“Now, too much of nothing
Can make a man ill at ease.
One man’s temper might rise
While another man’s temper freeze”
Can make a man ill at ease.
One man’s temper might rise
While another man’s temper freeze”
--------Bob Dylan
As people through out the world awake each morning to face a new day they do under very different circumstances. Some living comfortable homes with many rooms, they have more than enough to eat, are well cloth and healthy and a reasonable degree of financial security. Others and these constitute more than three fourths of earth 5.3 billion is much less fortunate. They make have little or no shelter and an inadequate food supply, their health is poor, they cannot read or write. They are unemployed and their prospect for a better life is black or uncertain at best. And examination of this global difference in living standard is revealing.
In recent times poverty alleviation has become a very fashionable activity in development discourse, research and action. The "establishment" - i.e. national and international power and professional structures - view of poverty puts the "poor" under an externally conceived "poverty line" and professes to want to get them above this line by giving them some kind of a "subsistence kit". Years of effort pretensions and discourses by the establishments have done little toward promoting the professed objective. Their statistics sometimes show some nominal progress, but this statistics itself is blissfully ignorant of the unfolding reality of life: new threats to the subsistence of people arising out of drastic decline in the quality of certain vital requisites for existence, some of which are included in the "subsistence kit" only very shoddily and some are totally ignored, today dominate the character of this reality. It is not in dispute that services like medical care, education, law and order and legal redress of inhuman oppression of many kinds, vital for living with minimum honor and security of life, body and property, have declined drastically in quality in recent years, implying in effect a fall in real incomes of people in terms of their "purchasing power" vis-à-vis these very essential services for subsistence. This alone prompts one to wonder whether there is a difference between "poverty watchers" and human beings! But looking beyond subsistence one has more reason to feel uneasy with the conventional treatment of the question of poverty.
Poverty
Poverty is a common term in the lexicon of development. Poverty implies deprivation of daily needs. The state of poverty can be judged from different angles. Poverty is widely recognized as a multidimensional problem involving income, consumption, nutrition, health, education, housing, crisis coping capacity, insecurity, etc. However, with the exception of income (consumption) measure, long-term trend in other dimensions of poverty is difficult to measure due to paucity of data. Focus is therefore on the income dimension of poverty supplemented by available evidence relating to its other dimensions. Many economists, social scientist and organizations define poverty from many angles.
According IBRD (World Bank), “poverty is the inability to sustain a minimum standard of life”.
Poverty does not depend on a single factor or determinant. It depends on many factors like economic, social, cultural, psychological determinants. Generally it can be defined,
“Poverty is not only the economic derivation but also social and psychological deprivation.”
According to C.T.Kurien, “ We shall ----- conceptualize poverty as the socio-economic phenomenon whereby the resources available to a society are used to satisfy the wants of the few while the many do not have even their basic needs met.”
There are three approaches to the conceptualization of poverty. Such as—absolute poverty, relative concept of poverty and externality concept of poverty.
As people through out the world awake each morning to face a new day they do under very different circumstances. Some living comfortable homes with many rooms, they have more than enough to eat, are well cloth and healthy and a reasonable degree of financial security. Others and these constitute more than three fourths of earth 5.3 billion is much less fortunate. They make have little or no shelter and an inadequate food supply, their health is poor, they cannot read or write. They are unemployed and their prospect for a better life is black or uncertain at best. And examination of this global difference in living standard is revealing.
In recent times poverty alleviation has become a very fashionable activity in development discourse, research and action. The "establishment" - i.e. national and international power and professional structures - view of poverty puts the "poor" under an externally conceived "poverty line" and professes to want to get them above this line by giving them some kind of a "subsistence kit". Years of effort pretensions and discourses by the establishments have done little toward promoting the professed objective. Their statistics sometimes show some nominal progress, but this statistics itself is blissfully ignorant of the unfolding reality of life: new threats to the subsistence of people arising out of drastic decline in the quality of certain vital requisites for existence, some of which are included in the "subsistence kit" only very shoddily and some are totally ignored, today dominate the character of this reality. It is not in dispute that services like medical care, education, law and order and legal redress of inhuman oppression of many kinds, vital for living with minimum honor and security of life, body and property, have declined drastically in quality in recent years, implying in effect a fall in real incomes of people in terms of their "purchasing power" vis-à-vis these very essential services for subsistence. This alone prompts one to wonder whether there is a difference between "poverty watchers" and human beings! But looking beyond subsistence one has more reason to feel uneasy with the conventional treatment of the question of poverty.
