SOC101: Introduction to Sociology

Figure 10.6 This young girl was begging for food in the street in Vietnam, holding a younger child as she was doing so.

What does it mean to be poor? Does it mean being a single mother with two kids in New York City, waiting for the next paycheck in order to buy groceries? Does it mean living with almost no furniture in your apartment because your income doesn't allow for extras like beds or chairs? Or does it mean having to live with the distended bellies of the chronically malnourished throughout the peripheral nations of Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia? Poverty has a thousand faces and a thousand gradations; no single definition pulls together every part of the spectrum. You may feel poor if you cannot afford cable television or buy a car. Every time you see a fellow student with a new laptop and smartphone, you may feel that you, with your ten-year-old desktop computer, are barely keeping up. However, someone else might look at the clothes and calories you consume and consider you rich.

Types of Poverty

Social scientists define global poverty in different ways and take into account the complexities and issues of relativism described above. Relative poverty is a state of living where people can afford necessities but are unable to meet their society's average standard of living. People often disparage "keeping up with the Joneses" – the idea that you must keep up with the neighbors' standard of living to not feel deprived. But it is true that you might feel "poor" if you are living without a car to drive to and from work, without any money for a safety net should a family member fall ill, and without any "extras" beyond just making ends meet.

Contrary to relative poverty, people who live in extreme poverty lack even the basic necessities, which typically include adequate food, clean water, safe housing, and access to healthcare. Extreme poverty occurs when someone lives on less than 1.90 U.S. dollars per day.

In prior years, the World Bank – the primary organization analyzing these trends – focused heavily on the number of people under that extreme poverty level of $1.90 per day. (The previous term was "absolute poverty".) In 2018, the World Bank added two more measures to consider: people living on less than $3.20 and people living on less than $5.50. As the number of people in that extreme category continues to decline, these two new categories will be important to recognize the population that lives above the $1.90 line but still remains vulnerable to extreme poverty. Someone who begins to earn enough to live on more than $1.90 is still in severe poverty and should be considered as such.

How would you do it if you were forced to live on $1.90 a day or even $5.50? What would you deem worth spending money on, and what could you do without? How would you manage the necessities and make up the gap between what you need to live and what you can afford?

Figure 10.7 Slums in many countries illustrate absolute poverty all too well.

Subjective poverty describes poverty that is composed of many dimensions; it is subjectively present when your actual income does not meet your expectations and perceptions. With the concept of subjective poverty, the poor themselves have a greater say in recognizing when it is present. In short, subjective poverty has more to do with how a person or a family defines themselves. This means that a family subsisting on a few dollars a day in Nepal might think of themselves as doing well within their perception of normal. However, a westerner traveling to Nepal might visit the same family and see extreme need.

Who Are the Impoverished?

Who are the impoverished? Who is living in absolute poverty? The truth that most of us would guess is that the richest countries are often those with the least people. Compare the United States, which possesses a relatively small slice of the population pie and owns by far the largest slice of the wealth pie, with India. These disparities have the expected consequence. The poorest people in the world are women and those in peripheral and semi-peripheral nations. For women, the rate of poverty is particularly worsened by the pressure on their time. In general, time is one of the few luxuries the very poor have, but study after study has shown that women in poverty, who are responsible for all family comforts as well as any earnings they can make, have less of it. The result is that women are suffering more in terms of overall well-being. It is harder for females to get credit to expand businesses, to take the time to learn a new skill or to spend extra hours improving their craft so as to be able to earn at a higher rate.

Global Feminization of Poverty

In almost all societies, women have higher rates of poverty than men. More women and girls live in poor conditions, receive inadequate healthcare, bear the brunt of malnutrition and inadequate drinking water, and so on. This situation goes back decades and led University of Michigan sociologist Diana Pearce to coin the term "feminization of poverty" in 1978. Throughout the 1990s, data indicated that while overall poverty rates were rising, especially in peripheral nations, the rates of impoverishment increased for women nearly 20 percent more than for men. More recently, as extreme poverty rates continue to fall, women still make up a disproportionate amount of the world's poor. Gender differences are sometimes difficult to discern in international poverty data, but researchers have undertaken efforts to define the makeup of those affected by poverty. Of people aged 25-34, the world has 122 women living in poverty for every 100 men living in poverty. The world's elderly below the poverty line are also more likely to be women.

