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1. Poverty: Elements of Historical Definition

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Title: 1. Poverty: Elements of Historical Definition


1
1.Poverty Elements of Historical Definition
  • 19th -20th centuries

2
Oxford English Dictionary The condition or
quality of being poor.     The condition of
having little or no wealth or material
possessions indigence, destitution, want (in
various degrees) Deficiency, lack, scantiness,
dearth, scarcity smallness of amount.   Want of
or deficiency in some property, quality, or
ingredient the condition of being poorly
supplied with something (of soil, etc.) the
condition of yielding little, unproductiveness.
  Poor condition of body leanness or feebleness
resulting from insufficient nourishment, or the
like.    III. 8. attrib. and Comb., as
poverty programme U.S., a programme or policy
designed to alleviate poverty poverty trap, a
situation in which an earned increase to a low
income is offset by the consequent loss of
means-tested state benefits
3
The OED indicates that in the English
language, concepts of poverty from the 14th
century onward stress the idea of lack, absence,
deficiency, and ALSO more specific framing of
poverty as market income poverty gt
having little or no wealth.


4
Creating a measure for market income poverty
  • Benjamin Rowntree formalized a market-based
    measurement definition in the early 1900s, when
    he established the concept of poverty line.
  • Poverty Line gt the income level beneath which
    a person cannot buy goods and services that
    constitute a socially acceptable minimum standard
    of living.

5
Poverty lines can be set at any level appropriate
for the purpose at hand.
  • Higher lines designate higher minimum living
    standards lower lines, lower minimum standards.
  • The Millennium Development Goal line of
    US1/day at 1985 US prices put about 1.3 billion
    people in poverty in 1990.

6
The CONCEPT of a poverty line depicting
a global minimum standard for a socially
acceptable minimum standard of living for the
whole world came into existence only after 1945.
This GLOBAL conceptualization of POVERTY as an
object of measurement EVERYWHERE is a feature of
WORLD ORDER in the later 20th century.
7
Concept gt Measure gt Policy
  • The original CONCEPT of poverty guiding
    MEASUREMENT and POLICY was nationality.
  • The modern problem of poverty, hence the idea of
    a poverty line, appeared FIRST inside
    territories of national state authority,
  • where NATIONAL norms prevailed, NATIONAL
    governments made policy, and NATIONAL elites and
    institutions debated policy options.

8
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9
Conceptualizing Poverty, Nationally
  • In England, the IRISH famine and mounting URBAN
    poverty became prominent features of public life,
    in the 1840s, when the first modern studies of
    poverty appeared, one influential study by
    Fredrick Engels, Karl Marxs close associate.
  • Modern ideas about socialism appeared at this
    time, to express the demand that the STATE
    protect the poor from poverty induced by early
    industrial capitalism (in England).
  • The Irish famine followed by INDIAN famines in
    1870s brought to light massive VULNERABILITY to
    catastrophe among poor people living under the
    authority of the BRITISH EMPIRE
  • From the 1870s, PROTECTING AGAINST FAMINE became
    official government policy in much of Europe and
    also in British India.

10
Increasing Inequality Made Poverty a Pressing
Problem
  • As economic growth accelerated under industrial
    capitalism, in the nineteenth century, states
    took more interest in the poverty problem.
  • Growing inequality generated demands to address
    poverty, in England and also in British India.

11
Nationalism and Socialism
  • Nationalism in British India and Socialism in
    Europe both made strong claims that states had
    the responsibility to protect the poor from
    calamity.
  • These claims became political challenges to
    states based on support for English national
    business interests promoting laissez faire market
    policies.

12
Revolution and Depression
  • The Russian Revolution (1917) provided a real
    socialist option and model for national movements
    in Asia, including British India.
  • The Great Depression (1929-1934) forced states to
    take responsibility for protecting whole national
    populations against severe market fluctuations.

