Poverty is hunger.
Poverty is lack of shelter.
Poverty is being sick and not being able to see a doctor.
Poverty is not being able to go to school, not knowing how to read, not being able to speak properly.
Poverty is not having a job, is fear for the future, living one day at a time.
Poverty is losing a child to illness brought about by unclean water.
Poverty is powerlessness, lack of representation and freedom.
Poverty has many faces,
changing from place to place and across time,
and has been described in many ways.
Most often, poverty is a situation people want to escape.
So poverty is a call to action --
for the poor and the wealthy alike --
a call to change the world
so that many more may have enough to eat,
adequate shelter,
access to education and health,
protection from violence,
and a voice in what happens in their communities.
Dimensions of Poverty
To know what helps to alleviate poverty,
what works and what does not,
what changes over time,
has to be defined, measured, and studied -- and even lived.
As poverty has many dimensions,
it has to be looked at through a variety of indicators --
levels of income and consumption, social indicators,
and now increasingly indicators of vulnerability to risks and of socio/political access.
So far, much more work has been done using consumption or income-based measures of poverty. But some work has been done on non-income dimensions of poverty, most notably in the Human Development Report prepared annually by the United Nations Development Program, and new work is underway in preparation for the World Development Report on Poverty and Development. See New Directions in Measuring Poverty
This page last updated on July 15, 1999