Three Related Concepts of Poverty

2004

What is poverty? How poverty relates to people's well-being? The concepts of poverty and of well-being are highly intertwined; however, there is little research on how specific conceptions of poverty relate to people's well-being. This chapter revises the prevailing traditions in conceptualizing and assessing people's well-being and how they end up being implemented in poverty studies. The chapter argues in favor of a subjective well-being approach to understand and assess people's well-being. It is not only to get people out of poverty; it is also to get them into a life-satisfying situation. Poverty studies would benefit from placing greater attention to the essential experiences of being well people do have as well as to their overall assessment of life. A better theory of well-being could emerge on the basis of this information; and this would reflect in social programs that do really impact on people's well-being.

https://www.ijhsr.org/IJHSR_Vol.7_Issue.5_May2017/IJHSR_Abstract.051.html, 2017

Objectives: There is no single "correct" definition of poverty. However, there is consensus that any definition of poverty needs to acknowledge particular social, economic and cultural contexts. Different meanings of poverty results in different policy implementations in the context of human poverty. There is also less agreement as to whether objective or subjective definitions and measurements of poverty are more valid. Participatory approaches however point to the need to let people define for themselves what it means to be poor and define the magnitude, causes and consequences of being poor. The major focus of this paper was to clarify, explain and define the concept of poverty. Methods: A concept analysis of poverty was done using the eight steps of Walker and Avant's strategic method. Initially 20 articles from 1995-2017 were reviewed. Seven articles were later dropped and thirteen articles were finally reviewed to deduce the definition of poverty. Results: The main antecedents of poverty identified in literature include ignorance, laziness, and lack of skill, lack of capital, dependency, poor infrastructure, unemployment, dishonesty and presence of diseases. Attributes of poverty identified in literature include lack of adequate income, ill-being, and lack of capability and functioning, lack of assets and material things, vulnerability, lack of education, social exclusion, and deprivation, powerless and voiceless. The resultant consequences of poverty were severe diseases, hunger, malnutrition, increased morbidity and mortality from illness, school dropping out, social discrimination, corruption, abuse and lack of general services. Empirical referents which are fundamental to poverty for future health and poverty research methodology in poverty eradication include Human Development Index (HDI) and Human Poverty Index(HPI). These indices are helpful in mapping poverty differences between countries and view poverty trends over time. Conclusion: The definition of poverty provided in this concept analysis will facilitate proper interpretation of the meaning of poverty and standardization of tools used to measure and monitor poverty. Poverty eradication purports to positively affect the economic growth of nations and hence improve the well-being of individuals.

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.

2010

This paper discusses the measurement of poverty and well-being. A historical overview is given of the last fifty years. This is followed by discussion of three groupings of indicators: those measures based primarily on economic well-being; those based on non-economic well-being and composite indicators. It is argued that the choice of indicator should reflect its purpose and that economic measures are best when quick, rough-and-ready, short run, aggregate inferences are required. In contrast, non-economic measures are better when greater depth on medium-or longer-term trends and/or dis-aggregation are required.

This review explores the relationships between poverty and well-being and the effectiveness of well-being interventions aimed at reducing poverty. Key points • Well-being can be subjective (such as whether an individual feels happy or satisfied with life) or objective (involving issues such as health, education, social relationships). Poverty can affect subjective well-being, but is ultimately different from it. However it is often a synonym for a low level of objective well-being. • There is strong evidence that: – people living in wealthier nations have, on average, higher subjective well-being; – within nations, low income is associated with low subjective well-being, however, whilst life satisfaction raises steadily with higher incomes, positive feelings (e.g. happiness) rise only up to a certain income threshold; – within nations, economic growth, that is increases in the income of all, do not bring lasting increases in subjective well-being. • Household financial resources are important for children’s academic outcomes and educational support can improve social and emotional development. • Conditional cash transfers can supplement poor families’ incomes and promote their children’s well-being by valuing educational effort and achievement, preventive health care, and training. • There is little research on well-being interventions aimed at reducing adult poverty. Qualitative evidence shows that taking part in cultural activities can enhance self-esteem and facilitate inclusion in society and the labour market. • Anti-poverty strategies can be more effective by increasing the income of those in poverty and by promoting individual and community programmes aimed at improving people’s wider well-being, e.g. health and education, which can improve life chances.

Kuwait chapter of Arabian Journal of Business & Management Review, 2012

Many poverty authors point out that the various ways poverty is conceptualized and measured are very crucial because different poverty measures tend to capture different people as poor. The main focus of this research is to review the theoretical and empirical research on theories of poverty, poverty measures and outcomes. Subsequently, we discuss conceptual framework of the different poverty measures.

2012

Drawing on unique survey data for rural Pakistan, we investigate the impact of socio-demographic factors on life satisfaction with particular emphasis on subjective well-being measurement to evaluate poverty and its different components. The data elicits information on overall well-being in terms of households’ satisfaction with the current socio-economic status as well as financial well-being regarding satisfaction with the current income or expenditure. We estimate a happiness model to explore to what extent a well-being perspective adds to our understanding of poverty. We find that the well-being approach closely depicts the idea of capability poverty in terms of the level education and health which both matter significantly. Our results moreover suggest that the proposed financial well-being approach is more promising in capturing both income and capability poverty on subjective grounds. This paper’s main contributions are as follows. First, we link the emerging field of happine...