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:
...........................................
www.mattberkley.com
266 Banbury Road,
Oxford OX2 7DL, England
+44 (0)7868 397699
matt@mattberkley.com