POVERTY • Material lack or want

• Capability deprivation
Poverty, the state of one who lacks a usual or socially
• Multidimensional deprivation
acceptable amount of money or material possessions.
Poverty is said to exist when people lack the means to
satisfy their basic needs

UNITED NATIONS:

Poverty entails more than the lack of income and

productive resources to ensure sustainable livelihoods.
Its manifestations include hunger and malnutrition,
limited access to education and other basic services,
social discrimination and exclusion, as well as the lack of
participation in decision-making.

United Nations Manifestation

Poverty is a lack of income and productive resources

sufficient to ensure sustainable livelihoods; hunger and ABSOLUTE POVERTY
malnutrition; ill health; limited or lack of access to
Absolute poverty is a state in which a person cannot
education and other basic services; increased morbidity
meet their most basic needs. This means that if you are
and mortality from illness; homelessness and inadequate
in absolute poverty, you are not able to get the minimum
housing; unsafe environments; and social discrimination
amount of food, clothing, and shelter that you need to
and exclusion. It is also characterized by a lack of
survive.
participation in decision-making and in civil, social and
cultural life.” RELATIVE POVERTY

• Historically, POVERTY has been defined in monetary
terms, using income or consumption levels. In order
to be able to compare poverty levels across countries
and over time, those that live below a given level of
income called the poverty line (Ravallion, 2010) are
classified as poor.
• Over the last decades, this economic definition of
poverty has been complemented by other
approaches to conceptualise poverty: basic needs
approach, capabilities approach, human
development approach and multidimensional
poverty approach (Handley et al., 2009).
CHAMBERS (2006)
A leading scholar on poverty and development, clusters
poverty definitions into four groups:
• Income poverty
Relative poverty refers to a situation in which your
income falls below a certain percentage of the national
median income.
EXTREME POVERTY
That number also includes extreme poverty that is
defined by the UN as “a condition characterized by
severe deprivation of basic human needs, including food,
safe drinking water, sanitation facilities, health, shelter,
education and information. It depends not only on
income but also on access to services.”
POVERTY IN THE WORLD
UNITED NATIONS:
✓ 736 million – people still live in extreme poverty
✓ 10 percent – of the world’s population live in
extreme poverty, down from 36% in 1990.

