Poverty in the World.
Etymology
The word poverty comes from old
French poverté (Modern French: pauvreté), from Latin paupertās from pauper .
The English word "poverty"
via povert. There are several definitions of poverty depending on the context
of the situation it is placed in, and the views of the person giving the
definition.
Measuring
poverty
1990-2 No.
|
1990-2 %
|
2012-4 No.
|
2012-4 %
|
|
World
|
1,014.5
|
18.7
|
805.3
|
11.3
|
Developed regions
|
20.4
|
<5
|
14.6
|
<5
|
Developing regions
|
994.1
|
23.4
|
790.7
|
14.5
|
Africa
|
182.1
|
27.7
|
226.7
|
20.5
|
Sub-Saharan
Africa
|
176.0
|
33.3
|
214.1
|
23.8
|
Asia
|
742.6
|
23.7
|
525.6
|
12.7
|
Eastern Asia
|
295.2
|
23.2
|
161.2
|
10.8
|
South-Eastern
Asia
|
138.0
|
30.7
|
63.5
|
10.3
|
Southern Asia
|
291.7
|
24.0
|
276.4
|
15.8
|
Latin America &
Carib.
|
68.5
|
15.3
|
37.0
|
6.1
|
Oceana
|
1.0
|
15.7
|
1.4
|
14.0
|
Definitions
United Nations:
Fundamentally, poverty is the inability of getting choices and opportunities, a
violation of human dignity. It means lack of basic capacity to participate
effectively in society. It means not having enough to feed and clothe a family,
not having a school or clinic to go to; not having the land on which to grow
one’s food or a job to earn one’s living, not having access to credit. It means
insecurity, powerlessness and exclusion of individuals, households and
communities. It means susceptibility to violence, and it often implies living
in marginal or fragile environments, without access to clean water or
sanitation.
World Bank:
Poverty is pronounced deprivation in well-being, and comprises many dimensions.
It includes low incomes and the inability to acquire the basic goods and
services necessary for survival with dignity. Poverty also encompasses low
levels of health and education, poor access to clean water and sanitation,
inadequate physical security, lack of voice, and insufficient capacity and
opportunity to better one’s life.
Copenhagen Declaration:
Absolute poverty is a condition characterized by severe deprivation of basic
human needs, including food, safe drinking water, sanitation facilities, health,
shelter, education and information. It depends not only on income but also on
access to social services. The term 'absolute poverty' is sometimes
synonymously referred to as 'extreme poverty.
Absolute poverty
Absolute poverty refers to a set
standard which is consistent over time and between countries. First introduced
in 1990, the dollar a daypoverty line
measured absolute poverty by the standards of the world’s poorest countries. The World Bank
defined the new international poverty line as $1.25 a day for 2005 (equivalent
to $1.00 a day in 1996 US prices). But have been updated to be $1.25 and $2.50
per day. Absolute poverty, extreme poverty,
or abject poverty is "a condition characterized by severe deprivation of
basic human needs, including food, safe drinking water, sanitation facilities,
health, shelter, education and information. It depends not only on income but
also on access to services."The term 'absolute poverty', when used in this
fashion, is usually synonymous with 'extreme poverty': Robert McNamara,
the former President of the World Bank, described absolute or extreme poverty
as, "...a condition so limited by malnutrition, illiteracy, disease,
squalid surroundings, high infant mortality,
and low life expectancy as to be beneath any reasonable definition of human decency”.
Australia is one of the world's wealthier nations. In his article published in
Australian Policy Online, Robert Tanton notes that, "While this amount is
appropriate for third world countries, in Australia, the amount required to
meet these basic needs will naturally be much higher because prices of these
basic necessities are higher."
However as the amount of wealth
required for survival is not the same in all places and time periods,
particularly in highly developed countries where few people would fall below
the World Bank's poverty lines, countries often develop their own National
poverty lines.
An absolute poverty line was
calculated in Australia for the Henderson poverty inquiry in 1973. It was
$62.70 a week, which was the disposable income required to support the basic
needs of a family of two adults and two dependent children at the time. This
poverty line has been updated regularly by the Melbourne Institute according to
increases in average incomes; for a single employed person it was $391.85 per
week (including housing costs) in March 2009.In Australia the OECD poverty
would equate to a "disposable income of less than $358 per week for a
single adult (higher for larger households to take account of their greater
costs).
