These definitions are used by an organization called Youth Against Poverty...
Absolute poverty refers to the level of resources needed to sustain physical survival. People are poor if they cannot feed clothe or house themselves and their dependants. It is based on a person's biological needs. This is the most common way in which people visualise poverty.
Relative poverty is defined in relation to the standards of living in a society at a particular time. People live in poverty when they are denied an income sufficient for their material needs and when these circumstances exclude them from taking part in activities which are an accepted part of daily life in that society.
What do you think about these definitions?
Do they accurately portray the reality of poverty?
5 comments:
Poverty is viewed on different levels but all in all poeverty is absolute luck of basic needs that would compound to happy living or fulfilling your dreams in life. In each case one regard himselve to be poor based on what their urgent needs are. For instance a school going person would regard themselevs poor if the parents can afford his education needs while the parents will regard themselves poor if they can't afford the basic upkeep of the family, education is secondary to them. the second definition of poverty is so NGO's like look at issues where you dress the top an rot the inside. Somehow they represent the reality but can someone come face to face with poverty instead of sitting in seminars and coming up with a suitable millenium definition of poverty get the real thing from the source. I am in daily contact with poverty within my working area at the moment with my minimal resources i am doing what the so called poverty erradicators have discussed for years and what i see is nothing close to what i read in their papers and watch on television it is upon the poor people to coil around each other and try to support each other in their small ways for a better future. Until some realistic meaures are taken we shall keep defining poverty instead of sorting it out. poverty in the west is a luxury in the developing countries how can i pledge my loyalty .......? this are my personal thoughts.
i want to concur with joseph on many of his views...i think that poverty is mostly that of the mind..it is attitudinal and most times it is caused by what i call the dependency/donor syndrome. over the last decades there has been a lot of money pumped into africa to ostensibly eradicate poverty, but has instead created more dependency on aid and donor support to such an extent that you even have to pay community members to attend a community meeting to discuss community problems!how absurd is this? so unless and until people shift their attitudes towards this thing about the panacea of all problems being money, then "poverty" will be with us for a long time. i believe that there is enough for everyone, its just that the systems have not been put in place to ensure equitable distribution of resources. humankind, and the essence of human dignity should drive us forward nas humans
sometimes when i listen to people go about discussing the idea of poverty then i do wonder why we have to set it in some five star hotel and spend collosal amounts of money to try and get some hungry idividuals out of that hunger situation. how should we look at poverty. vic and joseph have touched on very important positions and as i look at it poverty is in the mind and as long as one does not wake up and smell that coffee no amount of meetings in big hotels will drive guys out of that percieved abbys called poverty.
i agree with all this guys who have commented here. Discussing and defining poverty should just stop. it realy sucks to see healthy and wealthy guys sit in five star hotel and and spend billions trying to define for us what poverty is. do they realy know what it feels to be poor? look at Joseph he is a perfect example of a person who wants to make change and i just leaned that actually he is volunteering alongside others at a community center and he is using all possible means to bring change and make a difference in others lives. if such people can be supported in their initiatives i cant imagine what impact they can make. stop this papers and seminars and hotel comforts lets us do something by setting the example. am so moved by Joseph's action and desire to make change. he is my guy
Let us elevate the discussion on poverty above teh NGO bashing and whining about the west and the inequitable distribution of resources. Let us look at what poverty actually means; the absence of the resources economic, social, political, spiritual etc to change your environment. The nomadic pastoralist who has 2,000 head of cattle and still is too 'poor' to stop the drought killing three-quarters of that herd is poor. The woman who keeps chicken and sells eggs while her children suffer from mulnutrition because she has bought sugar to make sweet tea is poor. The young man or woman who sits at home waiting for a paid job while the land lies fallow and waits for a donor to provide them with incentives to farm is poor. The man who cuts down all the forest cover to burn charcoal and later cannot understand why drought and flooods are teh daily cycle of his life is indeed poor. The inability to fathom that one is poor because they choose to be is poverty at its best. The fact that seminars are held at hotels to discuss how to eradicate poverty and this provides business for the very hotels that employ sons and daughters of the poor is poverty reduction. The only way to tackle poverty is to reflect on the resources available to one; physical, mental, intellectual and spiritual and utilise these resources. Even thinking about poverty and writing about it is a start.
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