Poverty

Definition and measurement

Poverty is generally regarded as a multidimensional phenomenon. Economic dimension is most frequently taken into account and is broken up into four forms.

Pecuniary poverty

Pecuniary poverty is the lack of money, involving the difficulties to be nourished, get dressed, be placed. The pecuniary poverty (monetary) or of income results from an insufficiency of resources or is deduced from too low fuel consumption. When the disparities of incomes are important, poverty is apprehended statistically better by the measurement of the level of consumption. Thus, an individual is regarded as poor when its standard of living is lower than the Poverty line. Because of its simplicity, this method of measurement is usually used to define the poor individuals and to measure the incidence of poverty of a population.

According to the absolute approach, the threshold is fixed, since work of Rowntree in 1901, according to a basket of food and nonfood goods necessary to daily survival (2400 calories per day for poverty and 1800 for extreme poverty). The nonfood goods include/understand clothing, transport, hygiene, water and energy. The United States and Canada have recourse to the absolute measurement of poverty.

According to the relative approach, the threshold is fixed compared to the distribution of the standards of living of the whole of the population, with as reference the median income (the median income is the income separating the population into two, i.e. half of the population has an income more raised, and half a lower income). Eurostat fixes the poverty line relative to 60% of the European median standard of living. INSEE, for France, fixes it at 50% of the French median income.

Poverty of the living conditions

The poverty of the existence or living conditions results from impossibility of satisfying the needs which make it possible to carry out a decent life in a given company. The poverty of existence can result from a malnutrition, of an absence of education, an unsanitary housing… It is more difficult to encircle than monetary poverty.

Poverty of the potentialities

The poverty of the potentialities or the capacities expresses the lack of means making it possible to leave poverty. In France, the poverty line is currently of 788€/mois.

Human poverty

See also: Indicating of poverty, Classification IPH of the countries, 2000

In addition to economic dimension, poverty is expressed under the not-economic dimensions gathered under the term of human poverty. They are dimensions social, cultural, political and ethnic of poverty.

The Programme of the United Nations for the development (UNDP) created two synthetic indicators of poverty: the IPH-1 and the IPH-2 (indicating of human poverty).

These indicators make it possible to classify the countries; thus, in 2000,

according to the IPH-1, the Niger is the country having the most poverty of the 105 classified countries,
and according to the IPH-2, the the United States are the country having the most poverty among the 17 classified countries of OECD;

but all the countries are not classified, the statistics miss for some of them. The country having less poverty is the Sweden.

Evolution of poverty in the world

Many organizations try to evaluate the number of the poor, according to their sphere of activity. Very naturally, the estimates will diverge fault of really speaking about the same thing. For example, in 2003, the the World Bank defined as poor the households which have less than two dollars per day, and extremely the poor those which have less than one dollar per day. According to this indicator, they are respectively 2,8 and 1,2 billion people who are concerned (the number of people suffering from Sous-alimentation in 2002 is, him, of 800 million).

If one is interested in the situation of countries developed like the France, this indicator reduced to almost nothing the number of the poor. If it is adapted to a total analysis, it is thus not very usable to measure the situation of this only country. For this reason, the French institutions prefer to use like poverty line half of the median income; the number of the poor becomes in such a case more raised, whatever the general enrichment.

According to the poverty line of 1 dollar per day in PPP 1985, the majority of the poor are in South Asia (39%), East Asia (33%) and in sub-Saharan Africa (17%). The countries more cash half of their population under the poverty line are: Guatemala, Guinea-Bissau, India, Kenya, Lesotho, Madagascar, Nepal, Niger, Senegal, and Zambia.

Fight against poverty

History

We are informed of actions of fight against poverty in the companies Mésopotamie born several centuries before the beginning of the Christian era. The companies did everything face with poverty.

First of all that of the definition of the " pauvre". According to the periods, places, and the economic situations, this limit moves.

The second problem relates to the analyzes of the causes of poverty.

In Europe, if the rise of Christianity implies a form of new solidarity, since it is dealt with by institutions and that it becomes a Christian duty, one should not deny for as much the existence of a former solidarity.