13
Poverty Line and Cold War
  • The mid-20th century made concepts of poverty
    more political
  • First by introducing TWO conflicting meanings
    for the POVERTY LINE, one associated with
    capitalism, the other, with socialism.
  • Second by giving INEQUALITY (measured around the
    poverty line) two meanings, with the same
    conflicting associations.

14
Poverty Lines Entitlement in Socialism and
Welfare States
  • Under socialism and in welfare states, the
    poverty line marked an income level below which
    people became entitled to STATE provisioning of
    goods and services that people could not buy.
  • The assumption here is that the state is at the
    very least the provider of LAST RESORT of
    necessary goods and services for citizens.

15
Market Entitlement
  • By contrast, the market economy by itself
    provides no such last resort entitlement
  • Amartya Sen defines entitlements of three kinds
    (Poverty and Famines)
  • 1. Self-Production (as on peasant farm)
  • 2. Personal Property (legal ownership)
  • 3. Exchange (purchase for money)

16
Shifting Paradigms
  • After 1970, the socialist and welfare definitions
    of poverty entitlement became less politically
    popular in many states.
  • This trend accelerated with the dismantling of
    many socialist regimes and state policies.
  • The NATIONAL STATE became less active as
    guarantor of ENTITLEMENTS for the poor.

17
Meanings of Inequality
  • INEQUALITY (measured around the poverty line) had
    also acquired two meanings, with the same
    conflicting associations.
  • In market-based capitalism, it retained its
    meaning as UNEQUAL WEALTH among disparate
    individuals.
  • Under socialism, it acquired the meaning of
    UNEQUAL POWER over the distribution of goods and
    services among social classes.

18
UNEQUAL WEALTH among individuals became more
broadly defined over time. Kanbur et al,
Laderchi et al
  • Poverty
  • income insufficiency (market buying power)
  • lack of access (to goods and services in general
    provisioning, not just market, e.g. courts,
    welfare programs, family, community)
  • lack of assets (ownership, social capital, to use
    to acquire necessities, or to produce, e.g. land,
    animals, credit)
  • lack of capacity to do things (abilities),
  • lack of entitlement (rights to resources),
  • Hence insecurity, vulnerability (lack of
    protection, safety), lack of prospects or
    opportunities (e.g. education), hence poverty
    outcomes (symptoms) gtlack of health, food,
    shelter, hunger, disease, early death, misery, etc

19
Implications of viewing poverty as UNEQUAL WEALTH
among disparate individuals
  • The fact that non-poor people have what poor
    people do not have is irrelevant to poverty.
  • Income inequality is just a ranking of
    attributions, from greater to lesser, from wealth
    to poverty.
  • Targeting poverty can mean provisioning,
    providing, or endowing the poor with means to
    ends (i.e. money or jobs to buy food) or with
    ends directly (e.g. food, housing, shelter, etc).

20
By contrastThe UNEQUAL POWER concept of
INEQUALITYmakes poverty an outcome of
inequality.
  • This approach considers lack or insufficiency
    of wealth (by any definition) the outcome of
    denial
  • it applies the active verb meaning of
    deprivation,
  • indicating that things people need are taken
    away, deprived,
  • BECAUSE poor people do not have the power to
    sustain themselves.
  • A lack of empowerment, in this view, is not just
    a lack, but a loss, as in disempowerment or
    oppression (an active reduction of prospects and
    freedom of action).

21
So when we see poverty as UNEQUAL POWER among
social classes.
  • The fact that non-poor people have what poor
    people do not have is very relevant to poverty.
  • Wealth inequality represents the production of
    poverty by the systematic use of power to provide
    wealth to some groups and not others.
  • Targeting poverty can mean removing obstacles to
    their empowerment, including a reduction of the
    power of the non-poor poor to accumulate wealth.

22
Concept ltgt Measure ltgt Policy
  • The DEFINITION of poverty is thus a complex,
    changing process.
  • In which concepts and measures derive from policy
    orientations,
  • which are in turn formed within a changing world
    environment,
  • where people in state, regions, and localities
    engage poverty as a problem today.

