Read The Blackwell Companion to Sociology Online
Authors: Judith R Blau
from poverty in the USA to poverty in less-developed societies exponentially
ratchets up the complexity factor. Not only is the magnitude of poverty incom-
parably greater, but the contours and causes of poverty throughout developing
regions are far more varied. Measurement issues are more complicated too,
because of the lack of comparable data across nation-states and over time. In
this section, we discuss poverty measures and broadly sketch poverty trends in
developing regions and countries, revealing some of the stern challenges to
poverty reduction in the twenty-first century.
In contrast to absolute poverty thresholds developed for single societies
(national poverty lines), several measures have been devised for comparisons
across regions and nations. The World Bank's one dollar a day `èxtreme pov-
erty'' measure and the United Nations Development Programme's (UNDP)
``human development'' indices are both useful constructs that inform the magni-
tude and contours of poverty in comparative settings. We use the first measure of extreme poverty as a crude, though effective, yardstick of economic deprivation.
Table 12.1 contains the most recent data on the incidence of extreme poverty,
reporting the staggering number of persons and percentage of the population
living on less than one dollar per day in developing and transitional economies
over the decade 1987±98 (World Bank, 1999a). In 1998, an estimated 1.2 billion
people subsisted on less than one dollar per day. The incidence of extreme
poverty increased since 1987, fluctuating considerably over the decade. The
regions of South Asia, particularly India, and sub-Saharan Africa accounted
for two of every three persons living in extreme poverty in 1998. The most
rapid increase in the incidence of extreme poverty has been in Eastern Europe
and Central Asia, although it appears to have stabilized. Rapid social, political, and economic change in the former Soviet bloc countries has clearly led to a
dramatic rise in material deprivation.
The major exception to worsening regional poverty trends took place in the
East Asia and Pacific region until 1996. The reduced incidence of extreme
1998 (est.)
15.3 (9.6) 5.1 15.6 7.3 40.0 46.3 24.3 (27.3)
1996
14.9 (8.1) 5.1 15.6 7.8 40.1 48.5 24.3 (27.3)
4.0
8.4
Percent
1993
25.5 (12.4)
15.3
42.4 49.6 28.5 (28.5)
1990
27.6
1.6 16.8 9.3 44.0 47.7 29.3
1987±1998
(15.0)
(29.3)
1987
26.6
0.2
(22.9)
15.3 11.5 44.9 46.6 28.7 (29.6)
economies,
24.0 78.2 20.9
1998 (est.)
278.3 (55.6)
522.0 290.9 1,214.2 (991.5)
transitional
and
1996
265.0 (45.2) 23.8 76.0 21.3 504.7 289.0 1,179.9 (960.1)
(millions)
1993
18.3 70.8 21.5
developing
431.9 (66.0)
505.1 273.3 1,320.9 (955.0)
in
)
Number
7.1
region
1990
452.4 (76.0
73.8 22.0 495.1 242.3
by
1,292.7 (916.3)
1.1
1987
63.7 25.0
poverty
415.1 (109.2)
474.4 217.2 1,196.5 (890.6)
extreme
Asia
of
Caribbean Africa
Pacific
Central the North
Region
the
and and
Distribution
and
Africa
and China)
China)
Europe
East
12.1
Asia
Asian
America
Table
East (excluding Eastern Latin Middle South Sub-Saharan Total (excluding
The Persistence of Poverty in a Changing World
169
poverty in this region was impressive between 1987 and 1996, although China
lagged behind the rest of the region until 1993. The recent economic recession in Asia reversed the post-1993 decline in extreme poverty, yet the number and
proportion of persons living on less than one dollar per day in this region today are one-third to half their level in 1987. In sum, the one dollar per day extreme poverty measure indicates that there is wide regional variation in the extent of extreme poverty in developing and transitional economies. The numerical incidence of extreme poverty has increased, while the proportion of persons in such
regions living in extreme poverty declined, from nearly one in three in 1987 to
one in four in 1998. Most regions have experienced either stagnant or rising
numbers of persons subsisting on one dollar per day, with the exception of the
East Asia and Pacific region.
The growing number of persons in the world living on less than a dollar a day
is a worrisome trend given the expansion of global linkages, economic growth,
and a full decade of post-Cold War international relations. The dust of political, economic, and social upheaval has yet to settle, and hundreds of millions of
people continue to suffer the consequences of impoverishment. In addition to
global macroeconomic forces, ethnic conflict has wreaked havoc in numerous
countries in Africa and Central Europe, while climatic dynamics in Southern
Asia, Africa, and South America have undermined food security. In many
countries, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, the HIV/AIDS crisis is causing
widespread devastation with generational repercussions. Clearly, poverty indic-
ators based on income alone, such as the one dollar per day extreme poverty
measure, are wholly inadequate to reflect the multidimensional features of
poverty.
In terms of the quality and adequacy of material conditions, income among
the poor in developing nations is often less important than access to resources.
Recognizing the limits of income measures and that economic development by
itself did not necessarily improve people's material living conditions, the UNDP
has recently created several new indices based on the concept of ``human devel-
opment.'' These indices, which include the human development index, the
gender empowerment measure, and the human poverty index, are not simply
summary consumption measures, such as gross national product per capita.
Instead, these measures attempt to more broadly capture dimensions of the
human experience and are based on three concepts: longevity, knowledge, and
a standard of living measure (UNDP, 1999). While certainly limited, this more
comprehensive conceptualization of poverty by the UNDP is a shift toward a
deeper and better understanding of poverty and its underlying causes. Unfortu-
nately, the UNDP human development indices are not directly interpretable and,
therefore, we do not report them here. Instead, we briefly consider some of the
non-monetary resources used to create the UNDP indices that are associated
with poverty and their differential impact on men, women, and children.
