Poverty and Dimension

Poverty and Dimension 

Poverty is a complex multidimensional phenomenon which stands as obstacle to economic opportunities and life enhancement of ‘poor people and communities’ across the globe . According to  poverty is a condition where human beings are denied access to basic amenities required for quality living and survival such as water, food, clothing, and shelter.

Poverty also connotes“a reaction to the stress of being poor”, a situation that is precipitated by several factors ranging from ‘political, economic, social, and cultural forces’ in society

He adds that poverty refers to an income-induced depravation of different manifestations suffered by poor people. Poor people across countries lack basic food,shelter, amenities, social services and good condition of life. Furthermore, the International Poverty  posits that poverty has multi-faceted attributes.

Therefore, the term poverty has four clusters of reinforcing meanings in the development literature. The cluster of meaning should be integrated for researchers and policymakers to have sound understanding about poverty, its dynamics and dimensions. He asserts: The first meaning of poverty is inadequacy of income and basic consumables required for better life. The second meaning is lack of material things apart from food; these include lack of minimal accommodation/shelter, furniture, radio, television, bed and other basic items use in the home.

The third meaning of poverty is lack of physical capacity and requisite technical skills to pursue desired ambitions, careers and goal like others in the society. This is caused by lack of level plain fields for all members of the society. The fourth meaning of poverty is lack of assorted human needs ranging from material and non-material needs that are essential for quality wellbeing. However,  argue that poverty conceptualisation have four

(4) multifaceted approaches, viz:
a) Monetary Approach (MA),
b) Capability Approach (CA),
 (c) Social exclusion Approach (SEA), and
 (d) Participatory Approaches (PA). The monetary approach (MA) views poverty as financial deprivation arising from inability to meet one’s basic consumption due to paucity of income, low income and unfriendly inflationary impact on the economy.

The second, capability approach (CA) perceives poverty as lack of capability to afford the basic things of life needed for minimum survival in the society. The social exclusion approach (SEA) defines poverty as an unfair situation that precludes and marginalizes people from having access to basic things of life like housing, health, water, good diet et cetera. The marginalized people are shortchanged by governments/policymakers.

The participatory approach (PA) defines poverty from the presumption that people remain poverty-stricken because they are not allowed to have input in the socio-economic and political decisions that affect their wellbeing as citizens. This bottom-up approach of relating with the poor for conceptualization, formulation and implementation is called ‘participatory principle’ in development literature

 From the discourse above, poverty is a harsh social-economic condition where people are denied basic needs of life and infrastructural facilities requisite for quality of living and self-esteem.