Poverty is a state or condition in which a person or community lacks the financial resources and essentials for a minimum standard of living. Poverty means that the income level from employment is so low that basic human needs can’t be met. Poverty can be experienced on both own income or government income. Poverty also includes a lack of access to healthcare (and other human services) and education. If per day income of a family is below this level, then it is poor or below the poverty line. If per day income of a family is above this level, then it is non-poor or above the poverty line. In India, the new poverty line is Rs 32 in rural areas and Rs 47 in urban areas There was already a lot of poverty and now it has become more due to Korona. All the shops are closed and all the workers will be unemployed.

Causes of poverty:
Causes of poverty is a highly ideologically charged subject, as different causes point to different remedies. Very broadly speaking, the socialist tradition locates the roots of poverty in problems of distribution and the use of the means of production as capital benefiting individuals, and calls for re-distribution of wealth as the solution, whereas the neoliberal school of thought is dedicated the idea that creating conditions for profitable private investment is the solutions. Neoliberal think tanks have received extensive funding,and the ability to apply many of their ideas in highly indebted countries in the global South as a condition for receiving emergency loans from the International Monetary Fund.Poverty means to have less than the basic necessities and those necessities are less than adequate in their standards. The other causes are- lack of education, war, natural disaster, lack of employment, lack of infrastructure, political instability, etc. For instance- lack of employment opportunities makes a person jobless & he is not able to earn enough to fulfill the basic necessities of his family & becomes poor. Lack of education compels a person for less paying jobs & it makes him poorer. Lack of infrastructure means there are no industries, banks, etc. in a country resulting in lack of employment opportunities. Natural disasters like flood, earthquake also contribute to poverty.

9 thoughts on “Poverty

  1. Hi Mehak,
    I have just completed a course on Global Poverty, you can do it free on the website called Edx. It’s done by Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo who won last year’s Nobel Prize for Economics for their work on Poverty. They have also written a book called ‘Poor Economics’.

    Their work is on experiments on what works and what doesn’t on alleviating poverty. Their work is mainly focused on making life better for the poor, than for lifting people out of poverty. Mainly to assist NGOs working in this field. They have done experiments on how lives of poor can be improved by working on areas like food insecurity, health, micro finance etc.

    I agree with you that IMF has done more harm than good with their one size fits all neo liberal solutions for developing countries.

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