POVERTY

The elimination of world poverty, along with such concerns as the protection of the biosphere and the maintenance of peace, is generally counted among the global challenges facing humankind in the twenty-first century. In the mainstream account, poverty is the state of individuals who lack sufficient money or material possessions required for a dignified life. It usually implies living under the constant threat of starvation, sickness, and social exclusion. Global poverty is intolerable for societies oriented toward the achievement of material affluence and freedom; its eradication is therefore an ethical imperative for world economic policy. The role of science and technology, however, is a contested terrain; whether they are part of the problem or the solution depends on how poverty is understood and acted upon.

Disputed Definitions

Global poverty, understood as a category that comprises nations with low income, is a statistical construct. It is based on the comparison of aggregate national income figures, an operation that was first performed in the early 1940s. As societies are ranked according to a single quantitative scale, each nation is assigned a position in the hierarchy of income, which, below a certain poverty line, may be classified as poor. Likewise, global poverty as a category for classifying households worldwide is based on the ranking of household incomes, which, below a certain poverty line (for example, one or two dollars a day) are defined as poor. In both cases, the multidimensional diversity of living conditions on the globe is thus reduced to a unidimensional difference between income levels. Such a model of the world, while providing order and orientation, rests on a belief in the primacy of economic success over any other civilizational achievement. It had emerged during the rise of national economies in Europe and the United States; its projection upon the rest of the world triggered the rise of the development epoch after World War II (Sachs 1992).

Since the 1970s, however, the income definition of poverty has been recurrently contested, reflecting profound disagreements about the socially good and desirable. On a first level, measurements of objective poverty disregard subjective poverty. Yet how people perceive themselves is an important dimension of poverty. Calling people poor who do not think of themselves in this way may be misleading, offensive, or both.

On a second level, indicators that focus on absolute income fail to account for the relative nature of poverty, the experience of which varies according to context. As a general standard of living rises, a given amount of income may buy less well-being, because consumption items, such as automobiles, that were once viewed as luxuries may have become necessities, or because activities, such as child care, which were once available free of charge, may have come to involve expenditures. So the modernization of poverty tends to offset the income gains lifting people above the poverty line.

On a third level, income indicators ignore the importance of nonmarket goods and services for well-being. Two households that are equally poor in monetary terms may have quite different levels of well-being depending on access to community networks, environmental assets, and public services. In other words, common wealth is an important source of well-being; neglecting it renders any statement about poverty contestable.

Finally, on a fourth level, because income indicators are usually based on household measurements, they ignore gender inequality within households. But income is seldom equally distributed among family members; increases in household income tend to favor men over women.

Given the limitations of income as a measurement of poverty, social indicators have been put forth to capture information about a broader range of living conditions (Kanbur and Squire 2001). This approach, which has been particularly promoted by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), views income merely as an instrument for achieving desired outcomes. Money matters, but not alone; well-being may be only loosely correlated with income. In this perspective, the poor are seen as deprived of basic capabilities, such as education, health care, longevity, economic opportunities, and legal entitlements, that would permit them to lead the kind of life they value (Sen 1999). How capabilities are shaped depends only partly on household income; variables of age, gender, availability of public goods, market opportunities, and legal security may be equally important.

UNDP's human poverty index, for instance, concentrates on three aspects of human deprivation: longevity, literacy, and living standard. Longevity is measured by premature deaths, literacy by the percentage of adults who are literate, and living standard by the percentage of the population with access to health services and safe water, and the percentage of malnourished children. As it turns out, national income is not necessarily correlated to quality of life. For example, despite their rather low levels of income, the people of China, Sri Lanka, or Kerala, India, enjoy enormously higher levels of life expectancy than do much richer populations of Gabon, Brazil, Namibia, or, for that matter, African Americans in the United States (Sen 1999).

Furthermore, given the limitations of quantitative measurements in general, efforts have been made to represent conditions of poverty through the voices of the poor themselves, using participatory and qualitative research methods (Narayan et al. 2000). How do poor people view poverty and well-being? Again, the picture of poverty shifts; many poor are not primarily concerned about lack of money or services, but lack of security and political voice. Poverty is associated with a state of vulnerability, both as precariousness in the economic sense and as powerlessness in the political sense. Having secure livelihoods is perceived as more important than maximizing income, just as having voice and influence is seen as more relevant than the delivery of services. Such accounts of lived poverty suggest conceptual implications: Poverty results from a lack of power rather than lack of income. It is the outcome of social relationships that are structured in a way in which benefits accrue consistently to one group and costs to another. As aspirations for wealth and power are acted out in society, some groups of people are unable to gain access to life-supporting assets, be they productive, environmental, or cultural, whereas others succeed in securing conditions for stable, productive lives. Poverty can thus be defined as relative powerlessness; its mitigation calls for basic-rights rather than basic-needs strategies. Poverty, in the early twenty-first century, has turned from an issue of economic growth into an issue of human rights.

