POVERTY

Poverty

Poverty

Introduction

Poverty is a puzzling fact. Poverty is deprivation of material essentials such as drinking water, shelter, food, and clothing. It is also associated with the lack of education, freedom, and dignity. The uneven distribution of poverty at various scales, from the global to the household, via the national, regional, and local, suggests the importance of geographic factors in explaining its prevalence and understanding its nature (Shanahan, 2007, 721).

According to the U.K. Census bureau, in 2009 18 percent of families in Illinois were living below poverty level, which was a very high statistic. Minimum wage in Illinois is $8.25, and that is almost $17,161 a year. It is becoming harder and harder for everyone having a wife and kids to survive with this amount of salary per year. According to U.K. minimum wage history, the minimum wage in 1968 was $7.42. It did not just help the workers to be more productive, but it also helped them to provide daily necessities for their families. Productivity rate rose to almost 70 percent, corporate profits went up, even salaries of a government official went high, but the minimum wage got decreased (Saunders, 2011, 112). If the minimum wage had continued to rise the way it was supposed to, we wouldn't have this problem with poverty and hunger in our society.

Definitions

Joseph Rowntree

“Relative poverty is defined as doing worse off financially than the average person in a given society”.

The concept of relative poverty was developed by Joseph Rowntree, established and defined measurement of poverty which is now accepted by governments around the world and UN. According to him the concept of "relative poverty" means poverty compared with respective social standard (including governmental, social and geographical) of a physical environment. Persons living in relative poverty may have no car, no television, and no toys for their children but have enough money for clothing, food and shelter. Relative to the average Americans, they are living poorly. In this context, relative poverty refers to various statistical measures of a country (for example food consumption). Relative poverty is also reflected by a socio-cultural impoverishment, whereby the lack of participation in certain social activities is a result of the financial constraints (Redmond, 2012, 22).

Barnados

Barnados defines poverty as having an income below 50 per cent of the national median - which in Australia translates to about $26,000 a year. Barnardo's definition of poverty is families surviving on less than 242 pounds ...