Why is this happening? While myriad variables affect women's poverty, research specializing in this issue identifies three causes:

1. The expansion in the number of female-headed households
2. The persistence and consequences of intra-household inequalities and biases against women
3. The implementation of neoliberal economic policies around the world

While women are living longer and healthier lives today compared to ten years ago, around the world, many women are denied basic rights, particularly in the workplace. In peripheral nations, they accumulate fewer assets, farm less land, make less money, and face restricted civil rights and liberties. Women can stimulate the economic growth of peripheral nations, but they are often undereducated and lack access to the credit needed to start small businesses. When women are able to attain higher levels of education, they account for significant economic growth within their nations.

Many organizations undertake programs or provide support to improve opportunity, safety, education, equality, and financial outcomes for women. Some of these efforts involve diplomacy, such as one government (or a coalition) working to secure greater rights and improve the circumstances of women in other countries. Key areas of focus are reducing institutional and cultural discrimination, ending domestic violence, providing women more agency in decision-making, and increasing education for children. Other programs focus on more immediate needs and opportunities.

Microcredit and women's collective savings accounts provide financial resources for women and families to make important investments, such as building a well at home to improve health and reduce time spent obtaining clean water. Other uses may involve starting a business, paying a debt, or buying an important appliance or equipment. Unfortunately, these microfinance programs don't have a track record of alleviating poverty. In some cases, they can lead to negative outcomes, such as trapping women in a cycle of debt or increasing domestic violence. Collective savings programs – where local people pool their resources and extend credit within their group – have shown some more positive outcomes. The UN has emphasized that microfinance and cultural empowerment would be more successful if they were used in concert.

Africa

The majority of the poorest countries in the world are in Africa. That is not to say there is no diversity within the countries of that continent; countries like South Africa and Egypt have much lower rates of poverty than Angola and Ethiopia, for instance. Overall, African income levels have been dropping relative to the rest of the world, meaning that Africa as a whole is getting relatively poorer. Making the problem worse, 2014 saw an Ebola virus outbreak in Western Africa, leading to a public health crisis and an economic downturn due to the loss of workers and tourist dollars.

Why is Africa in such dire straits? Much of the continent's poverty can be traced to the availability of land, especially arable land (land that can be farmed). Centuries of struggle over land ownership have meant that much useable land has been ruined or left unfarmed. At the same time, many countries with inadequate rainfall have never set up an infrastructure to irrigate. Colonial forces took many of Africa's natural resources long ago, leaving little agricultural and mineral wealth on the continent.

Further, African poverty is worsened by civil wars and inadequate governance resulting from a continent re-imagined with artificial colonial borders and leaders. Consider the example of Rwanda. There, two ethnic groups cohabitated with their own hierarchy and management system until Belgians took control of the country in 1915 and rigidly confined members of the population into two unequal ethnic groups. While, historically, members of the Tutsi group held positions of power, the involvement of Belgians led to the Hutu seizing power during a 1960s revolt. This ultimately led to a repressive government and genocide against Tutsis, leaving hundreds of thousands of Rwandans dead or living in the diaspora (U.S. Department of State 2011c). The painful rebirth of a self-ruled Africa has meant many countries bear ongoing scars as they try to see their way toward the future (World Poverty 2012a).

In 2020, armed conflicts were underway in regions of nations, including the Tigray conflict in Ethiopia, the Kamwina Nsapo rebellion in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Boko Haram insurgency in Nigeria and neighboring countries, and several more. While most of the ongoing conflicts are considered minor, they are both dangerous and disruptive to the people living in those regions, and several have included ethnic cleansing, mass kidnapping, extensive sexual violence, and the use of child soldiers.

Asia

Figure 10.8 For children who have homes in slums like this one in Phnom Phen, Cambodia, survival and safety are often the primary and immediate concerns. Longer-term goals, such as education and social mobility, may not be available options.

