Poverty is an issue that can be viewed from many different aspects, it can be subjective based on the person who is viewing it and the evidence that is provided to them. Poverty can be associated with income, living standards, material possession and more, and as a result of this there are differences in the definitions of what constitutes as poverty. Which is one of the reasons why social scientists struggle in attempting to find a single definition for the term poverty and measure what actually is defined as poverty in today’s society. The difficulty prevails itself when it is needed to find what the standard of poverty is, what the contributing factors are, and how it differs in different parts of the world. This essay is going to discuss some the difficulties faced and reasons behind why those difficulties are faced when defining and measuring poverty as it is today, while using real world examples to compare and back each of the arguments.
The term poverty is very hard to define because it can mean vastly different things based on time, place and context. In the past, poverty just meant a ‘lack of income’ or inability to meet ‘subsistence needs’, but it is in fact a lot more complicated than that because ‘subsistence needs’ do not even include Quality of food/shelter, Sanitation, Education and Healthcare. Two common ways of measuring poverty are relative and absolute. Relative poverty is when “a person can't afford an ‘ordinary living pattern’—they're excluded from the activities and opportunities that the average person enjoys” (Full Fact, 2018) Meaning that this measurement is dependent on location and society and is not the same in all parts of the world. A person can be considered ‘poor’ in one place, while in another be considered to wealthy, this may consider things like cost of living, societal wealth, deprivation, and quality of life. An example could be the difference of the poverty line in countries like the UK and France, versus countries in parts of Sub-Saharan Africa.
According to the UN, absolute poverty “measures poverty in relation to the amount of money necessary to meet basic needs such as food, clothing, and shelter” (UNESCO, 2017). Meaning that it is a set amount that is universal across all countries to be the minimum amount for basic needs and necessities to survive. The figure set by the UN that groups to be considered in extreme poverty is if they are unable to attain the possession of $1 a day (UNESCO, 2017). The issue with absolute poverty is that it does not consider social norms and cost of living, which varies from country to country showing the flaws in using absolute poverty as a sole measurement. Another flaw is that it does not consider the purchasing power of different currencies in different countries, like when comparing $1 in America to $1 in India. In a country like India, a person would gain the ability to purchase far more product for the same amount of money than in a country like America. Therefore, it is difficult to generalize what is considered as poverty on a global scale as they are many factors that contribute in different parts of the world.
In the world we live in today, the most accepted measurement of poverty among society is one that is monetary and based on income alone. But in fact, household income alone cannot be used as sole a form of measurement because of differentiating circumstances, for example, large families and the sick would require more to sustain themselves than a single, healthy person would (Cowell, 2011: p.10). Another example to why the measurement of income alone is unreliable, would be if someone owns a house and a car, but has no income they would be considered as ‘poor’ when compared to someone who has a large income, but does not own anything. Meaning that non-monetary factors could play a vital role that directly relates towards the measurement of poverty. Therefore, more forms of measurements are needed to be used when looking at the standard that determines whether a person is categorized as ‘poor’ or not. A way to measure this could be based on material deprivation which “can be objectively measured by health status, food supply, clothing, housing, and other indicators and may relate to both a minimal survival level and a culturally defined minimum comfort level” (Acemoglu and Robinson, 2012). Social Scientists are not always able to use this method because of the difficulty that comes along with obtaining the data necessary to make these measurements. Accumulation of the data can either be very expensive, unnecessarily time consuming, or may even be located in undeveloped countries where the infrastructure needed to acquire the data is unavailable. Another aspect of poverty that can’t be measured to its full extent, is the aspect of Exclusion and Discrimination in poverty. It differs depending on geographic location, but still plays a considerable role in measuring poverty as a whole, because the main definition for relative poverty is in fact based solely on the exclusion of people from average society.
The measuring of poverty is a continuous issue and there are many more reasons to why social scientists find difficulty in measuring them. One of them being, the fact that some describe poverty to be a state of mind relative to the society that they live in (Jensen, 2009). And the measurement of a person’s mind and their thoughts is something that social scientists will be unable to collect data on, making it impossible to even measure. Another reason that may make it difficult is the different political, economic, and social backgrounds that different regions may have contributing to the poverty levels in their population. For example, if a country is at war there may be certain public services that are unavailable to the public for use which may alter the measurements of social scientists in that country, adding to the complexity of their measurement.
Although it is said that “people could be stuck in poverty, no matter how much economic aid they receive” (Guglielmi, 2017), it is still important that the problem is continued to be addressed by social scientists to someday reach a solution to poverty, or at least impede the increase of poverty levels in society. Social scientists have a common goal of reaching a point where “Individuals, Households, and other social units must have access to basic resources and sufficient involvement with decision-making processes to protect their self-interest” (Acemoglu and Robinson, 2012). And the fact that the wealth gap between the rich and the poor is continuously increasing is not helping, but instead providing even more of a reason to emphasize this topic in a goal of reaching better wealth distribution. Poverty can be simplified and defined as just an inability to meet basic needs, which indeed is a true definition of poverty, but it is only one of them. Simplifying the issue proves to be utterly inadequate because it shows a total disregard towards all the other factors surrounding the issue of poverty as a whole.