Among the basic central resources affecting the lives of the poor are access to
safe drinking water, access to health care, and adequate sanitation systems that reduce the threat of disease. Nearly one-third of the population in developing
countries is without access to safe water and nearly six in ten are without
170
Melvin L. Oliver and David M. Grant
adequate sanitation (UNDP, 1999). Access to health care is critical, particularly for infants and children, to ensure long, productive, and fulfilling lives; in many poor nations, only small proportions of the population have such access, including Cameroon (15 percent), Nepal (10 percent), Yemen (15 percent), and the
Central African Republic (12 percent). While poverty is intimately connected
with access to health care resources, there is wide variation among poor nations, with important consequences. Currently, some two million children die each
year, for example, from diseases that could be prevented with low-cost vaccina-
tions (World Health Organization, 1999).
The incidence of HIV/AIDS in many poor countries has completely over-
whelmed already inadequate health care facilities, particularly in sub-Saharan
Africa. The impact of HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa is horrific and projected
to worsen. Eighty percent of AIDS deaths worldwide took place in sub-Saharan
African (1.8 million deaths in 1998), possessing one-tenth of the world's population, and resulted in the orphaning of one-fifth to one-third of the children in nine sub-Saharan African countries by the end of 1999 (UNAIDS, 1998). The
impact of AIDS and related infectious diseases reduced life expectancy at birth in sub-Saharan African to less than fifty years in 1997. While the past century has witnessed à`health revolution'' due to the eradication of communicable diseases
and a near doubling in life expectancy worldwide since 1900, a number of
countries in sub-Saharan Africa experienced substantial declines in life expect-
ancy over the past decade (World Health Organization, 1999).
While the HIV/AIDS crisis will worsen in the future, it is, unfortunately, not
the only, or even the worst, of health threats to the poor. Sexual behavior (2.2
percent) ranked a distant fourth among risks that contributed to global mortal-
ity, behind tobacco use (6 percent), hypertension (5.8 percent), and inadequate
water and sanitation (5.3 percent) according to a recent World Health Organ-
ization study. The biggest health threat, tobacco use, has been rapidly increasing in developing nations, while decreasing in industrialized nations. ``[B]y the third decade of the next century, smoking is expected to kill 10 million people
annually worldwide ± more than the total of deaths from malaria, maternal
and major childhood conditions, and tuberculosis combined. Over 70% of these
deaths will be in the developing world'' (World Health Organization, 1999,
p. 67).
Education is a key resource in the fight against tobacco, HIV/AIDS, and other
health-related risks, as well as poverty more generally. Unfortunately, women in the developing world are less likely to receive access to adequate health care and education and are disproportionately poor. Like their sisters in the industrialized world, women in poor regions are more and more frequently finding themselves
heading households in the absence of men; these women and their children are
more likely to be poor (Buvinic, 1997). Adult literacy rates and child mortality rates demonstrate the additional burden associated with being a female in many
poor countries. Child mortality rates over the past decade show a disturbing
trend toward gender imbalance at birth. In a handful of the world's largest
developing countries, the ratio of girls' to boys' mortality rates were particularly high: Nigeria (1.7), India (1.4), and Bangladesh (1.3). Adult literacy rates in
The Persistence of Poverty in a Changing World
171
1997 universally favored men (80 percent) over women (63 percent) throughout
the developing world (UNDP, 1991).
An Asset Building Strategy
Strategy for Poverty Reduction
Reduction
Poverty trends in the USA and in developing regions do not generate much
optimism. Many people believe that poverty is intractable and that the poor
will always be with us. They cite the multidimensional character of poverty, the impersonal nature of global economic forces, and the belief, sanctioned by
religion, tradition, or personal worldviews, that the poor are the cause of their social conditions. These beliefs, among both the powerful and the powerless, are among the major impediments to the development and application of comprehensive strategies for poverty reduction around the world. While macroeco-
nomic trends, which lead to cyclical changes in local, regional, and world
economies surely play a significant role in material development, institutional
arrangements and social policies also mediate income redistribution, other
resources, and opportunities to affect the level and extent of poverty in a given society.
An `àsset building'' strategy for poverty reduction starts with the assumption
that poor people need to be empowered to become a part of their own solution
to poverty. As we have stated, most discussions of poverty are concerned with
income poverty ± the lack of sufficient cash income to meet basic household
needs. Policy responses that involve temporary subsidies to income (or consump-
tion) generate little change in the fundamental ability of families to escape
poverty and may, in fact, lessen the likelihood of reducing poverty in the long
run. For example, many welfare systems around the world are premised on
providing poor people with the income to consume and spend at poverty levels.
The present focus on putting ``welfare'' mothers to work in the USA does not
address the fact that they work in poverty wage jobs. Thus, the resources that
will enable people to invest in their capacities, to seize opportunities, and to move from economic insecurity and poverty to economic security and self-sufficiency are unavailable when the goal is to always keep people consuming
at poverty and below poverty income levels.
Asset building as a poverty alleviation strategy refers to a mixture of activities by which the poor are assisted to acquire individual or collective control or
ownership of assets, to effectively manage the assets in hand, and to sustain or improve the quality of their assets. Public and private groups often aid in the
asset building process and pressure the state to pursue policies that facilitate the acquisition, control, and protection of these assets among the poor.