How are we doing on poverty and hunger reduction? A new measure of country performance

The paper presents a new composite indicator – the poverty and hunger index (PHI) – to measure countries’ performance toward achieving millennium development goal No.1 (MDG1) on halving poverty and hunger by 2015. Building on the statistical structure of the human development index, the PHI combines all five official MDG1 indicators, thereby generating insights on a country’s net progress towards its own goal, as opposed to progress measured by a single yardstick. Nonparametric analysis on the PHI components provides further evidence on the nature of the relationship between poverty and hunger measures, while cross-country results show significant variance in progress between and within regions. An extension of the PHI allows for consideration of the rate of progress made by each country in its own terms; that is, based on where it needs to be to attain all 5 MDG1 targets by 2015. Countries needing priority attention are identified, as well as areas for future research and recommendations for post-2015 initiatives.     

‘It was doing my head in’: Low-paid multiple employment and zero hours work

This article explores the lived experiences and working time complexities of low-paid workers in legitimate multiple employment and zero hours work. Based on detailed qualitative research, these workers have 2, 3, 4, 5 and even 7 different jobs out of necessity due to low-pay, unpredictable working hours and employment precarity. The research reveals that workers need to be available for (potential) work at any point but may not actually be offered any hours, which we argue constitutes unremunerated labour time. The findings highlight a densification of working time with zero hours work as employers maximize productive effort into specifically numbered, demarcated and minimized working hours, which tightens the porosity of labour. There is a dual fragmentation and individualization of employment, as these workers traverse multiple, expansive, complex and dynamic temporalities of work. This study identifies new economic and temporal indeterminacies of labour, which fundamentally transform the employment relationship and wage-effort bargain.