While most of the world's poorest countries are in Africa, most of the world's poorest people are in Asia. As in Africa, Asia finds itself with disparity in the distribution of poverty, with Japan and South Korea holding much more wealth than India and Cambodia. In fact, most poverty is concentrated in South Asia. One of the most pressing causes of poverty in Asia is simply the pressure that the size of the population puts on its resources. Unlike Africa, many people living in poverty reside in urban areas, often in crowded, unhygienic conditions with limited access to water and resources. Estimates indicate that Asia has 60 percent of the world's people who live in slums. Those who find work often do so in garment factories or other manufacturing facilities, where pay is very low, and the demands are incredibly high. (See the feature below on sweatshop labor). Children are sent to work in these conditions as well.

Asia is also frequently impacted by natural disasters. Countries like India, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Thailand, and the Philippines experience frequent typhoons (hurricanes) and flooding. For those living in insecure structures – often constructed from various leftover materials and not subject to any type of building codes – such events can leave entire swaths of the population homeless and vulnerable to disease or injury.

The Middle East and North Africa region (MENA)

The Middle East and North Africa region (MENA) includes oil-rich countries in the Gulf, such as Iran, Iraq, and Kuwait, but also countries that are relatively resource-poor in relationship to their populations, such as Morocco and Yemen. These countries are predominately Islamic. For the last quarter-century, economic growth was slower in MENA than in other developing economies, and almost a quarter of the 300 million people who make up the population live on less than $2.00 a day.

The International Labour Organization tracks the way income inequality influences social unrest. Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East-North Africa region have the highest risk of social unrest. Increasing unemployment and high socioeconomic inequality in MENA were major factors in the Arab Spring, which – beginning in 2010 – toppled dictatorships throughout the Middle East in favor of democratically elected governments. Unemployment and income inequalities are still being blamed on immigrants, foreign nationals, and ethnic/religious minorities.

Consequences of Poverty

Figure 10.10 For this child, who is being assessed for malnutrition at a clinic in Kenya, risks associated with poverty and lack of food were exacerbated by a massive drought that hit the region.

Not surprisingly, the consequences of poverty are often also causes. The poor often experience inadequate healthcare, limited education, and the inaccessibility of birth control. However, those born into these conditions are incredibly challenged in their efforts to break out since these consequences of poverty are also causes of poverty, perpetuating a cycle of disadvantage.

According to sociologists Neckerman and Torche, in their analysis of global inequality studies, the consequences of poverty are many. Neckerman and Torche have divided them into three areas. The first, termed "the sedimentation of global inequality," relates to the fact that once poverty becomes entrenched in an area, it is typically very difficult to reverse. As mentioned above, poverty exists in a cycle that intertwines the consequences and causes.

The second consequence of poverty is its effect on physical and mental health. Poor people face physical health challenges, including malnutrition and high infant mortality rates. Mental health is also detrimentally affected by the emotional stresses of poverty, with relative deprivation carrying the most robust effect. Again, as with the ongoing inequality, the effects of poverty on mental and physical health become more entrenched as time goes on. Neckerman and Torche's third consequence of poverty is the prevalence of crime. Cross-nationally, crime rates are higher, particularly for violent crime, in countries with higher levels of income inequality.

Slavery

While most of us are accustomed to thinking of slavery in terms of the antebellum South, modern-day slavery goes hand-in-hand with global inequality. In short, slavery refers to any situation in which people are sold, treated as property, or forced to work for little or no pay. Just as in the pre-Civil War United States, these humans are at the mercy of their employers.

Chattel slavery, the form of slavery once practiced in the American South, occurs when one person owns another as property. Child slavery, which may include child prostitution, is a form of chattel slavery. In debt bondage, or bonded labor, the poor pledge themselves as servants in exchange for the cost of basic necessities like transportation, room, and board. In this scenario, people are paid less than they are charged for room and board. When travel is required, they can arrive in debt for their travel expenses and be unable to work their way free since their wages do not allow them to ever get ahead.

The global watchdog group Anti-Slavery International recognizes other forms of slavery: human trafficking (in which people are moved away from their communities and forced to work against their will), child domestic work and child labor, and certain forms of servile marriage, in which women are little more than enslaved people.

Source: Tonja R. Conerly, Kathleen Holmes, Asha Lal Tamang; OpenStax, https://openstax.org/books/introduction-sociology-3e/pages/10-2-global-wealth-and-poverty
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.