Contentious Strategies and the Relation to Science and Technology

It is commonplace to call for poverty alleviation, but opinions divide sharply as to how and by whom. Looking back at decades of conflict, a growth-based perspective may be distinguished from a people-based perspective. In the first perspective, poverty alleviation is seen as the collateral benefit of aggregate economic growth, spurred by world market integration and accompanied by redistributional policies. Investors, transnational companies, and planners figure highly as agents of development. In the second perspective, overcoming poverty calls for stronger rights of the poor to land, capital, culture, and participation. The poor themselves are seen as actors capable of shaping their lives, yet constrained by a lack of entitlements and political leverage.

Both perspectives differ also in terms of time and direction. Growth strategies trust in the trickle-down effect, which is expected to eventually spread the benefits of growth throughout society down to the poorest strata. The social and environmental costs of growth in the present are regarded as the price for benefits in the future. In contrast, in the people-based perspective, growth often fails to trickle down; consequently, there is no point in sacrificing human lives and natural resources in the present for speculative gains in the future. Instead, it is regarded as crucial to empower the poor for a dignified life here and now.

As to the direction of poverty alleviation, the growth perspective aims for higher purchasing power, without taking into account nonmonetary sources of well-being. It therefore tends to confuse frugality and destitution, lumping both together under the rubric of poverty (Rahnema 2003). A people-based perspective, however, considers communities that are poor in money capital, yet rich in natural and social capital, as a base of livelihood to build on. But as dams displaced people or cash crops replaced subsistence crops, livelihood economies have time and again been squashed in favor of the money economy. As a consequence, growth, in the name of poverty eradication, has often turned frugality into wealth for a few and destitution for many.

Similar lines of conflict pervade the use of science and technology in poverty alleviation. In a growth perspective, technology appears as crucial factor for raising the productivity of national economies, in particular through infrastructure investments in areas such as transportation, energy, and communications. Predominantly science-based, capital-intensive, and centrally controlled technological systems are expected to deliver growth and are viewed as the royal road to reducing poverty (ADB/OECD 2002).

Any technology, however, has an impact on the structure of social relationships; it allows some to capture the benefits and condemns others to carry the costs. To the extent that dams or highways, hybrid seeds or water supply systems, boost opportunities for the well-off and powerful while shifting additional burdens onto the poor and powerless, technologies have helped deepen poverty. Against this background, people-based strategies attempt to disseminate human-scale technologies that are designed to enhance the power of the weak (ITDG ET.AL 2003). Low-input agriculture, micro-power systems, rainwater collection, and hand-driven radios are examples of alternative technologies that are comparatively low in investment costs, are operated decentrally, and empower the poor in their daily activities. Whether or not technology is up to the ethical challenge of relieving the burden of poverty thus depends in the last instance on the degree of agency they give to the poor. Insofar as technologies enable the poor to broaden their scope of action at low financial, environmental and social cost, they may serve as stepping stones out of powerlessness.

WOLFGANG SACHS

SEE ALSO Development Ethics;Digital Divide;Green Revolution.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Asian Development Bank, and Development Centre of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (ADB/OECD). (2002). Technology and Poverty Reduction in Asia and the Pacific. Paris: Author.

Intermediate Technology and Development Group (ITDG)/UNESCO/Television Trust for the Environment. (2003). VHS and booklet, Small Is Working: Technology for Poverty Reduction. London: Author.

Kanbur, Ravi, and Lyn Squire. (2001). "The Evolution of Thinking about Poverty: Exploring the Interactions." In Frontiers of Development Economics: The Future in Perspective, ed. Gerald M. Meier and Joseph E. Stiglitz. New York: Oxford University Press.

Narayan, Deepa; Robert Chambers; Meera K. Shah; and Patti Petesch. (2000). Voices of the Poor, Vol. 2: Crying Out for Change. New York: Oxford University Press.

Rahnema, Majid. (2003). Quand la misère chasse la pauvreté [When misery drives out poverty]. Paris: Fayard/Actes Sud.

Sachs, Wolfgang, ed. (1992). The Development Dictionary. London: Zed.

Sen, Amartya. (1999). Development as Freedom. New York: Knopf.