Poverty threshold
[5][6] In September 2022, the World Bank updated the International Poverty Line (IPL), a global absolute minimum, to $2.15 per day[7] (in PPP).
[12] Booth set the line at 10 (50p) to 20 shillings (£1) per week, which he considered to be the minimum amount necessary for a family of four or five people to subsist on.
[13] Seebohm Rowntree (1871–1954), a British sociological researcher, social reformer and industrialist, surveyed rich families in York, and drew a poverty line in terms of a minimum weekly sum of money "necessary to enable families … to secure the necessaries of a healthy life", which included fuel and light, rent, food, clothing, and household and personal items.
Based on data from leading nutritionists of the period, he calculated the cheapest price for the minimum calorific intake and nutritional balance necessary, before people get ill or lose weight.
She attributed the poverty threshold as a measure of income inadequacy by taking the cost of food plan per family of three or four and multiplying it by a factor of three.
To assist in measuring this, the World Bank has a daily per capita international poverty line (IPL), a global absolute minimum, of $2.15 a day as of September 2022.
[18] In 2008, the World Bank came out with a figure (revised largely due to inflation) of $1.25 a day at 2005 purchasing power parity (PPP).
[22] Using a single monetary poverty threshold is problematic when applied worldwide, due to the difficulty of comparing prices between countries.
[citation needed] Prices of the same goods vary dramatically from country to country; while this is typically corrected for by using PPP exchange rates, the basket of goods used to determine such rates is usually unrepresentative of the poor, most of whose expenditure is on basic foodstuffs rather than the relatively luxurious items (washing machines, air travel, healthcare) often included in PPP baskets.
The economist Robert C. Allen has attempted to solve this by using standardized baskets of goods typical of those bought by the poor across countries and historical time, for example including a fixed calorific quantity of the cheapest local grain (such as corn, rice, or oats).
It attempts to define the absolute minimum resources necessary for long-term physical well-being, usually in terms of consumption goods.
[24][25] "Perhaps the high point of the WEP was the World Employment Conference of 1976, which proposed the satisfaction of basic human needs as the overriding objective of national and international development policy.
[26] Many modern lists emphasize the minimum level of consumption of 'basic needs' of not just food, water, and shelter, but also sanitation, education, and health care.
According to a UN declaration that resulted from the World Summit on Social Development in Copenhagen in 1995, absolute poverty is "a condition characterized by severe deprivation of basic human needs, including food, safe drinking water, sanitation facilities, health, shelter, education, and information.
[31] Relative poverty is thus a form of social exclusion that can for example affect peoples access to decent housing, education or job opportunities.
In 1776, Adam Smith argued that poverty is the inability to afford "not only the commodities which are indispensably necessary for the support of life, but whatever the custom of the country renders it indecent for creditable people, even of the lowest order, to be without.
"[40][41] In 1958, John Kenneth Galbraith argued, "People are poverty stricken when their income, even if adequate for survival, falls markedly behind that of their community.
"[45] This was the first introduction of the relative poverty rate as typically computed today[46][47] In 1979, British sociologist, Peter Townsend published his famous definition: "individuals... can be said to be in poverty when they lack the resources to obtain the types of diet, participate in the activities and have the living conditions and amenities which are customary, or are at least widely encouraged or approved, in the societies to which they belong (page 31).
"[48] Brian Nolan and Christopher T. Whelan of the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) in Ireland explained that "poverty has to be seen in terms of the standard of living of the society in question.
An example of this could be a person living in poor conditions or squalid housing in a high crime area of a developed country and struggling to pay their bills every month due to low wages, debt or unemployment.
Elements of a decent standard of living include food, water, housing, education, healthcare, transport, clothing, and other essential needs including provision for unexpected events.Like the poverty line calculation, using a single global monetary calculation for Living Income is problematic when applied worldwide.
In addition, if the data were correct and accurate, it would still not mean serving as an adequate measure of the living standards, the well-being or economic position of a given family or household.
Hence, this can mean that defining poverty is not just a matter of measuring things accurately, but it also necessitates fundamental social judgments, many of which have moral implications.
This value is based on a low pay rate of 60 percent of full-time median earnings, equivalent to a little over £12,000 a year for a 35-hour working week.
[71] Yet, Singapore is not considering establishing an official poverty line, with Minister for Social and Family Development Chan Chun Sing claiming it would fail to represent the magnitude and scope of problems faced by the poor.
[78][76] Women and children (as single mother families) find themselves as a part of low class communities because they are 21.6% more likely to fall into poverty.
[85] There is much dispute over whether upward mobility that brings a child out of poverty may or may not have a significant positive impact on his or her education; inadequate academic habits that form as early as preschool typically are unknown to improve despite changes in socioeconomic status.
[86] According to the Office of Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation the threshold is statistically relevant and can be a solid predictor of people in poverty.
[86] The reasoning for using Federal Poverty Level (FPL) is due to its action for distributive purposes under the direction of Health and Human Services.
[91] Most experts and the public agree that the official poverty line in the United States is substantially lower than the actual cost of basic needs.