This change implies a new design, theological poverty. Poverty is in the Christian design an irrefutable fact which within the framework of a world governed by the divine one cannot be eliminated. It is often perceived like a punishment and threatens the heart of the Christian of idleness, mother of all the defects. The fight against poverty thus passes by the handing-over to work. Thus poverty is not due to a dysfunction of the company but to the individuals themselves. The treatment of poverty is left with the individual will of the rich person.

The 17th century and 18th century bring on this concept a great upheaval. The abbot St Pierre in 1724 is one of the first to be thought under one day new of this question. Not on the fundamental cause of the inequalities but he seeks to reconcile utility and Philanthropie. He recommends the return to work like the average main thing of the fight against poverty and in same time against a factor of social entropy. It is within this framework of thought that is set up the system of the General hospital. Very quickly the population locked up in the Parisian establishments reaches the threshold of 6.000 people, that is to say 1% of the population of the time. The provinces were also gained by this movement of reaction to misery and, the day before the Revolution, one counted 32 general hospitals in all the country. But this movement largely exceeds France, this policy of internment forced of the poor has affected the whole of the European states. In England, since 1575, an act of Elisabeth I instituted establishments aiming “the punishment of the vagrants and the relief of the poor”. " Houses off correction" who would have had to be present in each county will leave the place to the workhouses which in second half of the 18th century will find their true expansion. Foucault notes that in “a few years, it is a whole network which was thrown on Europe.” In Holland, in Italy, in Spain, in Germany also create for themselves places of internment of comparable nature.

This policy of enfermement systematic appears now inhuman and dangerous in the medical plan. It was disputed by the philosophers of the Lights and finally abandoned. The revolution engages another evolution which leads to the current design of poverty. Poverty becomes the expression of dysfunctions in the company. A laic and social treatment of this one requires a questioning of its origin and armature of new answers. As from the moment when the independent factor, is the economic factor, although the moral speech is not absent from debates of the time, the principle of the redistribution of the richnesses and allowances becomes possible and even necessary to the new principles of the Republic. We cannot however compare these efforts from now on public and taken of loads by the State to those of the État-providence. Indeed, these dealt with only certain categories, widows, orphans (...) and not the totality of the population concern. It is necessary to await the end of the Second world war to see the emergence of the État-providence.

Analyzes

According to the place and the time, several solutions were considered:

regulations or ideal religious, asking people to help themselves directly the poor
caritative institutions (there still with a religious impulse), helping the poor and calling upon the public or the authorities to be financed
private Insurance S and mutual benefit insurances (in particular trade-union “relief fund”)
intervention of the State, under various forms

In the same way, the form of the action is very variable, and sometimes even repressive:

assistances silver
assistances in kind or, modern equivalent, goods of purchase usable only for certain products, or reserved services (housing HLM, at the origin intended for the poor)
supply of work, specific or regular
repression of idleness, Begging
encouragement with the migration, (sometimes: expulsion)
even extermination
Birth control, sometimes selective

Lastly, the helped poor also vary:

old men and invalids,
widowed and, abandoned children fault of resources (or for other company names, when the child except marriage represented a spot)
children in general,
adult credits without health issue (but with the Chômage) (more recent, except marginal)

Official intervention

Since the XIXe century, certain Western countries tried to cure poverty by instituting guarantees of minimal resources.

For the children:

principle of exemption from payment of the primary studies,
“family benefits”,
prohibition of too hard work before a given age (although the fight against the future poverty of the worker physically badly developed was in fact only one secondary concern compared to that to lay out soldiers physically suited…),
institutions for orphans and abandoned children, and, more recently, for children withdrawn with their parents considered to be inapt.

