Poverty And The Poor

Journal of Fundamental and Applied Sciences, 2016

Poverty was one of the biggest social problems in the twentieth century and continues to be in present century. Very few would deny that human miseries amidst the plenty, especially when they can be unraveled through collective actions, should not be related. Poverty encompasses low levels of health and education, poor access to clean water and sanitation, inadequate physical security, lack of voice, insufficient capacity and opportunity improve one's life. In the present research, while reviewing the concepts of poverty, various approaches to poverty and its related issues such as education, health, housing and etc. are considered. Finally, measuring poverty from different researchers' views and their critical perspectives are discussed.

Poverty: The Curse and the Blessing—Jewish, Christian and Muslim Perspectives

Poverty is the inability to secure the minimum consumption requirements of life. The purpose of this study is to find the major causes of poverty and how some measures can be effective to manage and resolve this problem. There are number of causes for poverty but in the modern context the main cause is socioeconomic inequality that may be based on discrimination of income level, government corruption and exposure to natural calamities.

The review of the different approaches to defining the term “poverty” makes clear that it is uncleared term. The term “poverty” was discovered from outsider point of view(First World) to make them strong and superior than other. They developed this for the purpose of themselves. In my opinion, First world have discovered this term to maintain their hegemony what they have before, they brought this concept to control over third world, to legalize their illegal colonial system through the concept of poverty, to expand their market. Thus I can conclude that the definition of poverty not on the side of the third world but contrary it is on the side of first world to retain their status which they had in colonial period.

“It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but,on the contrary, their social existence determines their consciousness. Karl Marx The term poverty was used long before social sciences conceived the idea of dividing society into different compartments and came up with the concept of social stratification. Poverty is a vague and value loaded concept. Consider the term „poverty‟ as explained in Random House Dictionary1as “the state or condition of having little or no money, goods, or means of support”. Similarly, Valentine (1968)2 refers to poverty as “a condition of being in want of something that is needed, desired or generally recognized as having value”. According Gupta (1984)3 poverty “differs in denotation in accordance with culture and economic development”.

Schneider and Castillo’s (2015) work on poverty and economic inequality in Germany was fascinating. Although these scholars conducted this project in one country, Germany, and contrasted the poverty guidelines of East and West of that country, their work could be the basis of a general approach to understanding poverty in other western countries. The authors started their quest with the following questions. What are the parameters that might help some establish poverty in societies? How does the perception of the poor change these parameters? This case study builds on the work of Schneider and Castillo’s (2015). More specifically, here is a subsidiary question that drives the case study forward: Should people all be responsible for their own economic fates? Schneider and Castillo (2015) answered this particular question and said: “The poor are responsible for their poverty, and the rich deserve their wealth” (p. 266). This answer is resoundingly satisfactory in a fair world in which self-determination and sovereignty for all people is the equilibrium for escaping poverty and fulfilled life.

2013

Poverty is an undesirable and intolerable state of affairs which is considered as a social, economic, political or psychological problem. The word suggests that individuals or groups who are in poverty have to be helped to change their conditions. The reduction or eradication (if possible) of this poverty problem has now become the primary focus of the socio-economic development polices of developing world governments. There is therefore the need to have a yardstick to identify the poor, tools to measure the depth of their poverty which will then assist policy makers to assess their policy impact. This paper which forms part of a literature search and review of poverty for the author’s PhD Thesis attempts to do just that. It first puts poverty in context and considers it as the absence of well-being. It explains the phenomenon and thereafter provides analysis of a wide range of measurements both qualitative and quantitative. How to use these measurements are then explained.

A boundless optimism leaps from every page of this book. It is a book of audacious ambition, unrestrained passion, unbridled hope, and unstinting ethical commitment. Fueling this optimism is an inextinguishable conviction that poverty theory illuminates a discernable path from our present circumstances to an auspicious future and that an implicit link connects knowledge of poverty to knowledge for its elimination. The ultimate contribution of Territories of Poverty may rest on how well the editors and contributors are justified in these beliefs. Editors Ananya Roy and Emma Shaw Crane state unequivocally in their Preface that " this project is unapologetically concerned with theory. " The editors fully endorse the Enlightenment precept that knowledge is power. They are confident in their wager that theorizing poverty in the right way, correcting the false starts and misguided theories that litter the history of poverty knowledge, will finally prepare the ground for its elimination. That belief rests on two presumptions. First is the certainty that poverty is knowable, is available to the knower, and is willing to let itself be known—not only seen but known in its ontological essence. Second is the wager that poverty knowledge is the avenue to progress, and that better knowledge constitutes a political tactic that can be marshaled to make a world without poverty. The chapters that follow the editors' preface and introduction, however, challenge such optimism in a series of astute analyses of existing poverty policy. With unerring insight and incisive analysis, the authors narrate an unbroken record in which policy ostensibly claiming to reduce or eliminate poverty instead exacerbated or redistributed the problem and found new ways to subject its intended beneficiaries to new forms of indignity, degradation and further immiseration. The collective lessons of these penetrating analyses are twofold: first, that regardless of its particular form or focus, poverty policy consistently accommodates the changing requirements of a social, political and economic order that repeatedly reinvents itself; and, second, that a discourse of poverty alleviation legitimates programs and actions that align with the changing requirements of that structural and procedural reinvention. It is unclear, as a result, how these incisive analyses of poverty policy contribute to the book's optimistic premise. A theory of poverty is not a theory of the absence of poverty and an analytic theory is not a theory of change. Calling out the failures of existing policy is not the same as calling for an alternative solution, and critique of current policy does not in itself reveal a route to a different future. Despite the Enlightenment belief that knowledge is power, how to use that knowledge moving forward still remains to be explained before collecting on the wager that theory opens the path to a better future. Further challenging the book's optimistic premise is the possibility that better knowledge may reveal that poverty is impermeable to solution, an intractable element of the human condition. The editors and contributors adopt a broadly relational approach to theorizing poverty, an approach that I strongly endorse for its ability to probe beyond reductive