Poverty
Poverty is a common term in the lexicon of development. Poverty implies deprivation of daily needs. The state of poverty can be judged from different angles. Poverty is widely recognized as a multidimensional problem involving income, consumption, nutrition, health, education, housing, crisis coping capacity, insecurity, etc. However, with the exception of income (consumption) measure, long-term trend in other dimensions of poverty is difficult to measure due to paucity of data. Focus is therefore on the income dimension of poverty supplemented by available evidence relating to its other dimensions. Many economists, social scientist and organizations define poverty from many angles.
According IBRD (World Bank), “poverty is the inability to sustain a minimum standard of life”.
Poverty does not depend on a single factor or determinant. It depends on many factors like economic, social, cultural, psychological determinants. Generally it can be defined,
“Poverty is not only the economic derivation but also social and psychological deprivation.”
According to C.T.Kurien, “ We shall ----- conceptualize poverty as the socio-economic phenomenon whereby the resources available to a society are used to satisfy the wants of the few while the many do not have even their basic needs met.”
There are three approaches to the conceptualization of poverty. Such as—absolute poverty, relative concept of poverty and externality concept of poverty.
Absolute poverty: Absolute poverty is lack of resources in an absolute sense. According to the definition of absolute poverty, poor are those who are unable to maintain a minimum subsistence level of living. This type of poverty is also known, as minimum needs approach or subsistence approach to the concept of poor.
Relative poverty: According to the some thinkers, minimum requirement, which is the base of subsistence poverty, can be determined only in relation to the general standard of living in the society. Relative poverty is nothing but the relative position of various income groups to each other. According to M. Rein. “Poverty can not be understood by isolation the poor and treating them as a special group.” Galbraith defines, “---- people are poverty- stricken when their income, even if adequate for survival falls markedly behind that of the community. Then they cannot have what the larger community regards as the minimum necessary for decency; and they cannot wholly escape, therefore, the judgment of the larger community that they are indecent. They are degraded for in the literal sense; they live outside the grades which the community regards as acceptable.”
Externality concept of poverty: According to this concept, poverty should not be allowed to the extent such that poor people become harmful to the rest, non-poor society. Discomfort and cost of the rest of the society is the crucial aspect of this concept rather than misery and plight of the poor. M. Rein attributed this concept of Smolensk who wanted this poverty measure to serve, as an index of disutility to the community as a result of the persistence of poverty.
Externality concept of poverty: According to this concept, poverty should not be allowed to the extent such that poor people become harmful to the rest, non-poor society. Discomfort and cost of the rest of the society is the crucial aspect of this concept rather than misery and plight of the poor. M. Rein attributed this concept of Smolensk who wanted this poverty measure to serve, as an index of disutility to the community as a result of the persistence of poverty.
Poverty is the condition of having insufficient resources or income. In its most extreme form, poverty is a lack of basic human needs, such as adequate and nutritious food, clothing, housing, clean water, and health services. Extreme poverty can cause terrible suffering and death, and even modest levels of poverty can prevent people from realizing many of their desires. The poor people struggle daily for food, shelter, and other necessities. They often suffer from severe malnutrition, epidemic disease outbreaks, famine etc. In wealthier countries—such as the United States, Canada, Japan, and those in Western Europe—the effects of poverty may include poor nutrition, mental illness, drug dependence, crime, and high rates of disease.
Extreme poverty, which threatens people’s health or lives, is also known as destitution or absolute poverty. Relative poverty is the condition of having fewer resources or less income than others within a society or country, or compared to worldwide averages.
