Poverty & Underdevelopment:

What is poverty?

The shortage of common things such as food, clothing, shelter and safe drinking water

It may also include the lack of access to opportunities such as education and employment

It could be lack of choice: “Beggars cannot be choosers.”

What is poverty?

It could also mean deprivation "to be poor is to be deprived of those goods and services and pleasures which others around us

take for granted.“

It could mean social exclusion: process through w/c individuals or groups are wholly or partially excluded from full participation in the society in w/c they live.

What is poverty?

Or if David Korten is to be believed, poverty also involves social disintegration and environmental degradation, which he describes as forming the threefold(line) human crisis in the world today.

Warning:

The definition of poverty may differ relative to the norms of each particular society

“The poor of different times & places differ between themselves in virtually every aspect of their conditions, just like the societies of w/c they are part. Who is cast in this way depends not on how the poor live, but on the way society as whole lives.”

—Bauman 1999

The World Bank's "Voices of the Poor," based on research with over 20,000 poor people in 23 countries, identifies a range of factors which poor people identify as part of poverty. These include:

Precarious livelihoods Excluded locations Physical limitations Gender relationships Problems in social

relationships

Lack of security Abuse by those in

power Dis-empowering

institutions Limited capabilities Weak community

organizations

What is poverty?

Not only income, but also rights Social exclusion Multi-dimensional aspects of poverty

Who are the poor?

The poor refers to individuals and families whose incomes fall below the official poverty threshold and/or cannot afford to provide for their minimum basic needs for food, health, education, housing, and other social amenities of life.

Republic Act No. 8425 - Social Reform and Poverty Alleviation Act, passed by Congress in December 1997:

Causes of Poverty: Economic

Historical factors—colonialism & neo-colonialism; post-communism (political economy)

Economic factors Recession Shock to food prices

Causes of Poverty: Governance

Lack of democracy Governance incompetence & corruption Weak rule of law Lack of peace & order

Contributory Factors

Overpopulation Educational achievements & employable skills Cultural causes: pre-scientific beliefs Social discrimination: gender, race/ethnicity,

age, disability, religious/political beliefs The Matthew Effect

The Matthew Effect

It describes the phenomenon that "the rich get richer and the poor get poorer". Those who possess power and economic or social capital can leverage those resources to gain more power or capital.

“For to all those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away.”

—Matthew 25:29, New Revised Standard Version.

Environmental factors

Erosion Desertification Deforestation Geographic & natural resource factors Drought & water crisis Climate change

Effects of povertyEffective marginal rates of tax poverty

The effects of poverty may also be causes, thus creating a "poverty cycle"

operating across multiple levels, individual, household, local, national and global

"set of factors or events by which poverty, once started, is likely to continue unless there is outside intervention."

Sometimes called the “Poverty trap”

Economic inequality

Poverty

Illiteracy/Ignorance

Malnutrition

Weak resistance

Unsanitarysurrounding

Spread of disease-causing microbes

Sickness

Death

Unsustainable Family size

Lack of investment

Homelessness/Inadequate housing

Relationship of Health & Poverty

What is food threshold?

Also referred to as the subsistence threshold or the food poverty lineRefers to the minimum income/expenditure required for a family/individual to meet the basic food needs, which satisfies the nutritional requirements for economically necessary and socially desirable physical activities

What is poverty threshold(line)?

Refers to the cost of minimum basic needs: food + non-food

Refers to the minimum income/expenditure required for a family/individual to meet the basic food and non-food requirements

Human Development Index (HDI)

An index used to rank countries by level of "human development", which usually also implies whether a country is a developed, developing, or underdeveloped country.

It is claimed as a standard means of measuring human development—a concept that, according to the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), refers to the process of widening the options of persons, giving them greater opportunities for education, health care, income, employment, etc.

Comparative HDI of Selected Countries: 1975-2002

HDIRank Country 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2002

1 Norway 0.866 0.886 0.897 0.911 0.935 0.954 0.956

8 United States 0.866 0.886 0.899 0.914 0.926 0.935 0.939

25 Singapore 0.724 0.761 0.784 0.821 0.859 .. 0.902

59 Malaysia 0.614 0.657 0.693 0.720 0.759 0.789 0.793

76 Thailand 0.613 0.651 0.676 0.707 0.742 .. 0.768

83 Philippines 0.653 0.686 0.692 0.719 0.735 .. 0.753

94 China 0.523 0.557 0.593 0.627 0.683 0.721 0.745

130 Cambodia .. .. .. .. 0.540 0.551 0.568

127 India 0.411 0.437 0.476 0.514 0.548 0.579 0.595

176 Niger 0.237 0.257 0.250 0.259 0.265 0.279 0.292

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