POVERTY

"to be poor is to be deprived of

those goods and services and
pleasures which others around
us take for granted."
Poverty

 Poverty (also called penury) is deprivation

of common necessities that determine the
quality of life, including food, clothing, shelter
and safe drinking water, and may also
include the deprivation of opportunities to
learn, to obtain better employment to escape
poverty, and/or to enjoy the respect of fellow
citizens.
Contents

 Etymology
 Other aspects
 Causes of poverty
– 1 Economics
– 2 Governance
– 3 Demographics and Social Factors
– 4 Health Care
– 5 Environmental Factors
 Effects of poverty
 Poverty reduction
– 1 Economic growth
– 2 Free market
– 3 Fair trade
– 4 Direct aid
– 5 Development aid
– 6 Improving the environment and access of the poor
– 7 Millennium Development Goals
Etymology

 The words "poverty" and "poor" came from

Latin pauper = "poor", which originally came
from pau- and the root of pario, i.e. "giving
birth to not much" and referred to
unproductive farmland or livestock.
Aspects

 economic aspects of poverty

– the necessities of daily living, such as food,
clothing, shelter, or safe drinking water.
– Result of a persistent lack of income.

social aspects of poverty

– lack of access to information, education,
health care, or political power.
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.[26]
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, and
 weak community organizations.
Causes of poverty

 Economics
– Unemployment
• Some countries' governments are believed to
purposefully maintain a 2-10% unemployed
populace to act as a 'replacement threat' to
unskilled private sector workers, by way of
maintaining an existing thriving service economy.
Causes of poverty

 Governance
– Lacking democracy in poor countries
– Weak rule of law
– Failure by governments to provide essential
infrastructure
– Poor access to affordable education
– High levels of corruption
 Dalits in Jaipur, India.

Causes of poverty

 Demographic and Social factors

– Overpopulation and lack of access to birth control methods. Note that
population growth slows or even become negative as poverty is reduced
due to the demographic transition.
– Crime, both white-collar crime and blue-collar crime, including violent
gangs and drug cartels.
– Historical factors, for example imperialism, colonialism and
Post-Communism (at least 50 million children in Eastern Europe and the
former Soviet Union lived in poverty).
– Brain drain
– War, including civil war, genocide, and democide.
– Discrimination of various kinds, such as age discrimination, stereotyping,
gender discrimination, racial discrimination, caste discrimination.
– Individual beliefs, actions and choices.
 Hardwood surgical tables are
commonplace in rural Indian
village clinics.

Health Care
 Poor access to affordable health care makes individuals less
resilient to economic hardship and more vulnerable to poverty.
 Inadequate nutrition in childhood
 Disease, specifically diseases of poverty: AIDS, malaria and
tuberculosis and others overwhelmingly afflict developing
nations, which perpetuate poverty by diverting individual,
community, and national health and economic resources from
investment and productivity.
 Clinical depression undermines the resilience of individuals and
when not properly treated makes them vulnerable to poverty.
 Similarly substance abuse, including for example alcoholism
and drug abuse when not properly treated undermines
resilience and can consign people to vicious poverty cycles.
Causes of poverty

 Environmental factors
– Erosion. Intensive farming often leads to a vicious cycle of exhaustion of
soil fertility and decline of agricultural yields and hence, increased poverty.
– Desertification and overgrazing. Approximately 40% of the world's
agricultural land is seriously degraded.
– Deforestation as exemplified by the widespread rural poverty in India that
began in the early 20th century and is attributed to non-sustainable tree
harvesting.
– Natural factors such as climate change. or environment
– Geographic factors, for example access to fertile land, fresh water,
minerals, energy, and other natural resources, presence or absence of
natural features.
– The climate also limits what crops and farm animals may be used on
similarly fertile lands.
– On the other hand, research on the resource curse has found that
countries with an abundance of natural resources.
– Drought and water crisis.
Effects of poverty