For a few years starting 1990, The
World Bank anchored absolute poverty line as $1 per day. This was revised in
1993, and through 2005, absolute poverty was $1.08 a day for all countries on a
purchasing power parity basis, after adjusting for inflation to the 1993 U.S.
dollar.
Relative
poverty
Relative poverty is the "most
useful measure for ascertaining poverty rates in wealthy developed nations. “Relative poverty
measure is used by the United
Nations Development Program (UNDP), the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and Canadian
poverty researchers. In the European Union, the "relative poverty measure
is the most prominent and most–quoted of the EU social inclusion indicators."
"Relative
poverty reflects better the cost of social inclusion and equality of
opportunity in a specific time and space."
"Once
economic development has progressed beyond a certain minimum level, the rub of
the poverty problem – from the point of view of both the poor individual and of
the societies in which they live – is not so much the effects of poverty in any
absolute form but the effects of the contrast, daily perceived, between the
lives of the poor and the lives of those around them. For practical purposes,
the problem of poverty in the industrialized nations today is a problem of
relative poverty (page 9)."
In
1776 Adam Smith in the Wealth of Nations argued that poverty is the inability
to afford, "not only the commodities which are indispensably necessary for
the support of life, but whatever the custom of the country renders it indecent
for creditable people, even of the lowest order, to be without."
In
1958 J. K. Galbraith argued that, "People
are poverty stricken when their income, even if adequate for survival, falls
markedly behind that of their community."
In
1964 in a joint committee economic President's report in the United States,
Republicans endorsed the concept of relative poverty. ”No objective definition
of poverty exists... The definition varies from place to place and time to
time. In America as our standard of living rises, so does our idea of what is
substandard."
Other
aspects
Economic aspects of poverty focus on
material needs, typically including the necessities of daily living, such as
food, clothing, shelter, or safe drinking water. Poverty in this sense may be
understood as a condition in which a person or community is lacking in the
basic needs for a minimum standard of well-being and life, particularly as a
result of a persistent lack of income.
Analysis
of social aspects of poverty links conditions of scarcity to aspects of the
distribution of resources and power in a society and recognizes that poverty
may be a function of the diminished "capability" of people to live
the kinds of lives they value. The social aspects of poverty may include lack
of access to information, education, health care, or political power.
Poverty levels can remain the same
while those who rise out of poverty are replaced by others. The transient poor
and chronic poor differ in each society. In a nine-year period ending in 2005
for the U.S., 50% of the poorest quintile transitioned to a higher quintile.
Poverty
may also be understood as an aspect of unequal social status and inequitable social relationships,
experienced as social exclusion, dependency, and diminished capacity to
participate, or to develop meaningful connections with other people in society.
Such social exclusion can be minimized through strengthened connections with
the mainstream, such as through the provision of relational care to those who are experiencing poverty.
- Abuse
by those in power
- Dis-empowering institutions
- Excluded locations
- Gender relationships
- Lack of security
- Limited capabilities
- Physical limitations
- Precarious livelihoods
- Problems in social relationships
- Weak community organizations
Characteristics
The effects of poverty may also be
causes, as listed above, thus creating a "poverty cycle" operating
across multiple levels, individual, local, national and global.
Health
One third of deaths – some 18 million people
a year or 50,000 per day – are due to poverty-related causes: in total 270
million people. People of color, women and children, are over represented among
the global poor and these effects of severe poverty those living in poverty
suffer disproportionately from hunger or even starvation and disease. Those living in poverty suffer
lower life expectancy. According to the World Health
Organization, hunger and malnutrition are the single gravest threats to the
world's public health and malnutrition is by far the biggest contributor to child mortality, present in half of all cases.
Almost
90% of maternal deaths during childbirth occur in
Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, compared to less than 1% in the developed world.
Those who live in poverty have also been shown to have a far greater likelihood
of having or incurring a disability within their lifetime.Infectious diseases such as malaria and tuberculosis can perpetuate poverty by diverting health
and economic resources from investment and productivity; malaria decreases GDP
growth by up to 1.3% in some developing nations and AIDS decreases African
growth by 0.3–1.5% annually.
