidimensional poverty index shows that multidimensional poverty has been reduced in urban and rural areas of Iran. Of course, the intensity of this decrease is significantly higher in rural areas. The value of this index in rural areas has decreased from 0.483 in 1990 to 0.183 in 2014. This reduction is a reduction in the extent and severity of multidimensional poverty in rural areas during the years 1990-2020, which can be due to the living facilities provided to rural households in the post-revolutionary years.
However, the decline in this index is not very obvious for urban households because most urban households had access to these amenities during the period. The value of this index for urban households in 1991 was equal to 0.239, which was the highest rate during the years 1990 to 2004. After that, during the years 2004-2009, there was a fluctuating trend. During these years, this index was 0.260 in 2003 and 0.294 in 2007, which was the highest value of the multidimensional poverty index during the studied years. This can be due to the high inflation and the recession in the late 2001.
Conclusion: Nowadays, the multidimensional poverty index is reported in global databases as a development index, so it can be a criterion for policymakers to make comparisons between Iran and other countries. It introduces equitable development not only in income poverty but also in the deprivation of the poor minorities and marginalized groups of equitable access to various aspects of quality and prosperous life. It brings multidimensional poverty into focus by defining equitable development. Therefore, in order to promote development based on justice in a society, conditions must be created for equal opportunities and access to resources such as education, health, employment and living standards.