Exploring the Links Between Social Justice and Multidimensional Poverty Analysis: a Rawlsian Approach

One of the main debates around multidimensional poverty assessment concerns the degree of arbitrariness used to inform poverty analysis. Which dimensions matter and who should be selecting them are questions that repeatedly raise issues of ethics and legitimacy. We hold that, in order to justify normative decisions in support of poverty assessment, the latter has to be addressed as a social justice question. We propose a reconceptualization of multidimensional poverty analysis starting from John Rawls' seminal work on the conception of justice by (i) reviewing the most influential philosophical frameworks for analysing social justice; (ii) showing that Rawls' principles of justice can frame investigations on multidimensional poverty in constitutional democracies; and (iii) analysing the idea of an overlapping consensus to show that the scrutiny of national Constitutions can serve the purpose of unambiguously informing empirical poverty analyses as they undoubtedly convey people's value judgements and public shared ideas.