Infectious diseases continue to
blight the lives of the poor across the world. An estimated 40 million people
are living with HIV/AIDS, with 3 million deaths in 2004. Every year there are
350–500 million cases of malaria, with 1 million fatalities: Africa accounts
for 90 percent of malarial deaths and African children account for over 80
percent of malaria victims worldwide.
Hunger
Rises
in the costs of living making poor people less able to afford items. Poor
people spend a greater portion of their budgets on food than richer
people. As a result, poor households and those near the poverty threshold can
be particularly vulnerable to increases in food prices. For example, in late 2007 increases in the
price of grains led to food
riots in
some countries.The World Bank warned that 100 million
people were at risk of sinking deeper into poverty.
Education
Research has found that there is a
high risk of educational underachievement for children who are from low-income
housing circumstances. This is often a process that begins in primary school
for some less fortunate children. Instruction in the US educational system, as
well as in most other countries, tends to be geared towards those students who
come from more advantaged backgrounds. As a result, children in poverty are at
a higher risk than advantaged children for retention in their grade, special
deleterious placements during the school's hours and even not completing their
high school education.
There are indeed many explanations
for why students tend to drop out of school. One is the conditions of which
they attend school. Schools in poverty-stricken areas have conditions that
hinder children from learning in a safe environment. Researchers have developed
a name for areas like this: an urban war zone is a poor, crime-laden district
in which deteriorated, violent, even war-like conditions and underfunded,
largely ineffective schools promote inferior academic performance, including
irregular attendance and disruptive or non-compliant classroom behavior.
Poverty often drastically affects
children's success in school. A child's "home activities, preferences,
mannerisms" must align with the world and in the cases that they do not
these students are at a disadvantage in the school and most importantly the
classroom.
For
a child to grow up emotionally healthy, the children under three need "A
strong, reliable primary caregiver who provides consistent and unconditional
love, guidance, and support. Safe, predictable, stable environments. Ten to 20
hours each week of harmonious, reciprocal interactions. This process, known as
attunement, is most crucial during the first 6–24 months of infants' lives and
helps them develop a wider range of healthy emotions, including gratitude,
forgiveness, and empathy. Enrichment through personalized, increasingly complex
activities".
Shelter
Poverty
increases the risk of homelessness. Slum-dwellers, who make up a third of the
world's urban population, live in poverty no better, if not worse, than rural
people, who are the traditional focus of the poverty in the developing world, according to a report by the United
Nations.
There
are over 100 million street children worldwide Most of the children living in
institutions around the world have a surviving parent or close relative, and
they most commonly entered orphanages because of poverty. Experts and child
advocates maintain that orphanages are expensive and often harm children's development by separating them from their families. It
is speculated that, flush with money, orphanages are increasing and push for
children to join even though demographic data show that even the poorest
extended families usually take in children whose parents have died.
Utilities
The urban poor buy water from water
vendors for, on average, about five to 16 times the metered price. The poorest
fifth receive 0.1% of the world’s lighting but pay a fifth of total spending on
light.
Similarly, the poorest fifth receive
0.1% of the world’s lighting but pay a fifth of total spending on light,
accounting for 25 to 30 percent of their income.] Indoor
air pollution from burning fuels kills 2 million, with almost half the deaths
from pneumonia in children under 5. Fuel from Bamboo burns more cleanly and
also matures much faster than wood, thus also reducing deforestation.
Additionally, using solar panels is promoted as being cheaper over the
products' lifetime even if upfront costs are higher
Violence
According
to experts, many women become victims of trafficking, the most common form of
which is prostitution, as a means of survival
and economic desperation.] Deterioration of living conditions can often
compel children to abandon school to contribute to the family income, putting
them at risk of being exploited.For example, in Zimbabwe, a number of girls are turning to sex in
return for food to survive because of the increasing poverty.
In
one survey, 67% of children from disadvantaged inner cities said they had witnessed a serious assault,
and 33% reported witnessing a homicide. 51% of fifth graders from New Orleans (median income for a household: $27,133)
have been found to be victims of violence, compared to 32% in Washington, DC
(mean income for a household: $40,127).
Poverty Reduction
Various
poverty reduction strategies are broadly categorized here based on whether they
make more of the basic human needs available or whether they increase the disposable income needed to purchase those needs. Some
strategies such as building roads can both bring access to various basic needs,
such as fertilizer or healthcare from urban areas, as well as increase incomes,
by bringing better access to urban markets.
