Poverty : What is it and what is it not ? A Concept Analysis

2010

Poverty reduction initiatives should be comprehensive, relational and global in their outlook even though poverty itself is always concrete and experienced in the local context. This is the major idea underlying this paper. The paper seeks to provide a brief overview of contemporary work on conceptualisations of poverty. It outlines characteristics of multi-dimensional and relational approaches to poverty and it examines the increased concern with the relation of inequality to poverty. The paper also touches upon current social, political and economic changes that have significant implications for poverty and the efforts to combat it. Finally, it indicates how different conceptualisations create different dilemmas for poverty reduction activities.

2000

This module illustrates how poverty can be defined in the context of policy impact analysis. After reporting and discussing the definition of poverty as "the lack of, or the inability to achieve, a socially acceptable standard of living", it discusses the monodimensional and multi-dimensional approaches to the definition of poverty. Furthermore, the module focuses on the absolute and the relative concept of poverty, also drawing some analogies and differences with the concept of food security. A stepby-step procedure, illustrated real case examples, are then provided to guide the reader through the process of poverty definition for policy impact analysis.

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.

The concept of poverty is subjective and it varies in many perspectives based on the indicators used. The objective of the study is to determine the concept and definition of poverty through exploring the collection of poverty definitions from different sources in order to set its own standardized of operational poverty definitions. This exploratory study will be based on qualitative research methodology. The output of study provides with a clear concept of poverty definition.

The European journal of development …, 2008

HTS [Hervormde Teologiese Studies], 2007

Most of us can easily identify human beings suffering from poverty, but find it slightly more difficult to understand poverty properly. In this essay I want to deepen our understanding of poverty by interpreting the conventional definitions of poverty in a new light. I start with a defence of a claim that poverty is a concept uniquely applicable to humans. I then present a critical discussion of the distinction between absolute and relative poverty. I argue that a revision of this distinction can provide us general standards applicable to humans everywhere.