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✓ 1.3 billion – people live in multidimensional poverty.
✓ 50 percent – of people living in poverty are under 18.
✓ 1 in 10 – individual is extremely poor.
DATA FROM WORLD BANK
THE WORLD’S POOREST COUNTRY
Burundi is the world’s poorest country followed by
Central African Republic, DR Congo, South Sudan and
Somalia as the poorest. The richest countries are
Luxembourg, Singapore, Ireland, Qatar and Switzerland.
• 19 of the 20 poorest countries are all located in
Africa. The first non-African country on the list is
Afghanistan, ranked 15th.
ASEAN
➢ Among ASEAN countries considered, Myanmar has
the highest share of population living below the
national poverty line in the ASEAN region, with 24.8
percent of the population doing so in 2017. As of
2021, Indonesia had 10.1 percent of its population
living beneath the poverty line
➢ The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic
pushed 4.7 million people in Southeast Asia into
extreme poverty in 2021, as 9.3 million jobs
disappeared, compared with a baseline no-COVID
scenario, according to a new Asian Development
Bank (ADB) report presented at the Southeast Asia
Development Symposium (SEADS).
POVERTY IN THE PHILIPPINES
• In the Philippines 6.1% of the population live on less
than $1.90 per day, 26% live on less than $3.20 per
day and 55.1% live on less than $5.50 per day (World
Bank Data)
• The DSWD's 'Listahanan 3' survey finds out that
about 30 million Filipinos are poor.
• There are over 5.6 million Filipino families living in
poverty as of 2022, according to findings of
the Listahanan 3 survey released by the Department
of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD).
• In individual terms, two out of five Filipinos are poor,
or at least 30 million Filipinos are considered poor.
Moreover five out of 10, or half of all indigenous
peoples households, are poor. This number is about
27% of the 111 million total Philippine population
• The Rural Poverty Portal reports that half of the
poor in the Philippines live in rural areas. The
poorest of the poor are the indigenous, landless
laborers, fishermen, small farmers, mountain folk
and women. Deforestation, depleted fisheries, and
unproductive farmland are major problems for these
people.
• The average family income needed to meet the
minimum basic food and non-food needs of a family
with five members in 2021 was estimated at PhP
12,030 per month. This amount is also called as the
poverty threshold, which was higher by 11.8 percent
from the estimated PhP10,756 monthly poverty
threshold for a five member family in 2018. On the
other hand, the average family income needed to
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 meet the minimum basic food needs of a five-
member family in 2021 was placed at PhP 8,379 per
month, an amount higher than the food threshold in
2018 of about PhP 7,553. (Source.:psa.gov.ph)
• At the regional level, the
regions with the lowest
poverty incidence among
families in 2021 were
National Capital Region
(NCR), Cordillera
Administrative Region
(CAR), Region III, and
Region IV-A.
• The Autonomous Region
in Muslim Mindanao
(ARMM) consistently
figured with the highest
poverty incidence among families at 29.8 percent in
2021. Moreover, more than half of the regions
posted significant changes in their incidences from
2018 to 2021. The regions with significant increases
were NCR, MIMAROPA, and Regions I, III, IV-A, VI, VII,
and X. On the other hand, significant decreases were
observed in CAR, Region XI, and ARMM/BARMM.
• At the provincial level, the provinces which belonged
to the group with the least poverty incidence among
families in 2015, 2018 and 2021 were Bataan,
Batanes, Benguet, Bulacan, Capiz, Cavite, Guimaras,
Ilocos Norte, Laguna, Pampanga, and Rizal. The
provinces of La Union, Siquijor, and Tarlac were
included in the least poor cluster since 2018.
Meanwhile, the other provinces that joined this
roster of least poor cluster in 2021 were: Apayao,
Batangas, Cagayan, Davao del Norte, Davao del Sur,
Ifugao, Kalinga, Lanao del Sur, Palawan, and Quirino
• Sulu was consistently included in the cluster with
relatively high poverty incidence among families in
2015, 2018 and 2021. Basilan was in the poorest
cluster in 2018 and 2021, while the new entrants in
2021 were Agusan del Sur, Davao Occidental,
Sarangani, and Zamboanga del Norte.
LACK OF GOOD JOBS/JOB GROWTH
• This is the first reason a lot of people think about.
When you don’t have a good job, you aren’t getting
a good income. In many countries, traditional jobs
like farming are disappearing.
LACK OF GOOD EDUCATION
Poverty is a cycle and without education, people aren’t
able to better their situations. According to UNESCO,
over 170 million people could be free of extreme poverty
if they only had basic reading skills. However, in many
areas of the world, people aren’t getting educated. The
reasons vary. Often times, families need kids to work,
there aren’t schools close by, or girls aren’t being
educated because of sexism and discrimination.
WARFARE/CONFLICT
Conflict has a huge impact on poverty. In times of war,
everything stops. Productivity suffers as well as a
country’s GDP. It’s very difficult to get things going again
as foreign businesses and countries won’t want to invest.
For families and individuals, war and conflict can make it
impossible to stay in one place. It’s also very common for
women to become the primary breadwinners, and they
deal with many barriers like sexual violence and
discrimination.
WEATHER/CLIMATE CHANGE
According to the World Bank, climate change has the
power to impoverish 100 million people in the next
decade or so. We know climate change causes drought,
floods, and severe storms, and that can take down
successful countries while pulling poor ones down even
further. Recovering is extremely difficult, as well,
especially for agricultural communities where they
barely have enough to feed themselves, let alone
prepare for the next harvest year.
SOCIAL INJUSTICE
Whether it’s gender discrimination, racism, or other
forms of social injustice, poverty follows. People who are
victims of social injustice struggle with getting a good
education, the right job opportunities, and access to
resources that can lift them out of poverty.
LACK OF INFRASTRUCTURE
Infrastructure includes roads, bridges, the internet,
public transport, and more. When a community or
families are isolated, they have to spend a lot of money,
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time, and energy getting to places. Without good roads,
traveling takes forever. Infrastructure connects people
to the services and resources they need to better their
financial and life situation, and without it, things don’t
get better.
LACK OF GOOD HEALTHCARE
People who are poor are more likely to suffer from bad
health, and those with bad health are more likely to be
poor. This is because healthcare is often too expensive or
inaccessible to those who need it. Without money for
medicine and treatment, the poor have to make really
tough decisions, and usually essentials like food take
priority.
HIGH COSTS
The last root of poverty is simple: stuff costs too much.
Even the basics can be too expensive. According to stats
from the World Food Programme, the poorest
households in the world are spending 60-80% of their
incomes on food. Food prices are also very unpredictable
in certain areas, so when they rise, the poor have to keep
cutting out other essentials. Housing is another essential
that is rising. Global house markets have been climbing,
according to the International Monetary Fund.
LACK OF GOVERNMENT SUPPORT/
CORRUPTION
The government needs to be involved. However, many
governments are either unable or unwilling to serve the
poor. Social welfare programs, redirecting funds away
from those who need it, failing to build good
infrastructure, or actively persecuting the population. If
a government fails to meet the needs of the poor, the
poor will most likely stay that way.
ACTION PLAN
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), also known
as the Global Goals, were adopted by the United Nations
in 2015 as a universal call to action to end poverty,
protect the planet, and ensure that by 2030 all people
enjoy peace and prosperity.
SDG GOAL 1: NO POVERTY
• By 2030, reduce at least by half the proportion of
men, women and children of all ages living in poverty
in all its dimensions according to national definitions
• Implement nationally appropriate social protection
systems and measures for all, including floors, and by
2030 achieve substantial coverage of the poor and
the vulnerable
• By 2030, build the resilience of the poor and those in
vulnerable situations and reduce their exposure and
vulnerability to climate-related extreme events and
other economic, social and environmental shocks
and disasters
• Ensure significant mobilization of resources from a
variety of sources, including through enhanced
development cooperation, in order to provide
adequate and predictable means for developing
countries, in particular least developed countries, to
implement programmes and policies to end poverty
in all its dimensions.
• Create sound policy frameworks at the national,
regional and international levels, based on pro-poor
and gender-sensitive development strategies, to
support accelerated investment in poverty
eradication actions
ACTION PLAN
The World Bank on September 30, 2020 approved a
$600-million loan to cushion the coronavirus pandemic’s
impact on poor Filipino households.
The latest loan support would help fund the Philippines’
conditional cash transfer program, known as the
Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program or 4Ps.
The amount would also be used to support
the Department of Social Welfare and Development’s
programs to go digital and hasten cash transfers to poor
households
“POVERTY IS THE WORST FORM OF VIOLENCE”
- Mahatma Gandhi