Comprehending Poverty

BIMBO CABIDOG

When we say our goal is to eradicate or reduce poverty, what do we mean? Sorting this out may already crystallize half of the way to get there. Comprehending poverty is important.

Poverty remains a global concern. Circa 2000, member states of the United Nations convened (for three days) the largest gathering of world leaders in history. The summit ratified eight UN Millennium Development Goals. First of them was the eradication of extreme poverty and hunger.

For the first time, the issue of global poverty figured in the agenda of states. The cut-off for the fulfillment of the UNMDG was set at 2015. But for sure, four years thereafter, poverty continues to be a pervasive reality in many locations all over the world.  

The current world population is estimated to be 7.4 billion. Estimates also show the number of the poor throughout the globe to have been reduced to 10%, down from 36% in late 1990s. But despite the noted decline, billions of people especially in the southern hemisphere still could hardly meet basic needs.

The international poverty line is presently set at $1.90 per person per day. This is the amount of income or consumption an individual needs to meet the bare minimum requirements of existence. Incidences of folks living below the said threshold remain obstinately high among low-income countries and regions affected by conflicts or political upheavals.

Income of the bottom 40% among countries in East and South Asia has been reported to grow by 4.7% and 2.6% per year from 2010 to 2015 respectively. The impressive statistics nonetheless does not offset the steep social inequalities and lopsided concentration of wealth in a tiny few to date.

In 2015, more than a quarter of the world’s population survived on $3.20 per day, nearly half on less than $5.50 per day. International non-government organizations observe that those who own around one half of the globe’s resources and wealth are a handful they could fit in a bus.

The reality underlies the conventional definition of poverty as “pronounced deprivation of wellbeing.” It relates wellbeing to command over commodities. The poor are therefore those who do not have enough income to live on a sufficient amount of needs expressed in monetary terms.

The conventional view is inadequate, narrowly focuses on individual experience, and misses out on the social character of the problem. It is especially blind to the question of injustice. It is now recognized that being poor is not just living below the threshold of consumption socially necessary for humans.

The broader view is to consider wellbeing as the capability of the individual to function in society. This was particularly argued by Amartya Sen of India. Thus, poverty is to be deprived of wellbeing by not having the capability to function in society in various ways.

Approximately eight out of nine folks are said to fall under the broader approach, while merely one in eight is said to fall under income-poverty. The former highlights the imperative of much stronger and more inclusive growth specially for still developing societies.

Another study reflects on poverty as an ill-being that is local, specific and multidimensional. It also pertains to the various aspects by which a person is incapable of functioning in society, such as lack of access to education, clean water, health care and housing, or basic social services. Disenfranchisement, alienation, and exclusion in governance form part of it.

Determination of the various measures or dimensions of poverty are important to:

1. Keep the poor in the governance agenda
2. Identify them so as to target them for appropriate and highly responsive interventions
3. Monitor and evaluate policies, projects and other initiatives along this line
4. Evaluate the agencies, institutions and organizations intended to help the poor

In this regard, poverty indeed has no simple solution. But strategies at poverty eradication/reduction adopting a multidimensional approach can have meaningful indicators to focus attention on. It can, not only in quantitative but graphic terms, define what success is.

The multifarious dimensions of ill-being must be set as standards in measuring results of anti-poverty initiatives. On the other hand, making them disappear and income or consumption to solely stand out, ultimately ignores the socio-political context that sees poverty as an issue of justice, which in fact it is.

Deprivation of wellbeing is the outcome as well as manifestation of regimes of production and market that squeeze or bleed by a thousand cuts the laboring masses. It is a symptom of the malaise spawned by an economic relationship where particular classes in society prey upon others.

The above postulate of course warrants another longer discussion. This discussion shall end on what poverty in its various manifestations entails, for example: hardship, economic marginalization, powerlessness, vulnerability and social insecurity.

Without further elaboration and details of the mentioned dimensions or manifestations, poverty may already be comprehended as a broad malaise rooted in social injustice and the prevailing economic order. It is an issue not only of social equality but of social equity. Solution shall be charted accordingly.