Poverty

I

Introduction

Poverty, condition of having insufficient resources or income. In its most extreme form, poverty is a lack of basic human needs, such as adequate and nutritious food, clothing, housing, clean water, and health services. Extreme poverty can cause terrible suffering and death, and even modest levels of poverty can prevent people from realizing many of their desires. The world’s poorest people—many of whom live in developing areas of Africa, Asia, Latin America, and eastern Europe—struggle daily for food, shelter, and other necessities. They often suffer from severe malnutrition, epidemic disease outbreaks, famine, and war. In wealthier countries—such as the United States, Canada, Japan, and those in western Europe—the effects of poverty may include poor nutrition, mental illness, drug dependence, crime, and high rates of disease.

Extreme poverty, which threatens people’s health or lives, is also known as destitution or absolute poverty. In the United States, extreme poverty is traditionally defined as having an annual income that is less than half of the official poverty line (an income level determined by the Bureau of the Census). Extreme poverty in developing nations, as defined by international organizations, means having a household income of less than U.S.$1 per day. Relative poverty is the condition of having fewer resources or less income than others within a society or country, or compared to worldwide averages. In developed countries, relative poverty often is measured as having a family income less than one-half of the median income for that country.

The reasons for poverty are not clear. Some people believe that poverty results from a lack of adequate resources on a global level—resources such as land, food, and building materials—that are necessary for the well-being or survival of the world’s people. Others see poverty as an effect of the uneven distribution of resources around the world on an international or even regional scale. This second line of reasoning helps explain why many people have much more than they need to live in comfort, while many others do not have enough resources to live.

II

Poverty Throughout History

Poverty has been a concern in societies since before the beginning of recorded history. According to sociologists and anthropologists, social stratification—the division of a society into a hierarchy of wealth, power, and status—was a defining characteristic of the earliest civilizations, including those of ancient Egypt, Sumer in the Middle East, and the Indus Valley of what is now India. The rulers and other powerful or wealthy members of these civilizations frequently mistreated the poor, sometimes subjecting them to hard labor or enslaving them.

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Babylonian, Talmudic, and early Christian writings from later times entreat people with resources and good fortune to relate to the poor with compassion. As the powerful nations of Western civilization became established, they codified relationships between the poor and nonpoor into law, as was done in Babylonia (see Code of Hammurabi). The present-day welfare systems of the United Kingdom, the United States, and Canada evolved from a 17th-century British legal act known commonly as the Poor Laws.

The rise of civilizations also led to stratification among nations and territories around the globe. Powerful and wealthy nations maintained and increased their power and wealth and built empires by using the labor and resources of less powerful regions. This dynamic took on a new form in the era of colonialism (see Colonialism and Colonies). Through two colonial periods—from the 15th century to the early 19th century and from the early 19th century to the mid-20th century—countries in western Europe, and later the United States and Japan, laid claim to territories and created colonies and new countries in Asia, Africa, and the Americas. These were areas where people still lived directly off the land and where natural resources were plentiful. Colonizers variously sought to acquire new resources and productive land, to spread religion, to find religious freedom, and to gain strategic positions against rival nations in political and military confrontations.

During the first period of colonialism, several western European countries—led by Portugal, The Netherlands, Spain, France, and Britain—used their colonial territories to provide them with goods for consumption and trade. In the late 18th century, the Industrial Revolution brought mechanized production to many nations and ushered in a second period of colonialism. Industrialization began in Britain and soon spread to North America, much of western Europe, and some Pacific nations, such as Japan. Industrialized countries could produce much larger quantities of goods and resources than had previously been possible. To achieve this level of production they relied on colonies to provide raw materials for building and powering machines and for supplying their factories. The industrialized countries, and many of the people living in them, experienced increases in wealth and ease of access to essential resources, including clothing, building materials, and staple foods.

The colonies in Africa, South and East Asia, and what is now Latin America did not share in these gains. Often, the resources of the colonies were exploited by the colonizing countries, especially geographically smaller ones such as Britain and The Netherlands, to supply raw materials such as metal ores for smelting or sugarcane for the production of rum. In the colonies, the production of food and raw materials for manufacturing diverted indigenous peoples from doing subsistence work, such as gardening or tending livestock. Others were simply displaced from their land. Native Africans, Asians, and Americans had been self-sufficient as farmers, herders, or hunter-gatherers; now they became dependent, for the first time, on outsiders for their basic needs, and many became poor. An exception to this pattern occurred in two of the world’s largest countries, Russia and China. These countries used primarily their own hinterlands to obtain resources.

