Basic Needs

The concept of “needs” has been a part of modern economic theory as well as a key element for diagnosis and interventions around the social question, more specifically related to the estimation of living standards and minimum wages. The notion of “basic needs” (BN), in turn, has been attributed to psychologist Abraham Maslow (1943). In the mid-1970s, as part of a reconsideration of economic growth strategies and of the international economic order, the meaning of BN became associated with “poverty” and “development” as a central issue on the agenda of international organizations. The notion entails simultaneously a programmatic dimension, oriented to policy making, and a descriptive dimension, focused on social structure analysis. In the early 1990s, the term lost preeminence in development discourse.

The International Labor Organization (ILO) defined BN in the Tripartite World Conference of 1976 as the minimum standard of living that a society should set for the poorest groups. It included a certain minimum set of requirements for private consumption (food, shelter, and clothing) as well as essential services provided by the community (safe drinking water, sanitation, public transport, health care, and educational facilities). Employment was included both as a means and as an end. Also, according to the ILO, policies oriented to fulfill BN should be inscribed in a broader human rights approach that includes people’s participation.

Although this became the most widespread characterization, there was place for many debates and redefinitions. Among other issues, there was discussion regarding whether BN were universal and invariant or historical, and around the pertinence of ranking and classifying different types of needs (ecological, social, personal, political, material, comparative, quantitative, intermediate, of being, of having, etc.).

The BN debate was intertwined with the issues brought up by the United Nations Second Development Decade proposal, which focused on guaranteeing minimum living standards by the end of the millennium. Similar concerns had already been brought up by peripheral countries since the postwar period. For example, in the late 1950s, India’s Planning Commission, led by Pitambar Pant, had become interested in focusing development toward the fulfillment of “minimum needs.” However, the ILO and the UN made them part of a global agenda, which required not only economic growth (measured through GDP [gross domestic product]) but also the redistribution of income, also an element incorporated by international organizations.

Also, between 1969 and 1979, the issue of BN would become an essential element of different proposals of alternative development styles. These perspectives contested social and international inequality, especially between the global north and the global south. These alternatives were put forward, among others, by the Bariloche Foundation since 1970, by the Hammersjöld Foundation since 1975, and by Oscar Varsavsky since 1971. These viewpoints objected to the consumer society—described as alienated—and projected a new social and international order that was able to ensure full development for the people and satisfaction of material and nonmaterial needs.

Because of this background, the BN perspective was associated with the discussions on the new international economic order. Nonetheless, there were some who accused BN proposals of diverting the debate around the international distribution of power and wealth toward the issue of distribution within developing economies. They also pointed out the Western and ethnocentric bias that allegedly lay behind the concept of BN. These criticisms were generally aimed at definitions that emphasized the virtuous relationship between BN satisfaction and workforce productivity as a way to ensure the income of the poor.

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