Fri, 16 Jun 2017 12:46:54 +0000
By Prof Eustarckio Kazonga
There are many definitions of poverty. These definitions basically differ in terms of sociological, developmental, or economical philosophical underpinning. Some writers on poverty have defined poverty to include any type of major deprivation, whether material lack of specific goods and services or more intangible lack of access to good quality jobs.
According to the Business Dictionary, poverty is defined as a condition where people’s basic needs for food, clothing, and shelter are not being met. A woman once said: “Some people express poverty as pain and it feels like a disease.
It attacks a person not only materially but also morally. It eats away one’s dignity and drives one into total despair”. Poverty is generally in two forms. One of these is absolute poverty and is usually associated with destitution and occurs when people cannot obtain adequate resources and the other one is relative poverty, which usually occurs when people do not enjoy a certain minimum level of living standards as determined by a government that may vary from country to country and sometimes within the same country.
Poverty is also defined as economic deprivation. This is determined in terms of people’s lack of economic resources for consumption of economic goods and services such as food, housing, clothing, transportation etc. Regardless of the definition of poverty used, use of statistics is required in measuring poverty. This covers all aspects of statistics from data collection, analysis up to interpretation.
Poverty statistics sometimes make big headlines in the media and attract people’s attention. International poverty lines focus currently in use are based on absolute poverty.
Most of the times, people question the accuracy and scientific potence in the methodology used to generate these statistics.
The most common basis for constructing an absolute poverty line at the national level is the use of the basic needs approach. The prerequisite for this approach is to determine a basket of goods, including food items reflecting the diet and the context of the country or the region concerned. The food component of the poverty line is based on the cost of acquiring food that is sufficient to meet a food energy threshold; in this regard, the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) has suggested using as a threshold the daily intake for an adult: 2,100 calories. That cost can be computed based either on a bundle of food items with the lowest possible price or on the diet of households whose members’ potential energy intake is nearest that of the threshold. The non-food component of the poverty line can be computed by predetermining a bundle of non-food items, or by extending the food poverty line based on the average total expenditure of households whose food expenditures are equivalent to the food poverty line, or on non-food expenditures of households whose total expenditures are equivalent to the food poverty line. For the needs to be determined, appropriate methods for the collection of different types of data need to be used. If wrong data is collected, no matter how good the analysis is it will not assist in monitoring poverty levels i.e. Garbage-In- Garbage-Out (GIGO).
From the Biblical point of view, Jesus did something even greater for the poor: he sacrificed his life on a cross so that both the rich and the poor could be forgiven and enter the Kingdom of God. This gets to the heart of God’s compassion for the poor: poverty and hunger are problems that should be alleviated on earth, while the ultimate solution is the full realisation of the Kingdom of God (Luke 6:20-22). Proverbs 28:6 states that: “Better is a poor man who walks in his integrity than a rich man who is crooked in his ways”.
The measurement and analysis of poverty, inequality, and vulnerability are crucial for cognitive purposes, for analytical purposes (to understand the factors determining this situation), for policymaking purposes (to design interventions best adapted to the issues), and for monitoring and evaluation purposes (to assess the effectiveness of current policies and to determine whether the situation is changing).
The formulation of a poverty measure requires decisions about several issues in addition to the concept and method by which to set and update the thresholds and the appropriate definition of family resources. In this chapter we address three such issues: the time period over which poverty is measured; the unit of analysis on which the measurement occurs (e.g., family or household) and the related issue of the unit of presentation of analysis; and the types of summary measures that are reported to indicate the extent of poverty across time and among population groups
Development Goals
Poverty is a problem in many countries and a number of policies have been developed and will continue being developed. Poverty is a very serious universal human problem. Statistics can be used to monitor the progress made by a country in achieving. As confirmation of the extent of the problem in the world, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) both contain a goal on poverty.
Specifically, MDG Number 1 was to Eradicate Extreme Poverty and Hunger with one of the targets being to half, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people whose income is less than 1 $ a day.
The SDG 1 is No Poverty – End poverty in all its forms everywhere. United Nations General Assembly in 2015 raised the level of ambition and increased the scope for monitoring poverty to eradicate poverty in all its forms and dimensions, including extreme poverty, is the greatest global challenge and an indispensable requirement for sustainable development. One of the specific targets is that by 2030, reduce at least by half the proportion of men, women and children of all ages living in poverty in all its dimensions according to national definitions.
Monitoring of this target requires that appropriate data be collected and analysed at regular intervals such as yearly. In order to ensure that credible, effective action in addressing poverty and inequality, information on the poverty situation is required on a regular basis. This information is important in developing social delivery policies and making evidence -based poverty reduction decision-making strategies.