In other cases, colonies were centers of trade in slaves (see Slavery: Modern Period). Many European nations, including Portugal, Britain, Spain, France, The Netherlands, and Denmark, set up outposts in West Africa from which they shipped slaves to the colonies of the Americas and the Caribbean. These countries also used slaves for free labor in their own lands. Slaves suffered a total loss of home, land, and livelihood.

The economies of the former colonies in Africa, Asia, and Latin America began to change only in the mid-20th century when they gained political independence. Most former colonies came to be known as developing countries or, collectively, as the Third World. The Third World is home to the world’s poorest people. The countries of eastern Europe—which were formerly part of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and the Communist bloc—and the People’s Republic of China are sometimes referred to as the Second World. These countries have vast rural territories and a legacy of state-owned property, facilities, and equipment (as for farming) from the years of Communist rule. They have become industrialized but many still have high levels of poverty. The former colonizing countries, which have highly industrialized and postindustrial (service- and information-based) economies, have become known generally as developed countries.

The unequal distribution of wealth and resources generated in the colonial period has become even more pronounced in the postindustrial or information age. Members of societies with access to good educational opportunities and advanced technology profit far more from the emerging global economy than do members of less developed societies.

III

Causes of Poverty

Poverty has many causes, some of them very basic. Some experts suggest, for instance, that the world has too many people, too few jobs, and not enough food. But such basic causes are quite intractable and not easily eradicated. In most cases, the causes and effects of poverty interact, so that what makes people poor also creates conditions that keep them poor. Primary factors that may lead to poverty include (1) overpopulation, (2) the unequal distribution of resources in the world economy, (3) inability to meet high standards of living and costs of living, (4) inadequate education and employment opportunities, (5) environmental degradation, (6) certain economic and demographic trends, and (7) welfare incentives.

A

Overpopulation

Overpopulation, the situation of having large numbers of people with too few resources and too little space, is closely associated with poverty. It can result from high population density (the ratio of people to land area, usually expressed as numbers of persons per square kilometer or square mile) or from low amounts of resources, or from both. Excessively high population densities put stress on available resources. Only a certain number of people can be supported on a given area of land, and that number depends on how much food and other resources the land can provide. In countries where people live primarily by means of simple farming, gardening, herding, hunting, and gathering, even large areas of land can support only small numbers of people because these labor-intensive subsistence activities produce only small amounts of food.

In developed countries such as the United States, Japan, and the countries of western Europe, overpopulation generally is not considered a major cause of poverty. These countries produce large quantities of food through mechanized farming, which depends on commercial fertilizers, large-scale irrigation, and agricultural machinery. This form of production provides enough food to support the high densities of people in metropolitan areas.

A country’s level of poverty can depend greatly on its mix of population density and agricultural productivity. Bangladesh, for example, has one of the world’s highest population densities, with 1,124 persons per sq km (2,910 persons per sq mi). A large majority of the people of Bangladesh engage in low-productivity manual farming, which contributes to the country’s extremely high level of poverty. Some of the smaller countries in western Europe, such as The Netherlands and Belgium, have high population densities as well. These countries practice mechanized farming and are involved in high-tech industries, however, and therefore have high standards of living.

At the other end of the spectrum, many countries in sub-Saharan Africa have population densities of less than 30 persons per sq km (80 persons per sq mi). Many people in these countries practice manual subsistence farming; these countries also have infertile land and lack the economic resources and technology to boost productivity. As a consequence, these nations are very poor. The United States has both relatively low population density and high agricultural productivity; it is one of the world’s wealthiest nations.

High birth rates contribute to overpopulation in many developing countries. Children are assets to many poor families because they provide labor, usually for farming. Cultural norms in traditionally rural societies commonly sanction the value of large families. Also, the governments of developing countries often provide little or no support, financial or political, for family planning (see Birth Control); even people who wish to keep their families small have difficulty doing so. For all these reasons, developing countries tend to have high rates of population growth.

Most developed countries provide considerable political and financial support for family planning. People tend to limit the number of children they have because of the availability of this support. Cultural norms in these countries also tend to affirm the ideal of small family size. Recently, however, some developed countries with declining population levels have begun experimenting with incentives to increase the birth rate. See also Population: World Population Growth and Distribution.