WORLD POVERTY Introduction THE THREE VOLUMES of the Encyclopedia of World experience was more helpful for me in drawing the fu- Poverty contain some 800 original, previously unpub- ture path of my professional career than it was for the lished articles written by over 125 independent or affil- villagers. At the ages of 16 and 17, we just did not have iated scholars. This encyclopedia is intended for the use enough physical power, or the necessary equipment, to as an authoritative and rigorous source on poverty and complete our projects. related issues. It provides extensive and current infor- It is hard to visualize poverty and the living condi- mation, and insight into the contemporary debate on tions of the poor without personal exposure. Without poverty. It can also be used as a reference to other that encounter, poverty mostly remains a statistic that sources through its cross-references and bibliographies. we are lucky not to be part of, and dealing with the cor- It is a timely project; the year 2005 is marked by a decla- responding human condition is then usually left to ration of concern with poverty by world leaders at the those with the willingness and imagination to think G-8 summit and at the World Economic Forum. In a about it. Poverty is anything but a statistic, and not all time when public attention is directed to poverty, the aspects of it are quantifiable. As the 1998 Nobel Prize Encyclopedia of World Poverty can be an indispensable Laureate in Economics Amartya Sen has eloquently source for all students of poverty. elaborated, poverty is more than just lack of income, Personally, my first encounter with poverty was even though this is an important factor. during a summer break in the 1960s as a high-school Poverty is deprivation from basic capabilities, student in Turkey, in a village in mid-Anatolia. A group rights, and freedoms that provide individuals the neces- of us had volunteered to go to the village to build a sary choices and opportunities they need to lead a life sewer system and repair the run-down school building. they value. Income is a necessary part of life, but alone There was no water, no electricity, no gas, no teachers, it is not sufficient. Unless it is coupled with social, po- and no doctors. The local economy at best could be de- litical, and economic freedoms, it does not suffice to en- scribed as a non-monetized village barter economy hance individual capabilities. In this respect, income is without much even to barter. Most villagers worked for not an end itself but just one of the means to healthy a bare minimum as sharecroppers. Unfortunately the life, to education, and to participation in the surround- vii viii Introduction ing political, cultural, and economic life. It is important lated deaths significantly. Tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS to take poverty out of the narrow context of income. are other diseases with a high death toll. In 2001, tuber- Otherwise poverty would be an issue only in develop- culosis claimed 196 lives per 100,000 people in Niger. ing countries and not in affluent, industrial countries, The HIV prevalence estimate runs a high range, 0.7-2.3 where even many of the poor have an income higher percent of the 15-49 age group. The probability at birth than most in the world. of not surviving to age 40 is 39 percent. In this measure, I do not mean to say that statistics related to Niger compares favorably to Lesotho, where the proba- poverty do not matter. They help us to frame the mag- bility of not surviving is 68.1 percent. Just these few sta- nitude of the problem. According to the latest official tistics are enough to give an idea about the level of data, about 1.2 billion people currently live in extreme destitution in these countries. poverty, defined as living on less than $1 a day at Pur- The poor in affluent societies face similar measures chasing Power Parity (PPP). If we raise the threshold in- of destitution, even though its magnitude is signifi- come to $2 a day (PPP), the number rises to 2.5 billion. cantly less. The United States, the highest per capita in- Of course, the geographical distribution of poverty is come country in the world, is ranked 17th according to not even. Over one billion of the extreme poor live in the Human Poverty Index. Over 13 percent of the pop- South Asia (488 million or 42 percent), in Sub-Saharan ulation lives below the poverty income threshold of Africa (315 million or 27 percent), and in East Asia and $11 a day, a threshold more than 10 times that of devel- the Pacific (279 million or 24 percent). The incidence of oping countries. The under-five and overall child mor- extreme poverty differs among countries. In Ethiopia tality rates are 8 and 7 percent, respectively. The and in Uganda, plagued by internal strife, it is 82 per- maternal mortality ratio is 12 percent. About 10 per- cent; in oil-rich Nigeria, it is 70.2 percent; while in Tan- cent of one-year-olds are not immunized against zania, Kenya, and Senegal, the corresponding figure is measles. The probability at birth of not surviving to age significantly less, 20, 23, and 26 percent respectively. 