For the adults, the State can seek with:

to regulate work (minimum wage, protectionism in order to protect work and thus the incomes existing), or on the contrary with the déréglementer to support the economic dynamism;
to organize the circulation of the fundamental food products (maximum price; put in reserve and distribution by the sovereign, as it is attested in the oldest civilizations),
to support institutions caritative or social,
often, to organize programs of “great work” ensuring of work the people, at least seemingly (because to finance this work, it is necessary to tax with other economic agents, which limits their essential resources to the realization of their own projects: the total effect is thus not inevitably positive, all depends on the type of action, and the actual value of the work -- a wall, a road, the draining of marsh or the construction of a pyramid do not have obviously, in the long run, same the effects on poverty).

But it is especially in the middle of the 20th century that certain States begin in a program of massive direct intervention, by taking the control of the private institutions (pension funds, insurances unemployment) and by diversifying its interventions ( assistances with housing ).

The aid in respect of the earning without conditions of use are more recent. Germany was one of the first to establish it. In France, the Minimum wages of Insertion (RMI) belonged to this supposed safety net to prevent people from falling into poverty. It should be noted that it was one of the rare laws voted by the National Assembly without only one voice being opposed to it.

At the beginning of XXIe century, one evokes the end of the welfare state: Universalization (Western disindustrialization, digital revolution, financial mobility, etc) withdraws with State capacity to control discretionarily what passes on its territory, while spreads the idea that the governmental organizations are more effective than the state and its inhuman bureaucracy, in particular in this eminently significant field which is the fight against poverty.

The state is done thus in general more modest, and the fight against poverty is delegated more and more by the public authorities to associations. This movement remains a polemical subject, some preferring to make confidence with the state to manage the solidarity, fearing an exploitation of the good will of the Bénévole S parallel to the orientation of the resources saved by the state at other more contestable ends, and indicator of many ethical problems like the problems of confidentiality. Moreover the recourse to associations can allow the state (and thus the community) to disengage relative questions with poorest.

In Western Europe

Serge Paugam distinguishes three ideal-types from poverty:

integrated poverty described the situation of country or backward region economically. As poverty since lontemps is largely spread, the poor are not stigmatized and profit from family solidarity or socialization by a religious practice which remains intense. The informal economy is particularly developed. It is a poverty without Exclusion (or, more exactly, exclusion follows its own dynamics independently of poverty).
marginal poverty corresponds to the poverty of a small portion of the population within a prosperous company. These poor, considered as “social cases” unsuited to the modern world are strongly stigmatized.
disqualifying poverty relates to the post-industrial companies touched by economic difficulties and the end of full employment fordist. The poor, increasingly many, are considered through the image of the fall or the forfeiture. The anguish of unemployment and exclusion touches the whole of the company.

By applying this model to the various countries of Europe one can distinguish several great areas:

In the South, the Italy, the Greece, the Portugal or the Spain have more important incidences of poverty (more the more stripped poor, and poor) than in North, but the poor are well integrated in the population; it are not stigmatized.
In North (Scandinavian countries), the preventive system is very developed and maintains the standard of living of the poor at the price of a narrow control of their private life. A situation of marginal poverty which correpond also roughly speaking with the situation of France of the Sixties and Seventies.
With respect to these two “models”, the France or the the United Kingdom are “in the middle of the ford”. The most fragile people are those having less diplomas, and the installation of a flexibility of work (mobility of the tasks and geographical) to reduce unemployment benefits only most graduate. Disqualifying poverty dominates. Beside these two countries, the Germany presents a case separately. The extent of poverty brings it closer to the situation of disqualifying poverty but the speech dominating and the institutions resist to recognize this situation officially and prefer to present the phenomenon in term of marginal poverty, approached by interventions psychologisantes centered on the maladjustment of the person.

In addition, there is a double institutionalization of poverty:

on the one hand by the Minimum wages of insertion (RMI), kind of officialization of poverty,
on the other hand by delegating the food distribution to associations like the Resto du coeur, which in the beginning had been designed like a temporary palliative and which is now fully integrated into the management of poverty.

It follows a social disqualification, a humiliation due to this double assistantship and the absence of hope to find an employment, a feeling to be socially useless, which creates a psychological distress (Nervous breakdown) at the poor. Under-graduate in countries having put on products at high added value, little integrated, politically invisible and médiatiquement, it is true a Quarter-World which was formed in the richest countries of planet.