23
2.Poverty in Global Frames
  • Since 1945

24
From International to Global Poverty
  • Conflicting meanings of POVERTY LINE,
    ENTITLEMENT, and INEQUALITY became part of
    international policy dispute and conflict after
    1945,
  • When for the first time, THE WHOLE WORLD of
    Poverty became an object of policy attention.

25
From International to Global Poverty
  • Poverty remains fundamentally national
  • Concepts, Measures, and Policies differ from
    state to state.
  • Statistics remain state products.
  • State politics still determine state policies.
  • But the international system has become more and
    more powerful as a context for state activities.

26
From International to Global Poverty
  • A World Development Regime came into being after
    1945
  • The World Bank, IMF, United Nations agencies,
    GATT/WTO, and major donor countries set the
    tone for development
  • These organizations actively shifted the POVERTY
    paradigm away from that of welfare/ socialism
    toward that of market/capitalism

27
Universal Norms, Concepts
  • The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was the
    first of many UN documents to formulate
    standards, norms, and concepts for all member
    states.
  • Member states eventually embraced almost all the
    world population.
  • The Millennium Development Goals are now the most
    GLOBALLY influential statements about POVERTY

28
Poverty as a global problem
  • Though policies focus on individual countries,
  • each operates inside a global regime
  • composed of states and inter-state organizations
    that set the tone for the dominant operative
    matrix of
  • CONCEPT gt MEASURE gt POLICY

29
National Poverty, Global Inequality
  • The following slides indicate
  • PERCAPITA GDP for each national territory (total
    product/total population) is the measure of
    global inequality
  • people in poor countries are the global majority
  • people in the richest countries, which set the
    tone for global development, are a small minority
  • most of the worlds poor live in Asia.
  • poverty correlates with life expectancy (among
    other quality of life variables

30
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31
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32
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33
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34
Wealth inequality is life inequality (Based on
1996 UNICEF data)
35
3.Measuring Poverty
  • Institutions and practices

36
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37
Spatial frames for approaching poverty
38
Concept ltgt Measure ltgt Policy
  • Policy orientations shape concepts and measures
  • Concepts and measures influence from policy
    orientations
  • Policy orientations take shape inside a changing
    world environment,
  • where people in state, regions, and localities
    engage poverty as a problem.

39
A Matrix of Interactions in the Politics of
Knowledge About Poverty
  • Policy orientations inform policy within
    structured institutional settings
  • These settings tend toward self-justification,
  • They structure research, interpretation,
    explanation accordingly
  • Concepts, measures, and analysis rarely operate
    free of institutional structures.
  • We all operate within structured conceptual
    limitations that said, we can proceed

40
From definition to measurement basic problems
(Laderchi)
  1. The space of poverty what is possible now
    under current conditions or what is possible
    under altered conditions.
  2. Universality do definitions translate or move
    across contexts.
  3. Subjective versus Objective Values, Judgments,
    and Agency
  4. Setting Poverty Line Dividing Poor and Non-Poor
  5. Units of analysis e.g. person, family, area,
    population
  6. Multidimensionality how to evaluate elements
  7. Time month, year, lifetime, or longer
  8. Do measures explain?

41
Four Approaches(Laderchi)
  • MONETARY Measure (MM)
  • CAPABILITY Approach (CA)
  • SOCIAL EXCLUSION (SE)
  • PARTICIPATORY METHOD (PM)

42
Definitions and Practical Benefits
  • Monetary Measure
  • Poverty line cuts ranked income groups by level
    at which money income insufficient to acquire
    necessary goods and services
  • Parsimony
  • Statistics
  • Objectivity
  • Translatable
  • Economic Theory
  • Levels of Scale