 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.
– hunger or even starvation
– lower life expectancy
– increases the risk of homelessness
– Increased risk of drug abuse
– Diseases of poverty
– suffer social isolation
– Rates of suicide may increase
– increase states' vulnerability to natural disasters
– make states more vulnerable to shocks in the international economy, such
as those associated with rising fuel prices, or declining commodity prices.
– vulnerable to human trafficking
Poverty reduction

 Economic growth
– World GDP per capita rapidly increased beginning with the
Industrial Revolution.
– The anti-poverty strategy of the World Bank depends heavily on
reducing poverty through the promotion of economic growth.
The World Bank argues that an overview of many studies shows that:
– Growth is fundamental for poverty reduction, and in principle growth
as such does not affect inequality.
– Growth accompanied by progressive distributional change is better
than growth alone.
– High initial income inequality is a brake on poverty reduction.
– Poverty itself is also likely to be a barrier for poverty reduction; and
wealth inequality seems to predict lower future growth rates.
Poverty reduction

Free Trade:
– What could broadly be called free market reforms
represent one strategy for reducing poverty.
– For example, noted reductions in poverty in the 20th
century have been in India and China, where hundreds
of millions of people in the two countries grew out of
poverty, mostly as a result of the abandonment of
collective farming in China and the cutting of
government red tape in India.
 This was critical in fostering their dramatic economic
growth.
Poverty reduction

 Fair trade
– Another approach to alleviating poverty is to
implement Fair Trade which advocates the
payment of a fair price as well as social and
environmental standards in areas related to
the production of goods.
Poverty reduction

 Direct Aid
– The government can directly help those in need through
cash transfers as a short term expedient. This has been
applied with mixed results in most Western societies during
the 20th century in what became known as the welfare state
. Especially for those most at risk, such as the elderly and
people with disabilities.
– Private charity. Systems to encourage direct transfers to the
poor by citizens organized into voluntary or not-for-profit
groupings are often encouraged by the state through
charitable trusts and tax deduction arrangements.
Poverty reduction

 Development Aid
– Most developed nations give development aid to
developing countries
– Aid from non-governmental organizations may be
more effective than governmental aid; this may be
because it is better at reaching the poor and
better controlled at the grassroots level
Poverty reduction
 Improving Environment and Access to thePoor
– Subsidized housing development.
– Education, especially that directed at assisting the poor to produce food in
underdeveloped countries.
– Family planning to limit the numbers born into poverty and allow family
incomes to better cover the existing family.
– Subsidized health care.
– Assistance in finding employment.
– Subsidized employment (see also Workfare).
– Encouragement of political participation and community organizing.
– Implementation of fair property rights laws.
– Reduction of regulatory burden and bureaucratic oversight.
– Reduction of taxation on income and capital.
– Reduction of government spending, including a reduction in borrowing and
printing money.
Millennium Development Goals

 Eradication of extreme poverty and hunger by 2015 is the first

Millennium Development Goal.
 Directly assisting local entrepreneurs to grow their businesses
and create jobs.
 Access to information on sexual and reproductive health.
 Action against domestic violence.
 Appointing government scientific advisors in every country.
 Deworming school children in affected areas.
 Drugs for AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria.
 Eliminating school fees.
Cont…..
 Ending user fees for basic health care in developing countries.
 Free school meals for schoolchildren.
 Legislation for women’s rights, including rights to property.
 Planting trees.
 Providing soil nutrients to farmers in sub-Saharan Africa.
 Providing mosquito nets.
 Access to electricity, water and sanitation.
 Supporting breast-feeding.
 Training programs for community health in rural areas.
 Upgrading slums, and providing land for public housing.
: Simple living

St. Francis of Assisi renounces his

worldly goods in a painting attributed
to Giotto di Bondone.
 'Tis the gift to be simple,
'tis the gift to be free,
'tis the gift to come down where you
ought to be,
And when we find ourselves in the
place just right,
It will be in the valley of love and
delight. Thank You
Seek no poverty in future