Computing Social Wellbeing Indicators by Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI)-Data

The problem of poverty has been the outstanding one in the face of the sustainable development goals (SDGs). Bangladesh intends to abide by their attainment by the year 2030. However, a question arises regarding the use of the Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) in studying the incidence of poverty and poverty alleviation for attaining social wellbeing in the face of the now much-emphasized goal of economic growth. Although much clamor has been raised regarding the simultaneous attainment of economic growth and social wellbeing, particularly in the latter context of poverty alleviation, and much empirical work has ensued by estimation revolving the indicator of MPI, yet the profound question remains: Has a substantive methodology and argument been discovered that will attain the much aspired for simultaneity between economic growth and social wellbeing? Economic and social theory, as well as scientific outlook, have prevailed on the idea of marginalist trade-off, which these disciplines uphold. Thus, the pertinent methodology needs to be established in the context of attaining economic growth as a complementary process within the overarching model of social wellbeing. This chapter ventures in this direction of outlaying the morally inclusive model of social wellbeing that presents an analytical perspective of complementarity between the two goals along with their multiple inner-defining variables. The socially inclusive model of wellbeing thus presents the ethical model of organic complementarity of wellbeing that embodies in it the goal of economic growth not with marginalist trade-off. In so studying this outlook of SDGs, the case of poverty alleviation and the corrected empirical estimation/simulation of the MPI-indicator is studied in the context of the wellbeing index of pervasive complementarity between wellbeing and growth.