World intervention

The fight against poverty belongs to the development objectives of UNO for the millenium and thus became a world priority.

The the World Bank has the role of fighting against poverty by financing projects being able to reduce misery. Certain governmental organizations as Oxfam encourages the Equitable trade so that the producers can live under better conditions. Others like DTA Fourth World, refuse with the poor that the human person is reduced to her lacks, stick so that the people, families and groups in situation of extreme poverty can reconquer their rights, reassume their responsibilities and contribute to the company by themselves. They are then central actors of the fight against poverty. The UNICEF also helps for poverty in the children

Poverty and policy

The appreciations diverge on the evolution from poverty. In general, the official interventionists tend to seriously see it growing (and to prefer the relative indicators) whereas on the contrary the liberals tend to find that poverty is rather in regression (and to prefer the absolute indicators).

In the same way, cleavage is similar on the causes and the remedies: ones thinking that poverty results from a lack of intervention of the public authorities, others estimating on the contrary that the best way of fighting against poverty is to leave the caritative institutions and the charitable hearts to act.

During the French revolution appeared one moment the “Fourth order”, that of the daily poor, the Disabled person, Poor… beside the three “orders” (Nobility, Clergé, third state) convened with the General states.

to see external bond Books of the Fourth Order

In 1987, the Economic and Social Council French published a report entitled “ Grande poverty and economic and social precariousness ”. It is always consultable with the address: http://www.atd-quartmonde.org/intern/fondam/WRES_JO87.pdf (site of DTA Fourth World, published with the authorization of the French Official journal).

The rapporteur, Joseph Wresinski, had proposed there a definition which establishes the link between several realities: “ precariousness is the absence of one or several safety measures, in particular that of employment, allowing the people and families to assume their professional obligations, family and social and to enjoy their basic rights. The insecurity which results from it can be more or less wide and to have more or less serious and final consequences. It leads to the great poverty, when it affects several fields of the existence, that it becomes persistent, that it compromises the chances to reassume its responsibilities and to reconquer its rights by oneself, in a foreseeable future. ” (page 6 of document pdf).

close Terms : Misery, social Exclusion, Underprivileged class

Poverty of a country

The term “fight against poverty” applying to countries disappeared little by little to make place with other concepts like “the the least advanced Pays” related to questions from development.

Whereas in the decades last one opposed “poor countries” and “rich countries”, the public opinion gradually became aware that poverty and the Misère, even if they were distributed differently according to the countries, related to them all.

Even if, in the international enclosures, when one speaks about fight against poverty, one continues to look towards Third World countries (because of the number of people concerned), several international agencies, as UNICEF also engaged a reflection and an action of fight against poverty in the Western countries.

The vicious circle of poverty

Poverty generally results from unfavourable starting conditions (bad access to the formation, defective health,…), and sometimes of accidents (destruction of assets, health accident, job loss, etc).

But that often generates a vicious circle . Poverty obliges to be placed at low prices, therefore in districts having bad reputation, where there is little work and a degraded educational offer, a criminality if not higher at least more violent, a less active medical prevention, etc the chances to find an income by work are less, stronger temptation to call upon illegal work (" with the noir"), with illusory sources of revenue (lotteries, bets) or dangerous (crime, drug) or dégradentes (prostitution), the accident risks are more important, and the exploitation by the Maffias, or groups organized, are factors of desocialisation, even of one at the same time personal and total insecurity. This phenomenon touches obviously the children and the teenagers, who in such a context begin their life with a handicap, even if the worst is not by no means certain for them.

In the developing countries, where the resources are rare, the consequences are marked even (famines, medical catastrophes…)

Additional details

External bonds

poverty|poverty

World Day of the Refusal of Misery: October 17th recognized by UNO
Make Poverty History
Whiteband.org: {{in}} Total Cal to Action Against Poverty
Historiography: '' The poor: physiology of misery '' (1841) by Louis Mathurin Black-Christophe (1799-1881).

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