43
Definitions and Practical Benefits
  • CAPABILITY
  • Poverty line distinguishes people without
    freedom to live a valued life, denied capacity
    to realize human potential
  • Multidimensional
  • Substantive
  • Adaptable
  • Non-Utilitarian
  • Ethical Theory Economics (HDI)

44
Definitions and Practical Benefits
  • SOCIAL EXCLUSION
  • Poverty line separates groups marginalized and
    deprived of basic social assets
  • Relativity
  • Agency
  • Dynamics (process)
  • Non-Individualistic
  • Multi-dimensional

45
Definitions and Practical Benefits
  • PARTICIPATORY APPROACH
  • Poverty line defined by people themselves
  • Sensitive
  • Contextual
  • Voice
  • Democracy
  • Relativity

46
Which measure is best?
  • Money measure is ubiquitous
  • Its practical benefits attract most support
  • Its theoretical attachment to economic theory
    implies explanatory and thus predictive power for
    policy makers
  • But diversity of measures better captures
    realities of poverty
  • and

47
large discrepancies in those defined as poor
according to different methods mean that one
cannot rely on the monetary indicators to
identify those in other types of poverty, nor
conversely.-- Laderchi et al.
48
Poverty Elements and Orientations
  • The diversity of definitions emerges from
    entanglements among technical analysts,
    institutions, and poverty issues.
  • Definitions of poverty do not emerge
    independently of theories, ideologies,
    statistical methods, and analytical procedure
    that inform policy, but rather inside them.

49
Specialist orientations and prior commitments
generate definitions, procedures, priorities
  • Human Rights
  • Education
  • Environment
  • Law
  • Housing
  • Sanitation
  • Health Care
  • Gender
  • Nationalism
  • Globalization
  • Economics
  • Anthropology
  • Cultural Studies
  • Etc etc

50
World Bank, World Development Report, 2000/1,
Attacking Poverty. Introduction.
  • Poverty is multidimensional it includes
    inadequate food, shelter, health, education
    vulnerability to disease, dislocation, disaster
    and often mistreatment by state and society.
  • Poor people live without fundamental freedoms of
    action and choice that the better-off take for
    granted. (capabilities, rights?)
  • The experience of multiple deprivations is
    intense and painful. The Voices of the Poor
    study, which informs this report, gives a
    first-hand glimpse of poverty. (participatory
    approach)
  • Of the worlds 6 billion people, 2.8 billion
    almost half live on less than 2 a day, and 1.2
    billion a fifth live on less than 1 a day,
    with 44 percent living in South Asia. (monetary
    poverty)
  • In rich countries, less than 1 in 100 children
    die before age 5 while in the poorest
    countries, as many as 20 do. In rich countries,
    lt5 children lt 5 yrs old are malnourished in
    poor countries, as many as 50 ? ten times the
    percentage.
  • (Inequality, comparison, as definition of poverty)

51
Poverty Measurement and Analysis
Suresh Babu International Food
Policy Research Institute
52
What is Poverty?
  • Poverty is welfare level below a reasonable
    minimum.
  • Poverty has various dimensions
  • Income poverty
  • Security poverty
  • Education poverty
  • Health Nutrition Poverty
  • Multiple deprivation
  • Poor peoples perception of poverty level

53
What do we mean by Poverty?
  • The primary focus is on individuals or groups
    suffering from multiple deprivations

Education poor
Core Poor
Health Poor
Security Poor
Income Poor
54
Poverty Lines and Poverty Measurement
  • Two Issues in Generating Poverty Estimates
  • Fixing a poverty line Identification
  • Measuring poverty Aggregation

55
Methods of Fixing Poverty Lines
  • Cost-of-basic-needs method (Food-share method)
  • Cost of basic food needs
  • Cost of basic non-food needs
  • Food-energy method
  • Expenditure level that meets the food energy
    requirement
  • Based on calorie-income relationships
  • Fitting and tracing calorie-expenditure graph

