MEASUREMENT OF POVERTY

[philipuyi]

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Poverty connotes indigenous wants and inferiority. Poverty is a state of being poor and being poor means needy and unproductive World Bank 1985 defined the poor as those whose average income is less than 370 dollars per annum, for the extremely poor their annual average income is less than 275 dollars.
Poverty is basically divided into two broad categories;

1. Absolute poverty
2. Relative poverty
   Others include; Economic, political, societal, mental poverty.
   Absolute poverty looks at those who are extremely poor people who are said to be living below the poverty line, they are unable to command sufficient resources to satisfy basic needs. Rownteree in 1922 saw poverty as a primary poverty which applied to families whose income was insufficient to obtain the minimum necessity for the maintenance of mainly physical efficiency

Relative poverty on the other hand as seen by Townsend in 1973 said that individuals and families are in poverty whose resources overtime fall seriously short of the resources commanded y the average individual or family in other community in which they live. Relative poverty is concerned with how well an individual is with respect to others in the same society or community.

POVERTY GAP

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Poverty gap measures the total amount of income necessary to raise anyone who is below the poverty line; it is the percentage of total consumption that will be needed by both the poor and the extremely poor above the poverty line.

TOTAL POVERTY GAP AND TOTAL INCOME SHORT FALL

This shows the extent to which income of the poor line, it is the amount of money per day that it will take to bring every poor person in the economy up to the defined minimum income standard

AVERAGE POVERTY GAP

The average poverty gap is gotten on a per capital basis. The average poverty gap (APG) = total poverty gap/ population.

THE NORMALIZE POVERTY GAP(NPG)

Often, we are interested in the size of the income short fall in relation to the poverty line. The normalized poverty gap (NPG) is gotten by NPG = APG/ income

CAUSES OF POVERTY

1. Unemployment.
2. Low levels of education and skills.
3. The size and type of family.
4. Gender.
5. Disability.
6. Being members of minority ethnics groups.
7. Political instability
8. Mass migration
9. Poor economic growth
10. Living in a remote community…
    
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WAYS TO PREVENT POVERTY

1. To reduce income poverty there is need to encourage and support the development of effective business.
2. Making good use of our natural talents and skills
3. To reduce non income poverty, people should be made to have access to affordable and good quality social service and infrastructure
4. People should be made to live secure in their homes that is, the government should provide security service so that the people no longer feel insecure.