1. Poverty & Underdevelopment:

2. What is poverty?
 The shortage of common things such as food,
 clothing, shelter and safe drinking water
 It may also include the lack of access to opportunities such as
 education and employment
 It could be lack of choice:
 “Beggars cannot be choosers.”

3. What is poverty?
 It could also mean deprivation
 "to be poor is to be deprived of those goods and services and pleasures which others around us
take for granted.“
 It could mean social exclusion: process through w/c individuals or groups are wholly or partially
excluded from full participation in the society in w/c they live.

4. What is poverty?
 Or if David Korten is to be believed, poverty also involves social disintegration and
environmental degradation, which he describes as forming the threefold(line) human crisis in the
world today.

5. Warning:
 The definition of poverty may differ relative
 to the norms of each particular society
 “The poor of different times & places differ between
 themselves in virtually every aspect of their conditions,
 just like the societies of w/c they are part. Who is cast in
 this way depends not on how the poor live, but on the way
 society as whole lives.”
—Bauman 1999

6. The World Bank's "Voices of the Poor," based on research with over 20,000
poor people in 23 countries, identifies a range of factors which poor people
identify as part of poverty. These include:
 Precarious livelihoods  Lack of security
 Excluded locations  Abuse by those in
 Physical limitations power
 Gender relationships  Dis-empowering
institutions
 Problems in social
relationships  Limited capabilities
 Weak community
organizations

7. What is poverty?
 Not only income, but also rights
 Social exclusion
 Multi-dimensional aspects of poverty

8. Who are the poor?
 The poor refers to individuals and families
whose incomes fall below the official poverty
threshold and/or cannot afford to provide for
their minimum basic needs for food, health,
education, housing, and other social amenities
of life.
 Republic Act No. 8425 - Social Reform and Poverty Alleviation Act, passed by Congress
in December 1997:

9. Causes of Poverty: Economic
 Historical factors—colonialism & neo-
colonialism; post-communism (political
economy)
 Economic factors
 Recession
 Shock to food prices

10. Causes of Poverty: Governance
 Lack of democracy
 Governance
 incompetence
 & corruption
 Weak rule of law
 Lack of peace & order

11. Contributory Factors
 Overpopulation
 Educational achievements & employable skills
 Cultural causes: pre-scientific beliefs
 Social discrimination: gender, race/ethnicity,
age, disability, religious/political beliefs
 The Matthew Effect

12. The Matthew Effect
 It describes the phenomenon that "the rich get richer and the poor get poorer".
Those who possess power and economic or social capital can leverage those
resources to gain more power or capital.
“For to all those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but
from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away.”
—Matthew 25:29, New Revised Standard Version.

13. Environmental factors
 Erosion
 Desertification
 Deforestation
 Geographic & natural resource factors
 Drought & water crisis
 Climate change

14. Effects of poverty
Effective marginal rates of tax poverty
 The effects of poverty may also be
 causes, thus creating a "poverty cycle"
operating across multiple levels, individual,
household, local, national and global
 "set of factors or events by which poverty, once
started, is likely to continue unless there is
outside intervention."
 Sometimes called the “Poverty trap”

15. Relationship of Death
Health & Poverty
Sickness
Spread of disease-causing
microbes
Weak resistance
Homelessness/ Unsanitary
Inadequate housing surrounding
Malnutrition
Illiteracy/Ignorance
Poverty
Unsustainable
Lack of investment Economic inequality
Family size

16. What is food threshold?
 Also referred to as the subsistence threshold or
the food poverty line
Refers to the minimum income/expenditure required for a family/individual to meet the
basic food needs, which satisfies the nutritional requirements for economically necessary
and socially desirable physical activities

17. What is poverty threshold(line)?
 Refers to the cost of minimum basic needs:
food + non-food
 Refers to the minimum income/expenditure
required for a family/individual to meet the
basic food and non-food requirements

18. Human Development Index (HDI)
 An index used to rank countries by level of "human
development", which usually also implies whether a country
is a developed, developing, or underdeveloped country.
 It is claimed as a standard means of measuring
human development—a concept that, according to the
United Nations Development Program (UNDP), refers to the
process of widening the options of persons, giving them
greater opportunities for education, health care, income,
employment, etc.

19. Comparative HDI of Selected Countries:
1975-2002
HDIRank Country 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2002
1 Norway 0.866 0.886 0.897 0.911 0.935 0.954 0.956
8 United States 0.866 0.886 0.899 0.914 0.926 0.935 0.939
25 Singapore 0.724 0.761 0.784 0.821 0.859 .. 0.902
59 Malaysia 0.614 0.657 0.693 0.720 0.759 0.789 0.793
76 Thailand 0.613 0.651 0.676 0.707 0.742 .. 0.768
83 Philippines 0.653 0.686 0.692 0.719 0.735 .. 0.753
94 China 0.523 0.557 0.593 0.627 0.683 0.721 0.745
130 Cambodia .. .. .. .. 0.540 0.551 0.568
127 India 0.411 0.437 0.476 0.514 0.548 0.579 0.595
176 Niger 0.237 0.257 0.250 0.259 0.265 0.279 0.292

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