Understanding Poverty

Devralin Talastas Lagos

Basic Needs and Poverty

How do we identify and

measure poverty?
 Daily minimum wage (2016) –
P481
 Daily cost of living (Family of 4) in

2016 – P1,096
Analyzing the causes of
poverty
Source: Burkey, S. 1993. People First. p. 3
1. Poverty as pathology
 Individualistic
 Blaming the poor for being poor
 Poverty can be seen as the net result of an

individual’s poor choices

Pathologizing
 Persuading people to accept their poverty as a
consequence of their own inadequacies rather
than a consequence of power relations and
structural discrimination, at the same time as
convincing the rest of society that their poverty is
a result of personal irresponsibility

 False consciousness- the way that subordinated

groups are persuaded to accept inequalities by
pathologizing their subordination
(Ledwith 2015)
 Do rich and poor people have the same
options and opportunities?
 How do these options and opportunities

contribute to life outcomes?

White Boy Privilege
'Dear women, I’m sorry,' Dear black people, I’m sorry. Dear Asian-
Americans, dear Native Americans, dear immigrants who come here
seeking a better life, I’m sorry.
'Dear everyone who isn’t a middle or upper class white boy, I’m
sorry. I have started life on the top of the ladder while you were born
on the first rung.
'I say now that I would change places with you in an instant, but if
given the opportunity, would I? Probably not.‘
'I love it because I can worry about what kind of food is on my plate
instead of whether or not there will be food on my plate. I love it
because when I see a police officer I see someone who is on my side.
'To be honest, I’m scared of what it would be like if I wasn’t on the top
rung. If the tables were turned and I didn’t have my white boy
privilege safety blankie to protect me. 
Read more:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-3685162/Dear-isn-t-middle-upper-class-white-boy-Teen-recites-poem-brutal-r
eality-white-boy-privilege-furiously-calling-ways-benefits-women-minorities.html#ixzz4IpPqxcDB

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2. Bureaucratic Stifling of Development

 Governments are saddled with over-centralization

leading to decisions and programmes which are
detrimental to the real interests of the people
 Programs from the top-down either never reach the
poor or make their situation worse
 Officials who are corrupt, their actions for personal
gain
Bello’s Anti-Development State
 The Philippines is dominated by a competitive
elite who oppose any significant attempts to
address the country's huge social
inequalities.
 Debt servicing
 Neoliberal policies
Structural Adjustment Policies (SAPs)
 have been imposed by the IMF-WB to ensure
debt repayment and economic restructuring.
 Has required poor countries to reduce

spending on things like health, education and

development
 debt repayment and other economic policies

have been made the priority.

 the IMF and World Bank have demanded that

poor nations lower the standard of living of

their people.
3. Vulnerability and Poverty
Vulnerability is referred to as the sources of
people’s low level of capacity to face, cope
and recover in the event of natural hazards.

 Fragile environments
 Fragile local economies
 Vulnerable societies
 Low level of entitlements
 Other physical/material vulnerabilities
 Social/organizational vulnerabilities
 Motivational/attitudinal vulnerabilities

(Blaikie et al 1994- ‘Pressure and Release Model’;

Watts and Bohle 1993-‘Space of Vulnerability’;
Anderson and Woodrow 1989 in Gaillard et al
2006)
4. Amartya Sen’s Concept of
‘Unfreedoms’
 The freedom approach describes processes of
development as a quest by individuals for
ever expanding freedoms.
 Economic criteria for evaluating development,

are only means to expand freedom and not as

ends.
 The goal of development becomes the pursuit

of enabling ever-expanding freedoms to be

gained and this becomes the overarching
objective of human development.
Amartya Sen’s Concept of
‘Unfreedoms’
The constraints to ever expanding freedoms are
termed “un-freedoms”
 barriers that could exist in economic, social or

political realms of society.

 poverty, malnutrition, poor sanitation, tyranny,

poor economic opportunities, social deprivations,

poor public facilities, intolerance, communalisation,
ethnic centricity, repressive state apparatuses, lack
of education, absence of health care, lack of
security, corruption can all be termed un-freedoms.
 They are all regarded equally relevant.
Amartya Sen’s Concept of
‘Unfreedoms’
 to remove un-freedoms, vital roles are played
by markets, market related organisations,
governments, local authorities, political
parties, civic institutions, educational
facilities, media
 opportunities for free speech and public

debate, social norms and values about

childcare, gender issues as well as the
treatment of the environment.
5. Dependency of Third World
countries
 Rich countries of the global north set the terms
of the economy (interest rates, trade terms,
tariffs, etc.) through their economic power,
draining surpluses produced in poor countries
 The global south countries are dependent on
developed countries for capital, technology and
markets
 The world has been polarized into powerful
‘haves’ and the poor and dependent ‘have-
nots’
6. Poverty as problems in relationships:
Exploitation of the poor

 What are manifestations of the exploitation of

the poor?
Exploitation
 the action or fact of treating someone unfairly
in order to benefit from their work (Oxford
dictionaries)
 the fact of making use of a situation to gain
unfair advantage for oneself (Oxford dictionaries)

 the forced appropriation of the unpaid labor

of workers (Marxist theory)
Sugarcane workers in Hacienda Luisita
Exploitation of the poor
 The cause of poverty lie in the domination of
poor people and their resultant dependence
on powerful elites in the form of landowners,
capitalists, merchants, moneylenders, corrupt
officials and sometime religious leaders
Inferiority
 discrimination in society subordinates people
in order to dominate them, a process that
robs people of their dignity, confidence and
self-belief because they see privileged people
as superior
Taken-for-granted reality
 Extra-ordinary contradictions that get lived
out in the ordinariness of everyday life with
such familiarity that they are not noticed as
injustices and people accept the unacceptable
(Ledwith 2015)
Structural Discrimination
 Oppression as experienced in everyday lives
is not random and personal, but
systematically structured into society in
relations of ‘domination’ and ‘subordination’
Analyzing poverty
 The danger is on partiality: tend to
concentrate on few explanations and actions
and ignore the others
 Recognize multiple causations
 Academics, practitioners and the community

must join in analyzing the community’s

situation
 Identify and differentiate symptoms vs. the

roots (economic roots, political roots,

cultural roots of poverty)