60 is 12.6 percent. Over 20 percent of the age group 16- The discouraging aspect of the overall poverty data 65 lack functional literacy. The data clearly reflect the is that in the 1990s, which is promoted as an era of sus- fact that a certain low-income group is not sharing the tained economic growth and prosperity, income economic growth and the affluence enjoyed by most in poverty increased in 37 of the 67 countries for which the United States. These findings can easily be extended longitudinal data is available. These countries are to other industrial countries as well. mostly located in Central and Eastern Europe. In other The poor in developing and industrial countries countries, mostly in East and Southern Asia and few in share similar characteristics. Unmistakably, women, Latin America (for instance Brazil and Chile), however, children, the elderly, racial and ethnic minorities, those poverty has significantly decreased. At this juncture, it in rural areas, urban unemployed and slum-dwellers is worth mentioning that official poverty rates based on make up the bulk of the poor. They constitute a socially threshold income measures tend to underestimate the and economically vulnerable group subject to Sen’s actual extent of poverty. Is there any reason to believe “unfreedoms” that worsen their destitution by limiting that a person who makes $1.10 a day (PPP) is not living their opportunities to break through the walls of in poverty? poverty surrounding them. An additional complication In spite of its shortcomings, income poverty gives of this gender, age, and race composition is that these an idea about the extent of the destitution of the poor. are those groups with the least potential to access mar- Malnutrition, hunger and starvation; HIV/AIDS, tuber- kets and therefore their poverty becomes a long-term culosis, malaria, and other life-threatening diseases; phenomenon. high child and maternal mortality, high illiteracy, and In the Encyclopedia of World Poverty, 191 country en- lack of basic needs are all concentrated in poverty- tries provide current vital statistics on poverty—on its stricken countries. In Niger in sub-Saharan Africa, one composition and characteristics, on mortality, disease, of the poorest countries in the world if not the poorest, literacy and illiteracy. These articles also incorporate in- 36 percent of the population is undernourished, the formation on geographic, political, social, cultural, and under-five mortality rate per 1,000 live births is 265, the other economic characteristics of each country. Each maternal mortality ratio per 100,000 live births is 1,100, country’s ranking according to the Human Develop- and about 2,000 children per 100,000 die because of ment Index and the Human Poverty Index, whenever malaria. Only one percent of children benefit from the available, is listed as well. The Human Development insecticide-treated bed nets that could cut malaria-re- Index combines life expectancy, education, and ad- Introduction ix justed income into an indicator of overall human devel- tential suspect contributing a fair share. Hence, the en- opment. The content of the Human Poverty Index de- tries emphasize the importance of all economic, social, pends on whether it is being used for developing or for and political aspects of poverty. affluent industrial countries. For the former group, it Vulnerability, insecurity, powerlessness, social ex- combines life expectancy, education, nutrition, and ac- clusion and disqualification, and stigmatization are cess to water and health services. For the latter group, among the more than two-dozen articles in the encyclo- the access to water and health is replaced by long-term pedia on the potential effects of poverty. Some of these unemployment. Even though these are by no means effects are quantifiable but some are not. To some de- perfect or comprehensive indices, they attempt to over- gree we can measure the crime rate and environmental come the difficulty of quantifying human development degradation associated with poverty, but it is almost im- and poverty, both of which do not lend themselves eas- possible to measure the stigmatization and powerless- ily to quantification. There are 78 entries in the encyclo- ness a poor person feels. We can somehow measure the pedia dealing with the various definitions and output loss associated with poverty, and the cost of wel- measurement techniques of poverty.