GY202 LENT TERM WEEK ONE: UNDERSTANDING POVERTY
• Who are the poor?
• How do we make poverty knowable, mappable, visible?
• What are some of the issues with that and what implicaOons do the meanings and measures of poverty have on the
poor and those who address their needs?
Consider the poliOcs behind the measurements of poverty and whether poverty can in fact be eradicated.
Consider how we think about poverty in developing and developed countries and what is gained and lost in these comparisons
General staOsOcs
World Bank – 12.7% of the world’s populaOon lived at or below $1.90 a day.
• In 2012, 896 million people lived on less than $1.90 a day
• 1990: 1.9 billion
UN – Poverty rate dropped to 14 per cent in 2015. 836 million people sOll live in extreme poverty.
• Previously half of the global South
• 20% live on less than US1, mostly in southern Asia and sub-Saharan Africa
MEANING AND MEASURE OF POVERTY (MAXWELL, 1999)
Challenges for development agencies
Agencies ofen want simple, universal measures like internaOonal poverty line of US1 per day.
• But this is too reducOonist
Must capture the diversity and complexity of poverty within countries – need collecOon of wide range of data from convenOonal
and parOcipatory sources
Different indicators have different and complementary uses in the idenOficaOon of poverty and planning.
• ObjecOve income or consumpOon measures can be used to assess poverty at naOonal level and can be aggregated
internaOonally.
• For analysis and detailed planning, more qualitaOve measures and parOcipatory approaches – requires local
empowerment and decentralizaOon.
Trade-off between measurability (requiring standardizaOon) and local complexity
IntervenOons should tackle causes not symptoms.
Terms used to describe poverty:
• Income or consumpOon poverty
• Human (under) development
• Social exclusion
• Ill-being
• (Lack of) capability and funcOoning
• Vulnerability
• Livelihood unsustainability
• Lack of basic needs RelaOve deprivaOon
Fault lines in poverty debate
INCOME-BASED OR MONEY-CENTRIC
Poverty as a state in which individuals lack financial resources to saOsfy basic needs/reach a min SOL (most common).
ConsumpOon or nutriOonal deficits. Idea of poverty line, disOnct divide between poor & non-poor (Lok-Dessalien, 2000)
1. Individual or household measures
Early measurement was at household level
Can disaggregate to the individual level, so as to capture intra-household factors and different types and causes of deprivaOon
affecOng men, women, children, old people etc.
2. Private consumpOon only or private consumpOon + publicly provided goods
• Who are the poor?
• How do we make poverty knowable, mappable, visible?
• What are some of the issues with that and what implicaOons do the meanings and measures of poverty have on the
poor and those who address their needs?
Consider the poliOcs behind the measurements of poverty and whether poverty can in fact be eradicated.
Consider how we think about poverty in developing and developed countries and what is gained and lost in these comparisons
General staOsOcs
World Bank – 12.7% of the world’s populaOon lived at or below $1.90 a day.
• In 2012, 896 million people lived on less than $1.90 a day
• 1990: 1.9 billion
UN – Poverty rate dropped to 14 per cent in 2015. 836 million people sOll live in extreme poverty.
• Previously half of the global South
• 20% live on less than US1, mostly in southern Asia and sub-Saharan Africa
MEANING AND MEASURE OF POVERTY (MAXWELL, 1999)
Challenges for development agencies
Agencies ofen want simple, universal measures like internaOonal poverty line of US1 per day.
• But this is too reducOonist
Must capture the diversity and complexity of poverty within countries – need collecOon of wide range of data from convenOonal
and parOcipatory sources
Different indicators have different and complementary uses in the idenOficaOon of poverty and planning.
• ObjecOve income or consumpOon measures can be used to assess poverty at naOonal level and can be aggregated
internaOonally.
• For analysis and detailed planning, more qualitaOve measures and parOcipatory approaches – requires local
empowerment and decentralizaOon.
Trade-off between measurability (requiring standardizaOon) and local complexity
IntervenOons should tackle causes not symptoms.
Terms used to describe poverty:
• Income or consumpOon poverty
• Human (under) development
• Social exclusion
• Ill-being
• (Lack of) capability and funcOoning
• Vulnerability
• Livelihood unsustainability
• Lack of basic needs RelaOve deprivaOon
Fault lines in poverty debate
INCOME-BASED OR MONEY-CENTRIC
Poverty as a state in which individuals lack financial resources to saOsfy basic needs/reach a min SOL (most common).
ConsumpOon or nutriOonal deficits. Idea of poverty line, disOnct divide between poor & non-poor (Lok-Dessalien, 2000)
1. Individual or household measures
Early measurement was at household level
Can disaggregate to the individual level, so as to capture intra-household factors and different types and causes of deprivaOon
affecOng men, women, children, old people etc.
2. Private consumpOon only or private consumpOon + publicly provided goods
