Concept Paper About Poverty Introduction

The term ‘poverty’ has become very common in this world today. In fact, it has been a part of the everyday language of most people. But despite the common use of this word, it concept of essence has not been grasp fully or in totality by the majority. Because of this, they are misled to what really is centered on the concept of poverty. For the many, poverty would be defined as just the absence or lack or material possessions. To other, the lack of money can be equated to poverty.

On a deeper sense, poverty can be defined as the deprivation of an individual on the three basic needs for survival- food, clothing and housing. All of these definitions are deemed correct. However, the concept of poverty has come a long way. Poverty today goes beyond the lack of material possessions or the deprivation of the three basic needs of a human being. For all we know, the concept of poverty may have developed to become a subjective term.

The ‘Copenhagen Declaration’ of the United Nations defines poverty as “a condition characterized by severe deprivation of basic human needs, including food, safe drinking water, sanitation facilities, health, shelter, education and information. ” With this, people can be considered as poor when they are unable to eat, have access to hospital care or even go to school regardless of their income. (ThinkQuest, 2006) With this, one can say that there are different measures utilized in order to determine the state of poverty of a person.

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Research Title About Poverty

Some would employ quantitative means in order to measure poverty while other would rely on the qualitative aspect. More so, some people would emphasize the importance of the two approaches, thus the combination of it would yield the best result. The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (Anup, 2006), have come up with a definition of poverty line to mean one dollar per day. However, this measure has been criticized by many because it can not really provide a true picture of global poverty. This is evident in the issues of poverty threshold.

For instance, in the family of four in the United States, they live with eleven dollars a day in order to survive. As such, this measure of poverty is deemed not effective since it misses out much of humanity to understand the impacts. According to the U. S. Census Bureau (2007), poverty is defined at the family level and not at the household level. As such, the household can be considered as poor when the householder’s family has a total income which is below the appropriate poverty threshold. Meanwhile, there are also different criteria in determining poverty threshold.

This includes the number of children, the size of the family, age and many more. In the United States, it has been claimed that in spite of the steady decline of poverty in the country, there is still a higher rate of poverty today than before. In 1998, the Census Bureau states that there are 34. 5 million Americans who are poor. Although this rate is considered as relatively low, because of the continuous decline, it is still generally higher when compared in the 1970s wherein it ranged from 11 to 12. 6 percent.

Furthermore, the characteristic of poverty is America is far from uniform. Particularly, the poverty in the country varies by age, region, family composition and race. (Almanac of Policy Issues, 2007) And so, with the significant presence of poverty in the United States, there is a need for the relatively wealthy family to help the poor. More importantly, the leaders of the country are expected to devise policies which can alleviate poverty and as well as promote sustainable development for the long-term welfare of the poor.