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The Morphology of Global Poverty: An OverviewBy: Wolassa L. Kumo

[ Posted On: 2011-05-01 ]
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Dr. Wolassa Kumo Dr. Wolassa Kumo.

Introduction

Analyses of global poverty often focus on a narrow concept of economic poverty, which is measured by income, consumption or wealth. Accordingly, an individual who does not have an access to food that provides a standard minimum daily energy requirement or lives on an income of less than US$ 1.25 per day, or does not own any significant asset of one or another sort is regarded as poor. Poverty is also measured by lack of access to basic social services such as basic education, health, water and sanitation. Gender inequality has also been adopted as an important indicator of poverty in the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals and Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers of several developing economies.

In line with the above view, the World Bank defines poverty as 'pronounced deprivation in well-being, including low incomes and the inability to acquire the basic goods and services necessary for survival with dignity. It also encompasses low levels of health and education, poor access to clean water and sanitation, inadequate physical security, lack of voice, and insufficient capacity and opportunity to better one's life.'

While economic poverty and lack of access to basic social services distinguish the haves from the have-nots and reflect the world's primary concern about global poverty, there are other apparently more subtle forms of poverty that transcend all income levels, classes, and societies. These include, among others, lack of self control (poverty of will); racial, religious, and ethnic prejudices often leading to xenophobia and racism (which we shall call cognitive poverty); and often controversial spiritual poverty (lack of relationship with God). We term these types of poverty as "poverty of humanity" for analytical simplicity.

The two types of poverty are related in that the latter often reinforces the former by acting as stumbling block on efforts aimed at alleviating the former. A society where there are no democratic spaces for citizens to make independent choices that enable them to make optimal uses of their resources is bound to keep them under perpetual poverty. Likewise societies plagued by racial, religious and ethnic intolerance and perpetual hatred of any one they perceive as different from them are bound to be trapped in eternal competition, conflict and blame game that can seriously undermine efforts towards reconciliation and development.

This brief article attempts to provide an overview of the morphology of global poverty with the view of creating awareness on the critical linkages among it's the most obvious and the hidden aspects.

Global Absolute Poverty: poverty of the poor

A decade after the adoption of the Millennium Development Goals, the fight against global absolute poverty looks promising. Standard poverty is gradually falling across all regions of the world with the sharpest fall occurring in Asia. In 2010 the rate of global poverty was 15.8%, i.e. about 878.2 million people lived in poverty. Regionally, the poverty rate was the highest in sub Saharan Africa with 46.9% or 370 million people living in poverty. However, in absolute terms there are more poor people in Asia than in Africa, with poverty rate of 27.7% or 458.3 million people living in poverty. Absolute poverty has sustainably fallen in Latin America and the Caribbean with a total of 35 million people living in poverty. In Europe and central Asia about 8.4 million people lived in absolute poverty.

Poverty and power

In his book Pedagogy of the Oppressed, the Brazilian educationalist Paulo Freire reiterated that the contradictory coexistence of the oppressed and oppressors cannot be altered without full understanding of the dynamics that sustains this relationship and suggested that education was a key instrument to uplift the oppressed. The power of knowledge in transforming power relationships is enormous. The current revolutions in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region are a testimony that higher economic growth and improved income levels do not necessarily uplift the poor. Autocracy, nepotism, corruption and a complete lack of power to voice concerns about how ones country is run seems to be at the core of the turmoil in the region. And this turmoil is fueled by an improved access to education, and particularly by the ability to make an effective us of the new advances in information and communication technology such as the social media.

Poverty and freedom

The seminal work "Development as Freedom" by Professor Amartya Sen, Nobel Prize Winner in Economics, critically exposed the severe limitations of economic policies that dwelt on growth to the neglect of social transformation. According to Professor Sen the wellbeing of humans should be placed at the center of economic development and that freedoms from poverty, hunger, malnutrition, tyranny, lack of economic opportunities, lack of access to basic social services, and oppressive political systems are both the means and the end of development.

Attempts to foster rapid rise in per capita income while consistently suppressing the voices of the citizenry will not only not ensure sustainable development but will cause serious backlash sooner or later. This mechanistic, anti- people centered development effort is often mired with corruption and misuse of nations' limited resources due to complete lack of accountability and will ultimately fail to sustain the mechanical growth trajectories themselves and is there futile.

Poverty of Humanity

The world has made remarkable progress in addressing the poverty of the poor during the past three decades. China is a typical success story. Poverty in China fell from over 80% in 1980 to about 15% in 2005. Even sub Saharan Africa has seen progressive decline in poverty since the past decade with the number of poor far below those in fast growing Asia. However, the non obvious poverty that cuts across all income levels, classes and societies which we dubbed above as the "poverty of humanity" is unfortunately on the rise. The few types of poverty of humanity are presented below:

Poverty of the will

Today an increasing number of humans lack self control in their actions. Abuse of members of family and society is on the rise regardless of the income and social status of individuals involved. Black mailing lies and deceptions are becoming the order of the day globally. If it continues unabated, poverty of the will may cause more damage to societies than lack of basic economic and social services or absolute income poverty.

Xenophobia and racism: cognitive poverty

Xenophobia, racism, religious and ethnic prejudices are nurtured by erosion of critical social value -- tolerance. As cognitively better developed animals, humans are expected to display more tolerance towards their species. While most humans still preserve this critical human value, the recent trend is worrying. Individuals and groups, who actively promote these tendencies across the globe, need to come to their senses and re-embrace tolerance for the good of humanity.

While the world has shown an increased concern about the poverty of the poor due primary to its scale and pervasiveness, cognitive poverty continues to attract little attention. This type of poverty is an antithesis to the current trend of globalization and has been exacerbated by the recent global economic downturn which deprived many of their livelihoods.

Concluding remarks

The world has made a remarkable progress in alleviating the poverty of the poor. The fastest gains in poverty reduction during the past three decades occurred in Asia with huge gains in countries like China and India. Progress in Africa has been slow but improvements have been observed since the beginning of the last decade when poverty fell below 50% for the first time.

Most of the MDG goals are expected to be achieved by 2015 in many developing countries. The world still has the capacity to eradicate poverty within the coming half decade if there is a political will. Alongside lack of political will, the most serious bottleneck remains to be the continued unfreedom faced by millions of the poor.

While eradication of the poverty of the poor remains promising, the poverty of humanity presents a lingering challenge. Governments, global and regional multilateral institutions and civil societies are encouraged to recognize the threat posed by this often hidden poverty of human society and act in unison to mitigate it.

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About The Author: Dr. Wolassa L. Kumo -- is a development practitioner and researcher. His research interests include risk and uncertainty, productivity and efficiency, finance and investment, currency substitution and development problems of Africa. Currently, he is working as a researcher in a public institution with a primary responsibility in econometric modelling. Previously, he taught Principles of Economics in an academic institution. before and after the --> | View Profile & All Articles By: Wolassa L. Kumo |

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