Poverty and deep poverty
One of the global problems of the 21st century is poverty caused by increasing inequalities a part of which is of transitional nature and is the result of economic recession. There are also structural reasons behind increasing inequality, like, for example, distribution of income and property and the social and economic subordination of certain social strata and groups. Transitional poverty can terminate by itself if the root-causes of it change, while we need intervention and different programmes to remedy and terminate structural poverty. If we try to identify the reasons of poverty, lack of job opportunities, namely full or partial unemployment take the first place in the world. The second reason is lack of education and skills and functional illiteracy. These two reasons are interrelated, because in many cases people do not find a job because they are not educated or are unskilled.
Poverty is a social phenomenon that everybody can experience in the neighbourhood. The adjective ‘poor’ refers to both material and non-material conditions and its definition varies with eras and by places, it is not permanent and has no definition accepted by everybody.
It is possible to define poverty objectively and subjectively. In case of objective definition, we do not take into account the self-image and opinion about themselves of the individuals or families and only quantify the indicators of poverty. The basis to define absolute poverty is to consider whether the income of the individuals facilitates the purchase of goods and necessities acknowledged as minimum living standards. When it comes to defining the threshold of relative poverty, we examine the distribution of income of the country’s population. The interpretation of poverty in this case is an inequality issue and the distribution of incomes is used to define poverty. A more recent definition of poverty is the calculation of deprivation. Its starting point is the socially accepted goods and services. The advantage of this method is that it does not limit poverty only to income. Meaning of deprived: a status in which the person is deprived of something(s), namely the individual or the family misses and goes without goods and necessities that are available for the majority of the society or whose possession would be desirable for everybody.
Definition of subjective poverty means the evaluation of the financial position, situation of the investigated household by the household members.
What makes somebody poor? Lack of income from work, unemployment and low, irregular income, low level of education, regional inequalities and ethnic belonging. Poverty is nothing else but depriving a person or family from something, thus it is deprivation. Deprivation is manifest in every field of life, because people living in poverty also miss economic, cultural and social capital.
Poverty has risk factors that contribute to the development of poverty. These factors are the following: age, number of children in the family, lack of education and skills, low level of schooling, belonging to the Roma population, disabilities and living in small villages. In case of some people, several of these factors are present.
Nowadays, the notion of poverty is often and increasingly replaced with the term of social exclusion. This definition includes many more characteristics than the definition of poverty. In addition to income and poverty, it can mean deprivation from housing, education, health-care and social services, communication, transportation and social assistance. Moreover, an excluded person is also a person who has no access to information influencing and defining his/her life, including decision made at his/her place of residence and the possibility to form an opinion during the phase preparing the decisions.
References:
Consortium partners of Project TÁMOP-5.1.3 „Közösségi felzárkóztatás a mélyszegénységben élők integrációjáért”: Autonómia alapítvány, Közösségfejlesztők Egyesülete, a Lechner Lajos Tudásközpont Nonprofit Kft. (early: VÁTI Nonprofit Kft.), Szociális Szakmai Szövetség.
This article based on the following document: Esélyegyenlőségi módszertani útmutató