Critical Situation of Poverty in Pakistan

The Poverty Line is the level of income below which the income of the household or individual is

The Federal Government defines poverty as income that falls below the United States Poverty threshold. (Begun 95). If a person

Dealing with risks such as health problems, loss of crops, loss of livestock, the death of a family member, loss of assets, income and employment is much harder by poor and low-income groups than others. Many poor households engage in activities which are smaller and bringing greater degree of risk and uncertainty and therefore likely scale financial risks and income. Every serious illness, every accident and every natural disaster threatens the existence of the poor and usually leads to more poverty. Thus the vicious cycle of poverty carries on.

Being poor can mean something to one individual compared to another. Whether it is not having clean water to drink or not being able to afford a new laptop. Poverty is very broad, without a single definition.

Poverty, in economic terms, is typically based on a poverty line, which measures the minimum amount of income deemed sufficient for livelihood. Although, poverty can also connotate the deprivation of capability.

Poverty has increased tremendously over the last decade in many countries, developed or less developed. Poverty can be caused by many different factors,

Poverty has been always considered as a dreaded menace in our society, which has widely spread all over the world. The worst category of poverty is Child poverty. It refers to the phenomenon where basic amenities namely food, shelter and clothes of children aged below 18 are deprived. It comprises of various factors such as deprivation of material, spiritual, cultural, social, and emotional resources.

“Research indicates that nearly 40 percent of American between the ages of 25 and 60 will experience at least one year below the poverty line during that period.” (Rank) The word poor is usually dealt with extremes, as in being homeless. Poor are simply people who do not have a lot of money. There are several key factors affecting the poor community this day in age. The majority of the poor cannot afford healthcare. A large group of poor people have extremely bad eating habits. The poor community lives in subpar living accommodations. A person who is poor, is a person who does not have a lot of money, and lives in subpar conditions.

Because of the subjectivity of the terms, poor and poverty, defining “Who is poor?” is a challenge. The challenge lies in who determines the monetary scale for poverty and being poor and what criteria is utilized to create and revise the monetary measuring scale. Another challenge in identifying “Who is poor?” is defining what constitutes basic needs as well as a minimum and maximum criterion for material possessions. A third challenge to identifying “Who is poor?” is examining the levels of poverty and the levels of

The poor is classified when people are living below the poverty line set up by the U.S. government. “The poverty level adjusts for family size, and as of 2009 is $21,834 for a family of two adults and two children” (Brinkerhoff, Ortega, White, & Weitz, 2011). The poor can be all types of ethnic, male and female, big cities to small towns, people with and without jobs to whole families or single

Authors have presented different ways of characterizing poverty and the poor. Some are the major efforts to provide the opportunity for the poor to escape poverty which resonates the principle that the problem of poverty is in a large extent caused by the unequal distribution of the available resources (World Bank Staff, paragraph 4). It was realized that there was a need to come up with a standard figure to stand for the minimum wage which could be applied throughout the nation. The people who lacked minimum income which was defined as the income that satisfactorily met their basic needs were seen as poor. There exists a disparity in the

Saudi Arabia has a poverty rate of 12.7% and China, with the lowest, has a poverty rate of 6.1%. China’s poverty rate seems rather low, but when you do the math, they have about 78 million people who are living below the poverty line, which is a little over eight times the population of the United Arab Emirates. India and Oman have very similar poverty rates and the two highest in this comparison. India has a rate of 29.8% and Oman, with the highest at 32%.

Determinants of poverty are the following: location (rural/urban), household size, low education, gender, high dependency ratio and lack of access to basic utilities such as Electric, water, and trash. The first ever health policy was established in 1990. 49 health initiatives primarily focusing on diseases from the creation of Pakistan in 1947 until 2005. For the first time in 2005 the natural development agenda in Pakistan, provision for safe drinking water. Data revealed that people less than 20 years of age

There are several types of poverty, the most appalling form of poverty is absolute poverty; this type of poverty can be defined as the inability to secure the basic necessities for physical survival (Richmond and Saloojee, 2005, p.35).This is usually measured by comparing income to expenses used to buy goods and services. Organizations usually define absolute poverty in terms of people who live on less than $1.25 a day, international organizations such as the World Bank use these types of monetary figures to measure poverty (Murray, 2011, p.245). Other organizations and economists, politicians and humanitarians think that living on less than two dollars a day is the indicator for living in poverty. It is believed that one billion people live on less than one dollar a day and that three billion people live off of less than two dollars a day (Seabrook, 2007, p.47). Regardless of the amount that is considered to be living in poverty most organizations have this perspective that poverty is about

The situation keeps aggravating despite of several poverty alleviation programs that are implemented every year. The main reason for such failure, apart from the implementation issues, would be the measurement and numbers on which these programs are based. Appropriate measurement is central to analyzing and understanding poverty and its alleviation.