relative poverty

Examples of relative poverty in the following topics:

• Measuring Poverty

  • The European Union's poverty threshold is based on relative poverty -- it measures how far below median income a person is, rather than whether or not they can meet their daily needs.
  • Poverty is usually measured as either absolute or relative poverty.
  • Relative poverty explains poverty as socially defined and dependent on social context.
  • Usually, relative poverty is measured as the percentage of the population with income less than some fixed proportion of median income.
  • Relative poverty measures are used as official poverty rates in several developed countries and are measured according to several different income inequality metrics, including the Gini coefficient and the Theil Index.

• Relative Deprivation Approach

  • This differentiates relative deprivation from objective deprivation (also known as absolute deprivation or absolute poverty), a condition that applies to all underprivileged people.
  • This leads to an important conclusion: while the objective deprivation (poverty) in the world may change over time, relative deprivation will not, as long as social inequality persists and some humans are better off than others.
  • A specific form of relative deprivation is relative poverty.
  • A measure of relative poverty defines poverty as being below some relative poverty line, such as households who earn less than 20% of the median income.
  • Notice that if everyone's real income in an economy increases, but the income distribution stays the same, the number of people living in relative poverty will not change.

• Poverty

  • By local standards of relative poverty, the wealthiest person in a town in Liberia is well-off, but measured on a global scale that person is likely to be considered relatively poor.
  • The United States officially defines poverty using the poverty line.
  • "Near poverty" is the term for an income level that is just above the poverty line; it refers to incomes that are no more than 25% above the poverty line.
  • "Relative poverty" refers to economic disadvantage compared to wealthier members of society, whereas "absolute poverty" refers to a family (or an individual) with an income so low that they cannot afford basic necessities of survival, such as food and shelter.
  • If there is a high level of social mobility, it is relatively easy for people to leave poverty.

• Poverty

  • By a local measure of relative poverty, the wealthiest person in a town in Liberia is well-off, but measured on a global scale that person is likely to be relatively poor.
  • Near poverty is when one earns up to 25% above the poverty line; put otherwise, a person near poverty has an income below 125% of the current poverty line.
  • Absolute poverty is the level of poverty where individuals and families cannot meet food, shelter, warmth, and safety needs, while relative poverty refers to economic disadvantage compared to wealthier members of society.
  • It enables comparisons between the relative wealth and poverty of countries — the higher a country's GNI PPP is, the better off the average person in that country is.
  • Countries with low HDI tend to be caught in a national cycle of poverty -- they have little wealth to invest, but the lack of investment perpetuates their poverty.

• The Dynamics of Poverty

  • Poverty operates in a dynamic cycle, with the effects of poverty increasing the likelihood that it will be transferred between generations.
  • This perpetuation of deprivation is the cycle of poverty.
  • The basic premise of the poverty cycle the idea that poverty is a dynamic process—its effects may also be its causes.
  • Without these resources, poverty-stricken individuals experience disadvantages that, in turn, increase their poverty.
  • Finally, poverty increases the risk of homelessness.

• The Feminization of Poverty

  • The feminization of poverty refers to the fact that women represent a disproportionate share of the world's poor.
  • Recent attempts to reduce global poverty have utilized systems of microcredit, which give small loans to poor households in an attempt to break the cycle of poverty.
  • Many factors place women at higher risk of poverty than their male counterparts.
  • Women in poverty also have reduced access to healthcare services and resources.
  • Increasing health services to women could, therefore, mitigate the feminization of poverty.

• Industrialized Countries

  • An industrialized country, also commonly referred to as a developed country, is a sovereign state with a highly developed economy relative to other nations.
  • Countries with low HDI tend to be caught in a national cycle of poverty -- they have little wealth to invest, but the lack of investment perpetuates their poverty.

• Social Exclusion

  • Poverty and exclusion are two different concepts.
  • Poverty is a distributional outcome, whereas exclusion can be defined as process of declining participation, solidarity, and access.
  • It is quite difficult to measure social exclusion quantitatively, as social exclusion is relative, sensitive, and variable.

• Aging

  • ., it is probably going to become increasingly difficult to pay corporate, federal, and state pensions, because the number of workers relative to retirees is shrinking.
  • The blue line represents social security expenditure in 2010 dollars, while the red line indicates the percentage of the population aged 65 and over who are at or below the poverty line.
  • As the graph shows, the amount of social security expenditure is correlated with a drop in the number of elderly people at or below the poverty line.

• Social Class in the U.S.

  • Another model for thinking about social class in the United States attributes the following general characteristics to each tier: The upper class has vast accumulated wealth and significant control over corporations and political institutions, and their privilege is usually inherited; the corporate elite is a class of high-salaried stockholders, such as CEOs, who do not necessarily have inherited privilege but have achieved high status through their careers; the upper middle class consists of highly educated salaried professionals whose occupations are held in high esteem, such as lawyers, engineers, and professors; the middle class is the most vaguely defined and largest social class, and is generally thought to include people in mid-level managerial positions or relatively low status professional positions, such as high school teachers and small business owners; the working class generally refers to those without college degrees who do unskilled service work, such as being a sales clerk or housecleaner, and it includes most people whose incomes fall below the poverty line.
  • This chart depicts the number of people living in poverty during each year from 1959-2003.
  • The poverty rate corresponds to what proportion of Americans live in the lowest economic strata of the hierarchical class system.