56
Cost-of-Basic-Needs Method
  • Total Poverty Line Z
  • ZZF ZN
  • ZF Food Poverty Line
  • ZNNon-food Poverty Line

57
How to calculate the Food Poverty Line
  • Calculate average household (HH) size
  • Find minimum requirement of daily per-capita
    calories for WHO
  • Find the typical food bundle of the relative poor
    HH
  • Calculate the calories of this food bundle
  • Determine the cost of this food bundle
  • WHOs average minimum
  • ZF calorie requirement
  • calories in average food bundle for
  • relatively poor HH

Cost of the average food bundle

58
How to Calculate the Non-food Poverty Line
  • Find typical Household (HH) on the food poverty
    line.
  • Calculate the non-food expenditures of the HH.
  • xF per capita expenditures on food
  • XN per capita expenditure on non-food
  • X total per capita expenditure
  • ZN E XNxF ZF for the poor
  • (Non-food poverty line is the per capita
    non-food expenditure level when the per capita
    food expenditure level is equal to the food
    poverty line)
  • ZN E XNx ZF for the ultra (extreme)
    poor
  • (The non-food poverty line is given by the
    per capita non-food expenditure when the total
    expenditure is equal to the food poverty line.
    The food poverty line in essence becomes the
    total poverty line for the ultra poor)
  • Z ZF ZN

59
Minimum daily caloric requirements by sector and
gender
Urban
Rural
Age categories
Male
Female
Male
Female
0 to 1 year
820
820
820
820
gt1 to 2 years
1,150
1,150
1,150
1,150
gt2 to 3 years
1,350
1,350
1,350
1,350
gt3 to 5 years
1,550
1,550
1,550
1,550
gt5 to 7 years
1,850
1,750
1,850
1,750
gt7 to 10 years
2,100
1,800
2,100
1,800
gt10 to 12 years
2,200
1,950
2,200
1,950
gt12 to 14 years
2,400
2,100
2,400
2,100
gt14 to 16 years
2,600
2,150
2,600
2,150
gt16 to 18 years
2,850
2,150
2,850
2,150
gt18 to 30 years
3,150
2,500
3,500
2,750
gt30 to 60 years
3,050
2,450
3,400
2,750
gt60 years
2,600
2,200
2,850
2,450
Source
Caloric requirements are from WHO (1985, Tables
42 to 49).
Notes
Requirements used are for men weighing 70
kilograms and for women weighing 60 kilograms.
Urban
individuals are assumed to need 1.8 times the
basal metabolic rate (BMR), while rural
individuals are assumed
to need 2.0 times the average BMR. Children under
one year of age are assigned the average caloric
need of
children either 36, 69, or 912 months old.
60
Poverty lines and spatial price indexes by region
Food poverty line
Reference poverty line
Ultra poverty line
Relative price index
Region
Metropolitan
50.18
129
.19
75.36
1.000
101
.72
Lower urban
45.94
67.52
0.787
Lower rural
44.29
85
.38
0.661
64.71
Upper urban
101.36
45.19
0.785
67.51
82.81
Upper rural
40.36
53.37
0.641
Notes
Poverty lines are monthly, per capita figures in
Egyptian pounds. The Metropolitan poverty line
is used as a
base line to create the relative price index,
which is simply the ratio of each region's
reference poverty line to
the base line.
61
Issues in the Poverty Line
  • Does a poverty line exists?
  • Can it be used is it well accepted?
  • Are international standards for setting poverty
    lines accepted in all countries?
  • Can we use the same poverty line throughout a
    country?
  • Can the nutritional basket underlying the poverty
    line be derived from surveys?

