Ending Poverty (First of Series)

BIMBO CABIDOG

So what is poverty?

Poverty is a global concern. In a summit of world leaders at the beginning of the new millennium, participants representing around 100 countries concurred on eight United Nations Millennium Development Goals. They ranked the eradication of extreme poverty and hunger No. 1.

Global poverty is depicted by a UN report on Human Development. It says:

1. Of the 4.6 billion people in the developing countries, around 1.2 billion live on less than $1 a day, 2.8 billion on less than $2 a day
2. Nearly a billion lack access to improved water sources
3. About 2.4 billion lack access to basic sanitation
4. More than 850 million are illiterate, 543 million of them women.
5. Nearly 325 million boys and girls are out of school.
6. And 11 million children under age five die each year from preventable causes.

The figures manifest a multidimensional reality. It is ironic for a world witnessing tremendous progress to have masses of people trapped in acute deprivations. Earth’s population has now grown to 7 billion. There are around four billion folks suffering from such.

Poverty is officially defined as a threshold of income on which a family can no longer meet the minimum requirements of living. The income-based definition points to purchasing power or what kind and number of goods an amount of currency can buy.

A way of determining purchasing power is the Consumer Price Index (CPI). This is the basket of goods a referenced amount of currency, like PhP100, could get at a given year. So, what is important is not how much a person or family earns, but how much his earnings can buy.

Today, an income of two dollars or approximately PhP100 can only buy two kilos of rice. Would two kilos of rice feed a family of six for the whole day? What about the other ingredients of the food diet which a human being needs to reproduce life daily?

In the early 1970s, a person earning PhP200 a month (not a day) had already more than enough to provide a family, not only with food, but other basic needs. During that time, a ganta or an equivalent of two kilos of rice costs only around PhP1.50 to two pesos.

An essential point of consideration is that for an income threshold to define poverty, it must refer to CPI in real time.

Measuring poverty presumably makes it objective. This means, a person is poor, whether or not he rates himself poor. But even being objective may not equate to being accurate. Defining poverty as a threshold of income is put into question as formulas and factors for computing thresholds differ, depending on which perspective they come from. The government usually applies numeric indicators that bring down the statistical threshold.

Private research groups, such as the Ibon Facts and Figures and trade union labor centers, often contest the statistical definition of poverty presented by agencies like the National Statistics Office or the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE). The difference between them, in numbers defining poverty, puts the incidence of poverty either up or down. It lessens or heightens the issue. As always, politics comes into play claiming viewing the reality from different sides.

So what actually is poverty? To answer this, it must be first acknowledged that statistics or figures do not offer an accurate definition. Poverty is not just about having only, or not having at all, a certain amount of income. It is an ill-being no number can justifiably express.

Poverty is not about what folks possess (or do not possess), but what they go through. It is not a so-what kind of social being, but a bad or painful experience of an unjust social reality.

To be poor, hence, is not just to be on or below a numeric threshold. It is to be condemned to a multidimensional ill that is by and large immeasurable as it is unquantifiable.

Science folks draw their meaning of poverty from observation at a cold distance. But true meaning can only be expressed by those who agonize in its hell. Most of the time, they have no words for it.