This document is a presentation by Md. Sahed Khan on rural poverty studies. The presentation covers defining poverty, typologies of poverty including absolute, relative, generational and situational poverty. It also discusses measurements of poverty such as the poverty line, food poverty line, human poverty index, headcount ratio, poverty gap index, and Lorenz curve. The causes of poverty include unequal resource distribution, lack of education, and natural disasters. Primary measurements used in Bangladesh include direct calorie intake, food energy intake, and cost of basic needs.

1. WELCOME TO MY
PRESENTATION
Course Title: Rural Poverty Studies
PRESENTED TO
RAFIQUN NESSA ALI
Professor
Department of Rural Sociology
Bangladesh Agricultural
University
Mymensingh-2202
PRESENTED BY
MD. SAHED KHAN
ID: 15RS JD-01M
Reg: 37769
MS in Rural Sociology
(2nd semester)
Department of Rural Sociology
BAU, Mymensingh-2202

3. Outline and Objective
 Outline of the presentation:
 Sensing poverty
 Typology of poverty
 Measurements of poverty
 Objectives:
 To comprehend the meaning of “Poverty”
 To identify the typology of “Poverty”
 To demonstrate the measurements of “Poverty”

4. POVERTY?
Poorness Hunger Homelessness

5. Definition of Poverty
 The word poverty comes from old French “poverte”
(Modern French: “pauvrete”), from Latin “paupertas”
and from pauper (poor).
 Refers to general scarcity or dearth, or the state of lacking
a certain amount of material possessions or money
 Sociological definition of Poverty
“the state of one who lacks a usual or socially acceptable
amount of money or material possessions”
“is a condition in which people lack what they need to
live”
“Poverty is HUNGER”

6. CONTD…
 Poverty is a situation in which a person or household lacks
the resources necessary to be able to consume a certain
minimum basket of goods.
 According to United Nations,
“Fundamentally, poverty is a denial of choices and
opportunities, a violation of human dignity…”
 According to World Bank,
“Poverty is pronounced deprivation in well-being, and
comprises many dimensions. It includes low incomes and the
inability to acquire the basic goods and services necessary for
survival with dignity...”

7. Types of Poverty
Absolute poverty
Relative poverty
Generational or Chronic poverty
Situational Poverty (Transitory)
Collective poverty

8. CONTD…
 Absolute Poverty
-Extreme case of poverty
-Individual’s annual income falls below the national poverty line (USD
1.25 at 1993 purchasing power parity)
-Individual’s life/health is threatened/compromised due to lower
economic position
 Relative Poverty
-Relative poverty defines people are relatively impoverished if the
customary (average) standard of living in their society requires more
spending than the income they have available
-A person or household, even though have access to government support
for food, water, medicine and free housing, can be considered as poor if it
 Can’t afford to go to vacations, or
 Can’t afford to buy presents for children at Christmas, or
 Can’t afford to send its young to university, and so on.
 They are considered poor because the rest of the community have access to superior
services and amenities.

9. CONTD…
 Generational or Chronic Poverty
 More complicated type
 When poverty is handed over to individuals and families from
generations before them.
 There is usually no escape from it
 Experience multiple deprivation, including
 Hunger
 Under nutrition
 Illiteracy
 Lack of access to safe drinking water and basic health services
 Social discrimination
 Physical insecurity and
 political exclusion

10. CONTD…
 Situational Poverty (Transitory)
-People or families can be poor due to some adversities like
 Earthquakes
 Floods
 A serious illness and so on
-Sometimes, people can help themselves out of this situation
quickly if they are given a bit of assistance
 Collective poverty:
-Affects a population collectively
-A whole country can be classified as poverty-stricken due
to insufficiency of basic materials and services

11. Other forms of poverty
 The disadvantaged
 Who own nothing
 Lack everything that is exterior
 The unfortunate and accident victims
 « New poor » victims of the economical crisis or unemployment
 The isolated
 The absence of relationships
 The result of broken relationships, e.g. the poverty of divorce
 Lack of acquaintances or of friends
 Those who have no future
 Who cannot foresee how the future will be, e.g. prisoners, the
unemployed, workers who are hired on a day to day basis
 The unwell
 Who have poor health: the sick, the disabled, the blind, the
deaf, the paralyzed, the amputees, the mentally ill, etc…

12. CONTD…
 The ignorant, the incompetent, the inexperienced
 Who have little culture, little knowledge, little learning, little
education, little training
 Usually more serious than the preceding forms of poverty in LDCs
 The unloved
 Lack affection, who do not receive a minimum of recognition or no ties
of love.
 Unloved as children are handicapped for the rest of their lives.
 Those who lack willpower or love
 The bottom of the scale
 Without will power, the person himself/herself is affected during
mental depression
 Without desire, without willpower, without love, one cannot change,
cannot evolve. The person’s vital strength is non-existent.

