Vulnerability Assessment of Northern Ghana to Climate Variability

This article focuses on statistics and actions (or lack of) in policies related to poverty. The topics that is discussed included who is the most likely to live in poverty and how it is measured. Also discussed in this article are the public policy response and poverty reduction. The articles credibility is high due to the type source which is academic. However, the reliability of the context in the article is questionable because of the lack of a strongly written argument. The statements appear to lack explanation on how they got their evidence,

Over the years living conditions around the world have improved, even in the poorest of countries. Despite this there is still a clear difference between high-income countries and low-income countries. High-income countries are defined as countries with very productive economic systems where the majority of people have fairly high incomes, while low-income countries are defineed as having low economic systems where most people are poor and many do not meet living standards (Macionis et al., 2005, pg 439). Even though poverty can be found all over the world citizens in low-income countries are living in absolute poverty rather than relative poverty

Whether or not a country uses a relative or an absolute poverty measure undoubtedly influences the understandings of poverty of its citizens.

Vulnerability factors considered in this paper will be broken down as follows, micro- individual and familial factors, generation level, meso- environmental factors , discrimination, neighborhood ethnic density, macro-culture, beliefs, socioeconomic status and chrono-

Poverty has become a major problem in the United States of America, affecting up to millions of Americans. Today the poverty level in the U.S is at a whopping sixteen percent. While sixteen percent doesn’t seem like a large number; it represents up to 40 million citizens in the United States. Statistics show that the poverty universe consumes up to 308,196,783 citizens that can be affected by poverty. According to the census Bureau, The poverty universe refers to the people who the Bureau can determine poverty status. However, the United States census Bureau has come up with a ninety percent confidence interval that shows that 48,810,868 to 49,067,044 citizens are affected by poverty. Coincidentally that interval

Economic insecurity is a problem that many Americans face. Families and individuals dealing with economic insecurity are often one disaster away from falling prey to poverty. Such disasters can range from natural disasters to health issues, issues with employment, or marital problems. If one or more of these disasters occurs to individuals living on the verge of poverty it might cause them to fall into poverty. Different individuals and families living on the economic margins are not affected in the same way because the different disasters that they experience influence their lives and perceptions in a unique manner.

There are several categories of vulnerability some of which include physical, economic, and social, and environmental vulnerability. For example, a physical vulnerability could be viewed as brick houses that reside in areas that

Measuring the amount of households currently receiving subsistence allowances and during the second year of an income increase, conduct another measurement of the households receiving government assistance. The reason for my design and method, is because some of the participants may not want to expose themselves to such a research, because they may feel humiliated by their livelihood. The method of the data analysis is to attempt to get at 100 participants from four regions in the country; the Northeast, Southeast, Midwest and West Coast. With the collected data from these regions, the questions can be answered though the responses. The responses can contribute to theory by providing evidence that increase in the minimum works or does not

2. This data is a list of the percent of persons living in poverty in each of the 50 US states in 1997.

In the article “Poor Statistics” (Eberstadt, 2009, p. 26), it revealed how Washington is lacking the statistical tools to effectively measure material hardships in America. Also, it tells how the official poverty rate indicator is outdated and incapable of providing the accurate poverty information. They have been using this method for calculation the poverty rate since 1965 from the reported annual income of each family. The poverty threshold is the budget based on household size and composition that will be used and adjust the inflation rate. However, when this is finally determined, it will determine the percentage of the population that is counted officially poor. In 1973, America’s poverty rate was 11.1%. In 2006, it was 12.3%. The official poverty rate measures income not consumption. According to the

economic issues of a place where poverty pervades a third of the population is posed and 1

This is a greater concern in world as sectors such as Africa, where poverty has roughly doubled in recent years. Consequently, many of the extreme poverty rates where based on a $1.25 purchasing power a day cut off. If this number is adjusted in 2005 to just $2.00 a day the rate of people living in extreme poverty jumps to 51% (David Moss, 2011). These numbers show that billions of people are unable provide themselves with basics like food, clothing, or shelter. This is a serious problem as these are people who have potential are being left in poverty that kills. At the very least income inequality leaves people with basic necessities with a chance to

The social vulnerability the country faces is the lack human capital because of the casualties and the underdeveloped education system. The reduced education also contributes to the national poverty level.

Data obtained by assessing social vulnerability must be implemented within each phase of the emergency management process; mitigation, response, and recovery. First, to effectively respond and recover from incidents emergency management agencies must concentrate on the mitigation phase to prevent incidents from happening in the first place. This is achieved through a thorough hazard/vulnerability analysis (HVA). This type of analysis assesses the risk of physical, economic, and social vulnerability within all communities of a given jurisdiction (Lindell et al., 2006, p. 165). Additionally, the basis of the HVA allows emergency managers to effectively plan for disaster by creating pre-planned responses to disasters (rather than improvised response) and staging resources to locations with the highest probability of risk; ultimately contributing to the mitigation and response phases.

As the Marxist approach puts it, “underlying states of human marginalisation are conceived as the principle cause of disaster.” (Pelling, 2001, p. 179). This resource exclusion to particular categories of people within society creates their vulnerability to risk, and in turn disaster. McLaughlin and Dietz (2007) suggest there are three dimensions that make up vulnerability including exposure, sensitivity and resilience. An example displaying the vulnerability of lower classed social categories is in North Bihar, India, where floods have been managed through engineering works to create embankments. While the Government appears to be reducing the hazard, this has increased the vulnerability of the local people. Soil fertility has decreased reducing agricultural success, dangerous flash floods are occurring due to embankment walls collapsing and communities have settled on apparently safe embankments and are now highly exposed (Pelling, 2001). The natural flood hazard was dangerous, but these works by society have created a natural disaster (Pelling, 2001). Power inequalities have created this disastrous situation where lower classes are at high exposure to floods due to profit hungry management bodies. This technological approach is clearly failing but the Government and other managing groups make large profits off flood engineering works and have the power to decide how to control the issue (Pelling, 2001). This has resulted in creating