62
Measures of Poverty
  • Incidence of Poverty poverty rate
  • Use the headcount rate to calculate the poverty
    rate of the of population below the poverty
    line
  • Depth of Poverty how far a person is below the
    poverty line
  • Poverty Gap aggregation of depth of poverty
  • Poverty Severity aggregation with weights

63
Head-count Index of Poverty
  • Proportion of population whose consumption (y) is
    less than the poverty line Z
  • Y1, Y2,..Z, ..Yn

  • q
  • H q/n
  • H Head-count index
  • q number of poor
  • n size of the population
  • Eg if n100 q50 then H0.5 or 50
  • Problems
  • Insensitive to the depth of poverty
  • H will not change when a poor persons welfare
    changes if he/she remains below the poverty line

64
Example of the Head-count Index Calculation
  • Income of 4 individuals in a sample 1,2,3,4
  • Poverty Line Z 3.0
  • H q/n 3/4 0.75 or 75

65
Head-count of Absolute Poverty for Bangladesh
Year Sector BBS Graph Fitting Method Ahmed et al. (1991) Ravallion Sen (1994) Rahman Haque (1988) Hossain Sen (1992) Sen Islam (1993) Muqtada (1986)
1973/ 1974 Rural Urban 82.9 81.4 (5.6) - - 65.3 62.5 71.3 n.a. n.a. 63.2 55.9 37.8
1981/ 1982 Rural Urban 73.8 66.0 71.8 65.3 - 79.1 50.7 65.3 n.a n.a. 48.4 -
1983/ 1984 Rural Urban 57.0 66.0 n.a. n.a. 53.8 40.9 49.8 39.5 50.0 n.a. n.a. 42.6 -
1985/ 1986 Rural Urban 51.0 56.0 51.6 66.8 45.9 30.8 47.1 29.1 41.3 n.a. n.a. 30.6 -
1988/ 1989 Rural Urban 48.0 44.0 - 49.7 35.9 - 43.8 n.a. n.a. 33.4 -
1991/ 1992 Rural Urban 50.0 46.8 - 52.9 33.6 - - - -
 
66
Poverty Gap Index (PGI)
  • Aggregate short-fall of the poor relative to the
    poverty line Z
  • Y1, Y2,, Yq Yq ? Z
  • Poorest Least poor
  • q
  • PG 1/n S (Z-Yi)/Z mean proportionate
  • i1 poverty gap across the
  • whole
    population (zero gap
  • for the
    nonpoor)

67
Example of Poverty Gap Calculation
Income of4 individuals in a sample
1,2,3,4 Poverty line Z 3 n4 PG (3-1)/3
(3-2)/3/4 (2/3)
(1/3)/4
(3/3)/4 ¼ or
0.25 Poverty gap index does not capture
differences in severity of poverty.
68
Why?
  • Region A (1,2,3,4)
  • Region B (2,2,2,4)
  • Poverty line Z 3
  • HA 0.75 HB 0.75
  • PGA 0.25 PGB 0.25
  • Poverty gap will be unaffected by an income
    transfer from a poor person to another poor
    person who remains below the poverty line

69
Squared Poverty Gap Index (SPG)
  • Mean of the squared proportionate poverty gap
  • Reflects severity of poverty
  • Sensitive to the distribution among the poor
  • q
  • SPG 1/n S (Z-Yi)/Z2
  • i1
  • Eg Region A (1,2,3,4) Region B (2,2,2,4)
    with Z3
  • SPGA 0.14 SPGB
    0.08
  • Poverty in region A gt Poverty in region B

70
Poverty AnalysisIncome/Consumption Poverty
Profile
  • Correlates poverty with
  • Gender
  • Age
  • Residential location
  • Ethnic characteristics
  • Income source
  • Employment sources
  • Share of food/ non food consumption
  • Education outcomes
  • Malnutrition outcomes

71
Qualitative Analysis of Poverty
  • Role of informal sector?
  • Social analysis of poverty?
  • Institutional analysis of poverty reducing
    institutions
  • Intra-household distribution of resources

72
Use of Qualitative Methods
  • Subjective meaning of poverty
  • Intra-household dimensions of poverty
  • Poor peoples priorities for action
  • Social, political, and cultural factors, gender
    roles, and traditional beliefs
  • Participants help in designing household surveys
  • Assess the validity of HHS results at local level

