What is Poverty: Define Poverty and Conditions Poor People Live in
What is Poverty: How much money does one need to survive and lead a decent life
Poverty, for statisticians, maybe a measure of how many dollars per day it takes for a person to survive and lead a “normal” life. But Poverty can also be defined in simpler terms that many can easily understand and relate to.
Just to put things in perspective, as of 2009, there are about 6 Billion people in this planet. Of this, about 3 billion live of under $2.50 per day.
The World Bank defines extreme poverty as people living on under $1.25 per day. The World Bank estimates there are about 1.4 Billion people living under “extreme poverty”.
Poverty can be defined by one or more following conditions a person is living under:
- Does not have money to buy and eat proper food; Stays hungry and Starves
- Does not have money to see a doctor when sick
- Cannot go to school for lack of money to pay school fees, buy books and uniform. Creates illiteracy, unemployment and eventually, more poverty.
- Does not have a shelter. Homeless, No roof , no house and live on the streets, parks (if in the city) or live under the sky in public places.
- Does not have access to clean drinking water. Unhygienic an contaminated water will causes illnesses that could lead to fatalities
In short, people who do not have access to proper food, education, shelter and basic health care for lack of money can be termed as poor”.
Poverty is not necessarily found only in developing countries. Developed countries too have their share of poor people. Although the level and density of poverty may not be as bad as those in the developing world, the poor from developed countries face problems such as lack of basic health care and shelter (homeless).
Another definition of poverty is the lack of purchasing power to be able to manage a certain ’standard of living’. ‘Standard of Living’ is again a very subjective term and varies with geography, governments and time.