13. Causes of poverty
oUnequal distribution of resources
oUnproductive human resources
oInadequate employment opportunities
oRapid population growth
oLack of education
oNatural disasters
oLack of money
Poverty is also
caused by DRUGS
& ALCOHOL as
some people spend
all their money on
addictions

14. Measurements
of
poverty

15. Poverty
Absolute Poverty Relative Poverty
Human Poverty
Index
Poverty Line
Food Poverty
Line
Non food
Poverty Line
Lorenz Curve ( Gini index)
National Poverty
Line

16. CONTD…
 Measures of absolute poverty:
 Human poverty index
 Developed by the United Nations
 Not only poor countries but also industrial countries are suffering
from the human poverty
 So economists introduced separate two indexes
 Human poverty index for developing countries (HPI 1)
 Percentage of people who are living more than 40 years (Longevity)
 Adults percentage with illiteracy (Knowledge)
 Percentage of people who are impossible to access for pure water
 Percentage of low weight infants below 5 year old (Decent
standards of Poverty)

17. CONTD…
 Human poverty index for developing countries (HPI 2 )
 Percentage of people who are not living more than 60 years from the
total population
 Percentage of people who are inability to read and write in day today
activities from the total population
 Segment of people who suffer from income poverty
 Group of population suffer from the unemployment more than 12
months

18. CONTD…
Poverty line:
 A critical threshold of income, consumption, or more generally,
access to goods and services below which individuals are declared
to be poor
 A minimum level of “acceptable” economic participation in a
given society at a given point of time
 Those with incomes or expenditures equal to or above the line are
not poor
 A person is considered poor if his or her income or consumption
level falls below a given “minimum level” necessary to fulfill basic
needs. What is necessary to satisfy basic needs is different at
different times and in different countries
 Therefore, poverty line may vary with time and place

19. CONTD…
 Food poverty line:
 Minimum amount of food an individual must consume
to stay healthy
 Non food poverty line
 Average per capita non-food expenditure of households
whose per capita total expenditure is close to the food
poverty line
 National poverty Line
 This is the percentage of people living below the national
poverty line

20. Criticisms on Poverty Line
 A measure solely based on the cost of food
 Needed to measure poverty through multiple factors such as
 Housing
 Transportation
 Regional economic differences
 The thresholds are low
 Current poverty thresholds were established in the 1960s. It
should vary geographically to reflect variations in the costs of
meeting the needs
 The analytical data is low to find the solution to reduce
the poverty
 Essential to have the categories (sex, age etc.) what affect from
poverty more. Then the solutions can be used to that affected
group

21. Measures of relative poverty
 The Lorenz Curve
 Max O. Lorenz: 1905- inequality of the wealth distribution
 A graphical representation of the proportionality of distribution
 To map the Lorenz curve, the cumulative income share is plotted on the
vertical axis and distribution of the population on the horizontal axis
 Always bowed to the right of the line of equality
 The more curved a Lorenz curve is, and the further it lies below the line of
equality
 A linear Lorenz curve is evidence of “perfect” equality

22. CONTD…

23. CONTD…
 The Sen index:
 The weighted Sen index by the gini coefficient of the poor:
 Formula:
Where,
Gpp = The gini coefficient of the poverty gap ratios of the poor
P1
P = The poverty gap index

24. CONTD…
 The Sen-Shorrocks-Thon index:
 The product of
 The headcount index,
 The poverty gap index and
 The Gini coefficient of poverty gap ratios for the population
 Formula:
PSST= P0P1
P(1+ĜP)
P1
P = The poverty gap index
ĜP = The Gini coefficient of the poverty gap ratios

25. Primary Measurements of poverty
 Direct Calorie Intake (DCI)
 If its per capita calorie intake is less than the standard per
capita nutritional requirement (2,122 kcal per day)
 Best used to measure under-nourishment
 Food Energy Intake (FYI)
 Normally derived through regression of the relationship
between calorie intake and expenditure
 Cost of Basic Needs (CBN)
 Since 1995-96, BBS is using it
• Lower poverty line: Total expenditures on food and
non-food combined are equal to or less than the food
poverty line
• Upper poverty line: Estimated by adding together the
food and non-food poverty lines

26. Other measurements of poverty
 Head Count Index:
 the proportion of the population that is counted as poor
 Formula:
Np = Number of poor
N = Total population
 Rewrite as:
 I is an indicator function that takes the value of 1 if the bracketed is true and o
otherwise
 Expenditure Yi is less than poverty line z
 Drawback:
 Fails to capture the extent to which individual income falls below
poverty line

27. CONTD…
Poverty Gap Index:
 Measure of the intensity of poverty
 Average of the ratio of the poverty gap to the poverty line
 Expressed as a percentage of the poverty line for a country
 A percentage between 0 and 100%
 Formula:
PGI = 1/N ∑ (Z-Yj.1 (Yj < Z)/Z)
 Where
N = Total population
q = Population of poor who are living at or below the poverty line
Z = The poverty line and
Yj = Income of the poor individual j

28. CONTD…
 Foster, Greer and Thorbecke set:
P = 1/n Σ(1-yi / yx )a
 Where
 The poverty measure (p) is a function of the total number (n) of
households and the incomes of that sub-set whose income (yi) is
below the poverty line (yx)
 Varying the parameter (a) from 0 to 1 to 2 provides estimates
respectively of the numbers of poor people and the intensity and
severity of their poverty

29. Other Poverty Indexes used by the
World Bank
 The Human Suffering Index (HSI)
 The Physical Quality of Life Index (PQLI)
 The Human Development Index (HDI)
 Depth of poverty:
 How far below the poverty line the poor population
lives; also called the poverty gap
 Poverty severity (squared poverty gap):
 Measures how poor the poor are
 Also measures how far below the poverty line
individuals and households are, with more consequence
given to those at the very bottom

30. Effects of poverty

31. POVERTY

32. THANKS FOR YOUR
KIND PATIENCE