73
Income or Consumption?
  • Consumption reflects income as well as past
    savings, access to credit markets, and seasonal
    variation in income
  • No records of income or seasonal fluctuations
  • Large informal sectors
  • Consumption data helps in deriving the poverty
    line

74
Measuring Income/ Consumption Poverty
  • Household data availability tools
  • Measurement of income poverty
  • Quantitative analysis tools
  • Qualitative analysis tools
  • Income poverty dynamics tools

75
Data Needs for Poverty Analysis
  • National level data
  • National accounts GDP, consumption, savings,
    investment, imports, exports, etc.
  • Ministry of Finance, Central Statistical Agency
  • Budgets, price surveys, and data collection
  • Monthly, quarterly, and yearly

76
Data Needs for Poverty Analysis cont.
  • Local level data
  • Consumer and producer prices, climatic data,
    availability and use of markets and services
  • CSA, local service providers, regional
    departments
  • Price and market surveys
  • Monthly, yearly

77
Data Needs for Poverty Analysis cont.
  • Household Individual level data
  • Household income, consumption, employment,
    assets, production, demography, etc.
  • CSA, sectoral ministries, NGOs, academics
  • Household survey, rapid assessments, monitoring
    and evaluation
  • Yearly, 2-3 years, every 5 years

78
Data Sources for Poverty Analysis
  • Administrative data
  • Population Census
  • Household surveys LSMS, IE, Labor, DHS, RRA
  • Qualitative and Participatory Assessments
    ethnographic, village studies, beneficiary
    assessments, etc.

79
Types of Household Surveys
  • Single-topic surveys
  • Multi-topic surveys
  • Census data
  • Poverty monitoring surveys
  • Times series data
  • Panel data sets

80
THE END
  • continuations
  • nutrition and poverty
  • markets and poverty

81

HOW to TACKLE POVERTY GLOBALLY Before the 1970s,
the general assumption internationally was that
GOVERNMENTS were responsible to PROTECT people
against calamitous vulnerability, to provide
SAFETY and SUSTENANCE, which would not otherwise
be available.

Since then, the IDEA THAT ECONOMIC GROWTH based
primarily if not solely on asset allocations in
the MARKET could END POVERTY or even curtail it
massively has become increasingly popular.
82
Changing Parameters of Policy gt Concept gt
Measure
  • THE NATIONAL STATE has thus lost its formerly
    presumed role as guarantor of basic welfare
    entitlements for the poor.
  • A global POLICY orientation that promotes the
    CONCEPT of market-driven ECONOMIC GROWTH has
    generated new efforts to measure its impact on
    wealth and inequality.

83
Global Trends indicate growing productivity,
wealth, and inequality
  • ratios of per capita income between rich and poor
    countries increased more than six-fold between
    1870 and 1985, as income levels dispersed over an
    ever-widening range of variation and rich and
    poor economies clustered on either end of a
    broader spectrum.
  • Today, inequality is increasing. The gap between
    the richest and poorest countries is growing.
    The poorest of the poor are an ever-larger
    proportion of the world population.
  • Absolute poverty increased in the 1990s most
    dramatically in Africa, where an average
    household now consumes 20 less than 25 years
    ago.
  • From Divergence, Big Time, by Lant Pritchett (a
    World Bank report)

84
Markets and Poverty
  • It appears that in general
  • Market-based economic development DOES generate
    increasing WEALTH
  • but also ALLOWS for (if it does not generate)
    increasing inequality,

85
Markets Are Pragmatic
  • The following slide indicates that investors
    would tend to avoid risky economic environments.
  • Many of which would also be poor.
  • Left to itself, therefore, the market would not
    define poverty as a problem.

86
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87
As a result of investor logics non-market
mechanisms remain critically important for our
GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT REGIME to target poverty as
a global problem in each individual country
where poverty is prevalent as measured by
global standards.
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