HUMAN RIGHTS QUARTERLY
Measuring Compliance: Social Rights
and the Maximum Available Resources
Dilemma
Abby Kendrick*
ABSTRACT
This article argues that since fulfillment of social rights is dependent on
the availability of resources we must look beyond the field of international
human rights, to economics, to provide a stylized way of thinking about
measuring compliance. Using conditional rights as a starting point, this article
argues that there are certain normative and practical factors that limit social
rights, and it is in allowing for these factors that gives rise to the maximum
resources dilemma: How can the content of social rights be determined if
it is allowed to differ across resource contexts, and how can compliance
be measured if the content is not determinate? It argues further that the
empirical tools of microeconomics offer a systematic way to deal with the
dilemma and outlines a methodological sketch for measuring compliance.
I. INTRODUCTION
Consider two new lives. The first enters the world in Swaziland, the other
in Switzerland. The Swazi new born is twenty times more likely to die before reaching her fifth birthday than her Swiss counterpart.1 If she reaches
adulthood, she will have been educated for half the number of years.2 She
* Abby Kendrick is Teaching Fellow in Economics at the University of Warwick. She is also an
Honorary Research Associate in the Peter A. Allard School of Law at the University of British
Columbia. Her current work focuses on the use of quantitative methodologies for research
in economic and social human rights. She teaches world economic theory and history and
is a Member of the Centre for Human Rights in Practice at the University of Warwick.
1. World Health Organization, World Health Statistics 2013, 22 (2013).
2. United Nations Development Programme, Human Development Index, Mean Years of Schooling
(Females Aged 25 Years and Above) (2014).
Human Rights Quarterly 39 (2017) 657–679 © 2017 by Johns Hopkins University Press