Increasing
the supply of basic needs
Food
and other goods
Agricultural technologies such as nitrogen fertilizers, pesticides, new seed
Varietiesandnew irrigation methods have
dramatically reduced food shortages in modern times by boosting yields past
previous constraints.
Health
care and education
.
Nations do not necessarily need
wealth to gain health. For example, Sri Lanka had a of 2% in the 1930s, higher than any nation today. It
reduced it to 0.5–0.6% in the 1950s and to .06% today while spending less each
year on because it learned what worked and what did not. Cheap and promoting hand washing are some
of the most cost effective health interventions and can cut from and . Knowledge on the cost effectiveness of healthcare
interventions can be elusive and educational measures have been made to
disseminate what works, such as the
Desirable actions such as enrolling
children in school or receiving vaccinations can be encouraged by a form of aid
known as ,
for example, dropout rates of 16- to 19-year-olds in rural area dropped by 20%
and children gained half an inch in height. Initial fears that the program
would encourage families to stay at home rather than work to collect benefits
have proven to be unfounded. Instead, there is less excuse for neglectful
behavior as, for example, children stopped begging on the streets instead of
going to school because it could result in suspension from the program.
Removing
constraints on government services
Local citizens from the Jana bi
Village wait their turn to gather goods from the Sons of Iraq (Abna al-Iraq) in
a military operation conducted in Yusufiyah, Iraq.
Government
revenue can be diverted away from basic services by corruption. Funds from aid
and natural resources are often sent by government individuals for to overseas banks which insist on Bank, instead of spending on the poor. A
report asked for more action from Western banks as they have proved capable of
stanching the flow of funds linked to terrorism.
to banks and governments from richer countries can
constrain government spending on the poor. For example, Zambia spent 40% of its total budget to repay foreign debt, and
only 7% for basic state services in 1997. One of the proposed ways to help poor
countries has been .
Zambia began offering services, such as free health care even while
overwhelming the health care infrastructure, because of savings that resulted
from a 2005 round of Debt Relief.
, also known as vulture funds, buy up the debt of
poor nations cheaply and then sue countries for the full value of the debt plus
interest which can be ten or 100 times what they paid. They may pursue any
companies which do business with their target country to force them to pay to
the fund instead. Considerable resources are diverted on costly court cases.
For example, a court in ordered to pay an American speculator $100 million in 2010. Now,
the Jersey have banned such payments.
Reversing
brain drain
The
loss of basic needs providers emigrating from impoverished countries has a
damaging effect.
As of 2004, there were more Ethiopia-trained
doctors living in Chicago than in Ethiopia.Proposals to mitigate the problem by
the include compulsory government service for graduates of
public medical and nursing schools and creating career-advancing programs to
retain personnel.
Controlling
overpopulation
Some
argue that overpopulation and lack of access to birth control leads to population
increase to exceed food production and other resources. Better education for
both men and women, and more control of their lives, reduces population growth
due to family planning. According to UNFPA-United
Nations Population Fund, by giving better education to men and women, they can
earn money for their lives and can help them to strengthen economic security.
Increasing
personal income
The
following are strategies used or proposed to increase personal incomes among
the poor. Raising farm incomes is described as the core of the antipoverty
effort as three quarters of the poor today are farmers. Estimates show that
growth in the agricultural productivity of small farmers is, on average, at
least twice as effective in benefiting the poorest half of a country’s
population as growth generated in nonagricultural sectors.
Income
grants
A guaranteed
minimum income
ensures that every citizen will live be able to purchase a desired level of
basic needs.
A basic income (or negative income tax) is a system of social security, that periodically provides each citizen,
rich or poor, with a sum of money that is sufficient to live on. Studies of large cash-transfer
programs in Ethiopia, Kenya, and Malawi show that the programs can be effective
in increasing consumption, schooling, and nutrition, whether they are tied to
such conditions or not. Proponents argue
that a basic income is more economically efficientthan a minimum wage and unemployment benefits, as the minimum wage
effectively imposes a high marginal tax on employers, causing losses in efficiency. In 1968, Paul Samuelson, John Kenneth Galbraith and another 1,200
economists signed a document calling for the US Congress to introduce a system
of income guarantees.Income grants are argued to be vastly more
efficient in extending basic needs to the poor than subsidizing supplies. Its effectiveness in poverty
alleviation is diluted by the non-poor who enjoy the same subsidized prices. In
some countries, fuel subsidies are a larger part of the budget than health and
education. A 2008 study concluded that the money spent on in-kind transfers in
India in a year could lift all India’s poor out of poverty for that year if
transferred directly.