Measurement of Poverty
As alluded to earlier, if poverty cannot be measured, it will be difficult to talk about reducing it. The measurement of poverty is partially done through the use of the Living Conditions Monitoring Surveys (LCMS). The surveys are used to measure the effectiveness of Government policies and development programmes. In 2015, the Central Statistical
Office (CSO) conducted the seventh LCMS. The survey was mainly intended to monitor and highlight the living conditions of the Zambian society. The survey also included a set of priority indicators on poverty and other living conditions that can be used to measure the progress that the country is making towards the attainment of both domestic and global development targets such as Development Goals (DGs) and the National Development Plan. One of the key objectives of the 2015 LCMS was to monitor the level of poverty and its distribution in Zambia.
The proportion of the population living below the poverty line was found to be 54.4 per cent. According to the survey findings, poverty in Zambia still remains predominantly a rural phenomenon with poverty levels at 76.6 percent compared to 23.4 percent in urban areas. Using statistical tools, the survey revealed that 40.8% of the country’s population is living in extreme poverty.
The survey has also revealed that 54.4% of the country’s population is poor, while 13.6 percent of the population is moderately poor. Western Province has the highest population of the poor at 82.2% with Lusaka Province having the lowest 20.2%.
Some people have raised concerns, and rightly so, in the way the income measurements are done. The current methods used in measuring poverty and some standards used in environments that are very different from Zambia create a number of concerns on whether or not statisticians are really doing justice to the poverty statistics. For example, the reference to the concept of proportion of people whose income is less than $1.00 a day. A typical rural person, is able to produce his/her own vegetables, fruits etc. People in these areas do not buy some of these food staffs because they grow for their consumption. This is an area we need to improve upon.
The Statistics Division of the United Nations (UNSD) in 2006 produced a compendium of best practices in poverty measurement. Three basic approaches to the establishment of the poverty line were identified i.e. absolute poverty line, relative poverty line and subjective poverty line. A relative poverty line, is simply determined from a cut-off point in the welfare distribution, such as the income or consumption level below which, say, 30 per cent of the population is located.
This approach to setting the poverty line is attractive in that it is both simple and transparent, and it is quite functional in terms of identifying a population sub-group upon which to focus attention. There is always a bottom 30 per cent of the population, even if living standards for the whole population have risen over time. Similarly, this approach does not allow for comparisons of poverty across regions. The relative poverty is essentially quite arbitrary. It is not clear why poverty should be defined in terms of one percentage point instead of another and what percentage point is settled upon can have a bearing on the characteristics of the population subgroup designated poor.
Kamanou (2005) states that Governments around the world define and measure poverty in ways that reflect their own circumstances and aspirations. Income is universally an important element, even while most agree that money metrics are too narrow to capture all relevant aspects of poverty.
Still, the challenges of measuring poverty narrowly defined by a lack of money are substantial in themselves, and statistical offices have adopted a wide array of methodological approaches.
These methodological choices can matter greatly, and the ultimate users of data are usually left unaware of which choices were made and how they matter. Without that knowledge, it is impossible to make fully reliable comparisons of poverty rates across countries, or even to confidently compare rates for a single country across different years.
To assist countries in responding to the increasing demand of poverty monitoring, the United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD) in 2003 launched a Special Project on Poverty Statistics.
Poverty Statistics and Uses
It is said that poverty has been a constant presence in man’s history, but its meaning has changed through time. The current understanding, on the contrary, is that the condition of poverty is unacceptable, and that it should be possible to find the ways to eradicate it.
This is based on ethnical and moral considerations: the notion that all human beings are equal, and should be entitled not only to civil and political rights, but also to social rights such as food, shelter, education and personal security. The definitions of poverty and the selection of statistical instruments depend on the intended use of the results. Three main uses can be identified in the current international practice: the establishment of poverty lines. The goal, here, is to identify a threshold of income or need satisfaction dividing what is acceptable and what is not acceptable in a given society.
Whether a country decides or not to adopt an official poverty line is a matter of national policy.
From the statistical point of view, the best practice to this work seems to be the use of methodologies which can be simple to understand in their procedures and implications, and with built-in mechanisms for adjustment according to changes in prices, consumption habits of the population and national wealth.
In conclusion, governments around the world define and measure poverty in ways that reflect their own circumstances and aspirations. Poverty is clearly a world-wide problem that requires each country to address based on its environment.
Income is universally an important element in measuring poverty even if it is agreed that money orientation is too narrow to capture all relevant aspects of poverty.
Regardless of the definition of poverty used, use of statistics is required in measuring poverty.
This covers all aspects of statistics from data collection, analysis up to interpretation for rational and evidence-based policy development and decision-making.
