CHAPTER TWO: CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK
2.3 DIMENSIONS OF POVERTY
The way people define poverty has evolved from being absolute to be more encompassing by being relative and currently the debate is the multi dimensionality of poverty (UN 2000) as intimated in the statement below.
“Don’t ask me what poverty is because you have met it outside my house. Look at the house and count the number of holes. Look at my utensils and the clothes that
I am wearing. Look at everything and write what you see. What you see is Poverty”. —A poor man, Kenya 1997 pg 26 (World Bank 1999)
Poverty is known to assume many faces in space and time as implied in the above statement. To some poverty is hunger, lack of shelter, being sick, not being able to the see the doctor, not going to school, being jobless, having unclean water, being powerless and lacking representation (World Bank 2002; World Bank 1999). Thus poverty is some form of deprivation; however it differs from depravation in that deprivation implies unmet peoples needs while poverty implies lack of resources to meet those needs (Townsend 1979). The Asian Development Bank (2007) taxonomises poverty into groups namely; human poverty which is the lack of essential human capabilities, notably literacy and nutrition; income poverty which is the lack of sufficient income to meet minimum consumption needs; absolute poverty which is the degree of poverty below which the minimal requirement for survival are not being met and relative poverty, which is lacking necessary requirements considered normal. These types of poverty are discussed below.
2.3.1 Absolute Poverty
Absolute poverty is when or if total earnings of a person or household are insufficient to obtain the minimum necessities for the maintenance of a mere physical efficiency (Rowntree 1901: p186 cited by World Bank 2002). Oppeinham (1993) argues that absolute poverty is when you cannot house, clothe or feed oneself, in essence one cannot physically sustain ones self. Absolute poverty quantifies the number of people below a poverty threshold, and this poverty threshold is independent of time and place (World Bank 2002). Thus for example for the measure to be absolute, the line must be the same in different countries. The World Bank has championed such thresholds based on consumption since it better captures long run welfare than income (Chen and
Ravallion 2000). Thus the World Bank since 1990 has created poverty lines wherein one is classified poor if one is living below $1.08 a day usually translated to one dollar a day. When creating these lines, The World Bank uses purchasing power parity (PPP) and exchange rates to confirm that the poverty lines are comparable between countries (World Bank 1999). The intuition behind an absolute measure is that mere survival takes the same amount of goods across the world and that everybody should be subject to the same (World Bank 1999). However scholars like (Davidson 2002; Townsend 1979) argue that poverty cannot be aggregated into a single domain (income /consumption) but is relative.
2.3.2 Relative Poverty
Relative poverty acknowledges that income and consumption are necessary but not adequate measures in defining poverty (World Bank 1990). Relative poverty is the falling behind by a certain degree from the average income and lifestyle enjoyed by the rest of society where one lives (Davidson 2002) as described in the statement below.
“If I consider how other people live, then I feel poor because I cannot give my child what he needs— this is not normal.” —Latvia 1997 pg 53 (World Bank 1999)
The woman in the above statement considers herself poor because she lacks what is considered normal in her society. Townsend (1979) goes on to further include items considered customary therefore individuals are in poverty if they lack the resources to obtain the types of diets, participate in activities and have living conditions and amenities which are customary or at least widely approved. Thus poverty has cultural or qualitative implications. Relative poverty unlike absolute poverty, acknowledges that people‘s needs are not merely physical but social. People are not merely individual organisms requiring sources of physical replenishment but also social beings, they are not consumers but are producers as well (Townsend 2006). However what is relative differs from one society to the other. Others scholars have also gone past relative and come up with human poverty, which has attracted attention of development organisations.
2.3.3 Human Poverty
Human poverty is defined as lack of basic human capabilities mainly nutrition, literacy, abbreviated life span, poor maternal health and illness from preventative diseases (UNDP 2006). This is echoed in the statement below.
If you don’t have money today, your disease will take you to your grave.
—An old woman, Ghana 1995a pg 42 (World Bank 1999)
Human poverty also entails other indirect measures such as lack of access to services and goods, infrastructure, energy, sanitation, education, communication and drinking water necessary to sustain basic human capabilities (Sen 1999; World Bank 2000; Chambers 1995). In essence human poverty entails deprivation in non income terms but in human terms. Sen (1999) defines human poverty as being unable to choose a life that one values. This is also in line with the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDG‘s)wherein the major goal is to alleviate poverty in as far as expanding human capabilities are concerned. The MDG‘s are; to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger, achieve universal primary education, promote gender equality, reducing child mortality, improve maternal health, combating HIV/AIDS and malaria, ensuring environmental sustainability and developing a global partnership for development (UN Millennium Summit 2000).
The above goals acknowledge that poverty is not merely deprivation of income but lack of human capabilities which is defined here as, denial of opportunities and choices most basic to human development to lead a long healthy, creative life, enjoying a decent standard of living, freedom, dignity, self esteem and respect from others (Statistics South Africa 2000; Sen 1999; UNDP 2003).
Poverty is thus multidimensional and pervasive, as 1.2 billion people around the globe still live on less than a dollar a day and nearly 850 million people go hungry every night (UNDP 2006). Poverty reduction should therefore be the centre of development efforts (UNDP 2006).