Economic
freedoms
In Canada, it takes two days, two
registration procedures, and $280 to open a business while an entrepreneur in Bolivia must pay $2,696 in fees, wait 82 business
days, and go through 20 procedures to do the same. Such costly barriers favor
big firms at the expense of small enterprises, where most jobs are created.
Often, businesses have to bribe government officials even for routine
activities, which are, in effect, a tax on business. Noted reductions in
poverty in recent decades has occurred in China and India mostly as a result of the
abandonment of collective farming in China and the ending of
the central planning model known as the License Raj in India. The World Bank concludes that governments and feudal elites
extending to the poor the right to the land that they live and use is 'the key
to reducing poverty' citing that land rights greatly increase poor people's
wealth, in some cases doubling it. Although approaches varied, the World Bank said the key issues were security of tenure
and ensuring land transactions costs were low.
Financial
services
Microloans,
made famous by the Grameen Bank, is where small amounts of
money are loaned to farmers or villages, mostly women, who can then obtain
physical capital to increase their economic rewards. However, micro lending has
been criticized for making hyper profits off the poor even from its founder, Muhammad Yunus, and in India, which has seen a growing wave
of defaults and suicides.[184][185][186] Indian political activist Arundhati Roy asserts that some 250,000 debt-ridden
farmers have been driven to suicide.
Those
in poverty place overwhelming importance on having a safe place to save money,
much more so than receiving loans. Additionally, a large part of microfinance loans are spent not on investments but on
products that would usually be paid by a checking or savings account. Micro savings are designs to make savings
products available for the poor, who make small deposits. Mobile banking utilizes the wide availability of mobile
phones to address the problem of the heavy regulation and costly maintenance of
saving accounts. This usually involves a
network of agents of mostly shopkeepers, instead of bank branches, would take
deposits in cash and translate these onto a virtual account on customers'
phones.
Wealth
concentration
Oxfam has called for an international movement to end extreme
wealth concentration as a significant step towards ameliorating global poverty.
The group stated that the $240 billion added to the fortunes of the world's
richest billionaires in 2012 was enough to end extreme poverty four times over.
Oxfam argues that the "concentration of resources in the hands of the top
1% depresses economic activity and makes life harder for everyone else -
particularly those at the bottom of the economic ladder."
Climate
Change
A
report published in 2013 by the World Bank, with support from the Climate
& Development Knowledge Network, found that climate change was likely to
hinder future attempts to reduce poverty. The report presented the likely
impacts of present day, 2 °C and 4 °C warming on agricultural
production, water resources, coastal ecosystems and cities across Sub-Saharan
Africa, South Asia and South East Asia. The impacts of a temperature rise of
2 °C included: regular food shortages in Sub-Saharan Africa; shifting rain
patterns in South Asia leaving some parts under water and others without enough
water for power generation, irrigation or drinking; degradation and loss of
reefs in South East Asia, resulting in reduced fish stocks; and coastal
communities and cities more vulnerable to increasingly violent storms.
Voluntary
Among
some individuals, poverty is considered a necessary or desirable condition,
which must be embraced to reach certain spiritual, moral, or intellectual
states. Poverty is often understood to be an essential element of renunciation in religions such as Buddhism (only for monks, not for lay persons) and Jainism, whilst in Roman Catholicism it is one of
the evangelical counsels. The main aim of giving up
materialistic world is to withdraw oneself from sensual pleasures (as they are
fake and temporary in some religions). This self-invited poverty (or giving up
pleasures) is different from the one caused by economic imbalance.
Benedict XVI distinguishes “poverty chosen”
(the poverty of spirit proposed by Jesus), and “poverty to be fought”
(unjust and imposed poverty). He considers that the moderation implied in the
former favors solidarity, and is a necessary condition so as to fight effectively
to eradicate the abuse of the latter.
As it was indicated above the reduction of
poverty results from religion, but also can result from sustainable development or solidarity.
References:
Dr. Faisal Zaheer.
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