Poverty: Issues of Poor

Poverty is deprivation of material essentials such as food, shelter, drinking water, and clothing. It is also associated with the lack of education, freedom, and dignity. The uneven distribution of poverty at various scales, from the global to the household, via the national, regional, and local, suggests the importance of geographic factors in explaining its prevalence and understanding its nature.

Poverty Measures

There is disagreement on how best to measure poverty. The first distinction exists between absolute and relative measures. Absolute measures identify a minimum level of income or consumption below which individuals or households are considered poor. For example, the World Bank defines extreme poverty as less than $1 per day and moderate poverty as less than $2 per day, with purchasing power parity adjustments allowing comparisons between countries. Because standards of living vary dramatically across places, most countries have established their own absolute poverty lines. In the United States, the poverty threshold was established in 1965 based on the cost of food, taking into account household size and composition but making no adjustment for regional differences in cost of living. The threshold is adjusted annually for inflation. For example, in 2007, the federal poverty threshold for a family of three, with one adult and two children, was $16,705—far above the extreme world poverty measure but well below the national average income. (Couto & John, 2010)

Income-based measures have led to some criticism that monetary amounts do not directly translate into human well-being. The Nobel laureate Amartya Sen argues that poverty is the deprivation of basic capabilities to lead the kind of life one chooses. Although income is instrumental in reaching this goal, its impact is conditional and varies between different communities, families, and even individuals. To address these shortcomings, in 1997, the United Nations constructed the Human Poverty Index ...