UPPSC 2022 Prelims GS Paper-I · Question 13 of 150

Correct — C, Both (a) and (b). UNDP works with income poverty and human poverty as two distinct categories, and the distinction is the whole point of its Human Development Report 1997. That report introduced the HUMAN POVERTY INDEX to sit alongside the Human Development Index, and it defined human poverty as deprivation in the three essential elements of human life — longevity, knowledge and a decent standard of living. Income poverty, by contrast, is the older and narrower measure: a household counts as poor if its income or consumption falls below a stated money threshold, and nothing else about its life enters the calculation. UNDP's argument was never that the money measure is wrong, but that it is incomplete — a person can clear an income line and still be illiterate, chronically undernourished and likely to die early, and a measure that cannot see that is not measuring poverty properly. Because the report names and uses both categories, the only option that reflects UNDP's position is the combined one.

• (a)Income poverty — True but incomplete. Income poverty is one of the two categories, not the whole of UNDP's framework — the entire contribution of the Human Development Report 1997 was to add a second, non-monetary category alongside it.
• (b)Human poverty — Also true but incomplete, and it inverts the history. UNDP introduced human poverty as a COMPLEMENT to the income measure, not as a replacement for it; income poverty remains part of the framework.
• (d)None of the above — Plainly wrong. Both terms are UNDP's own, set out in the Human Development Report 1997 and carried through the Human Poverty Index and its later successor, the Multidimensional Poverty Index.

The human-development approach treats poverty as a shortfall in what a person is able to be and do, not only in what they can buy. UNDP therefore distinguishes INCOME POVERTY — falling below a money threshold — from HUMAN POVERTY, deprivation in the essentials of a decent life: longevity, knowledge and a decent standard of living. The Human Development Report 1997 gave the second idea a measure, the Human Poverty Index, built to complement the Human Development Index that the first report had introduced in 1990.

In a 'which one is correct' item where two of the four options are individually true and the third simply combines them, the combined option is almost always the answer — an examiner does not put a true statement at (a) and a true statement at (b) in order to reward picking one of them. Here the framework reasoning agrees with the exam heuristic: UNDP's whole position is that the two measures are complementary. The chain to remember is short: HDR 1990 gave the HDI; HDR 1997 gave the Human Poverty Index and this income/human distinction; HDR 2010 retired the HPI and put the Multidimensional Poverty Index in its place.

• The Human Poverty Index was introduced in the UNDP Human Development Report of 1997.
• Human poverty in that framework means deprivation in three essential elements of human life — longevity, knowledge and a decent standard of living.
• Income poverty is measured against a monetary threshold (an income or consumption poverty line); human poverty is measured by non-monetary deprivations.
• In 2010 the Human Development Report replaced the Human Poverty Index with the global Multidimensional Poverty Index, developed by the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative with UNDP.

• Treating human poverty as a replacement for income poverty. It was introduced as a complement, which is exactly why (c) rather than (b) is the answer.
• Confusing the Human Poverty Index (1997) with the Multidimensional Poverty Index (2010) — the second replaced the first thirteen years later, in the twelfth report after it.
• Assuming UNDP publishes the Global MPI alone. It is a joint product with the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative.

UPPSC likes the UNDP vocabulary itself — which index, which report, which year, which agency — while UPSC more often tests the content of the indices and what does or does not enter them.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Human Poverty Index was introduced by UNDP in which Human Development Report?

  • (a)Human Development Report 1990
  • (b)Human Development Report 1997
  • (c)Human Development Report 2005
  • (d)Human Development Report 2010

  Answer(b) Human Development Report 1997 — the report that set out the income-poverty versus human-poverty distinction. The 1990 report had introduced the HDI, and the 2010 report replaced the HPI with the Multidimensional Poverty Index.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  In UNDP's framework, human poverty is defined as deprivation in which of the following?

  • (a)Income, savings and assets
  • (b)Longevity, knowledge and a decent standard of living
  • (c)Employment, housing and transport
  • (d)Food, clothing and shelter alone

  Answer(b) Longevity, knowledge and a decent standard of living — the three essential elements of human life named in the Human Development Report 1997, deliberately chosen to parallel the dimensions of the HDI.