The reasons for poverty are not clear. Some people believe that poverty results from a lack of adequate resources on global level— resources such as land, food, and building materials—that are necessary for the well-being or survival of the world’s people. Others see poverty as an effect of the uneven distribution of resources around the world on an international or even regional scale. This second line of reasoning helps explain why many people have much more than they need to live in comfort, while many others do not have enough resources to live.
Poverty Line:
Poverty line is the line or limit of poverty status, which indicate the per capita income or per capita calorie intake per day. Actually the line, which indicates the 2122-kilo calorie value in the calorie perspective and $ 375 in per capita income perspective, is the poverty line. On the other hand, the line, which indicates the 1805- kilocalorie value in the calorie perspective and $ 273 in per capita income perspective, is absolute poverty line. Poverty line is measured by various ways. On the question which method is to be used for setting poverty lines, it has been argued that the “food energy intake (FEI) method”, when the issue at stake is to establish the basis for a consistent poverty comparison over time and space. The another method cost- of- basic- needs (CBN) which making poverty comparisons is that it explicitly aims to control for differences in purchasing power over basic consumption needs, while the FEI method does not. Setting the non-food component of the poverty line is another contentious step. There is no agreed to the role played by the food energy requirements in fixing the food component of the poverty line.
Once the relativities of the poverty lines over time and space are agreed, the next step is to estimate suitable poverty measures. Three poverty measures capture three aspect of poverty---its incidence, its depth and its severity. The first of these measures is the head-count index given by the percentage of the people who live in households with consumption per capita, which is below the poverty line. The second measure is the poverty gap index, which is the distance below the poverty line as a proportion of that line. And the last, the squared poverty gap index (SPG) introduced by Foster, Greer and Thornback, defined as the mean of the squared proportionate poverty gaps. Now we can show the poverty line in the following way;
Table: poverty line and its limit
On the basis of per capita calorie intake (kilo calorie) | |
Types of poverty | Limit |
Poverty line | 2122 |
Absolute poverty line | 1805 |
On the basis of per capita income ($) | |
Types of poverty | Limit |
Poverty line | 375 |
Absolute poverty line | 273 |
Poverty gap is a situation which shows the poverty and income inequality at the same time. The people who lie under poverty line to bring them over this line which amount money is needed that is called poverty gap.
OP=Poverty level;
PV=Poverty lone;
OD shows direct relationship between income and the income recipients. In the figure OM amount peoples’ income is less than OP. So, OPA is poverty gap. So, OM/OX= no. of people stay at below poverty line.
In mathematically this gap may be expressed by the index.i.e.
Ip= S (PL-Yi )/PL.Np.
Given, (PL- Yi )>0,i=1,2,----------Np.
Here, PL=poverty line,Yi= monthly income of the poor household.
The poor:
The total population below the poverty line is now estimated to be more than 3.5 billion of which about 939 million is in rural areas. Asia has the highest share of these. Numerically, the most important are smallholder farmers and the landless. In addition, there are groups like artesian fishermen, nomadic pastoralists and indigenous ethnic tribal. Smallholder farmers are often in marginal areas where participation is inadequate, the soils fragile and vulnerable to erosion, and desertification poses a serious risk. All these processes have adversely affected indigenous peoples and others on the periphery as well. Artesian fishermen and pastoralists are particularly vulnerable to ecological damage and resource depletion.
We can define poor in two ways on the basis of per capita income and per capita calorie intake. They are poor and absolute poor. According to World Bank, “a man who take less than 2122 but more than 1805 kilo calorie food in a day is poor and who take less than 1805 kilo calorie food in a day is absolute poor”. On the basis of per capita income “if the per capita income is less than $ 375 the people are poor and if the per capita income is less than $ 273 the people are absolute poor”.
In the context of assets, the poor are a person or household who have less than 1. 5 acres land holding or property of equivalent value. According to the U.S government, a poor household is one whose total income is less than the amount required satisfying the minimum needs of household. Another way, we can say, “the poor are a part of the necessary furniture of the earth. A short of professional where the rich can practice their virtue when they are so inclined.”
No comments:
Post a Comment