Poverty and Disasters

The Difficult Task of Defining Poverty

Poverty can be considered as both an absolute and a relative phenomenon. Absolute poverty (also known as extreme poverty) amounts to destitution, and indicates the lack of basic necessities. The United Nations (UN) World Summit on Social Development, held in Copenhagen in 1995, defined it 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.” Hence, poverty is about both access to resources and empowerment. Relative poverty signifies a standard of living that falls below a threshold of a combination of basic needs and general economic levels in a particular country. It is usually measured in terms of income inequality, and is a function of the distribution of wealth in a particular country or region.

So many factors contribute to poverty that it is not an easy phenomenon to measure, especially as some of the indicators may be elusive. Hence, it can be exaggerated or understated, sometimes for political reasons. In the light of this, and to produce a worldwide comparison, in 1990, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) began to compile the Human Development Index (HDI), summaries of which are published in its annual Human Development Reports. The index uses life expectancy at birth, adult literacy rate, and per-capita Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to define relative levels of development.

It is assumed, with good reason, that each of these is related to poverty levels. The index is a good measure of the ranking of development and well-being among countries, but in reports by the UNDP, it does not give any insight into the variations in wealth and poverty within individual countries. These can be very large indeed. For example, in Recife, Brazil's fifth-largest metropolis, some parts of the city have HDIs that are high enough to be comparable with Scandinavian countries, while others have HDIs on a level with North Africa. Globally, from 1999 to 2008, nearly 2,000 disasters occurred in countries with a high HDI, but more than 5,000 happened in nations with medium and low HDIs.

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