Understanding material deprivation in Spanish households using the OWA aggregation operator and 2-tuple linguistic model

Poverty has long been defined by income, but Sen (1995) broadened it to include deprivation of basic capabilities that prevent a decent life. This perspective has reshaped poverty assessment, leading institutions such as the European Union’s Social Protection Com­mittee and Eurostat to adopt household deprivation indicators to capture poverty and social exclusion. Such deprivation is usually measured by the lack of a certain quantity of essential goods or services, though further study is needed on how demanding decision-makers define poverty and social exclusion. Therefore, this work aims to define various scenarios of material deprivation, considering how demanding decision-makers are when measuring such depri­vation. It employs three methods: (i) the Ordered Weighted Averaging (OWA) aggregation operator to simulate decision-makers’ attitudes, (ii) the 2-tuple linguistic model to improve the interpretability of material deprivation results without information loss, and (iii) hierarchical clustering to summarize material deprivation in Spanish households by region and degree of urbanization. Results show that households may be economically poor based on income, but still have access to basic goods and services necessary for a decent life. The proposed model offers a more comprehensive, dynamic measure of material deprivation, enabling clearer in­sights into regional disparities through multiple scenarios. First published online 3 August 2026