Deprivation

DEPRIVATION REFERS TO the effects that extreme poverty has upon the poor. It creates numerous difficulties for meeting the conditions of life. Numerous synonyms refer to the deprivations experienced by the poor. Some of these synonyms are privations, dispossessed, deprived, and wanting.

These terms point to the insight that poverty is not just the lack of means to satisfy needs and wants, it also robs people physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually, and socially. Social scientists have developed a deprivation [Page 255]index to isolate the factors that mark a person in poverty. The factors of the deprivation index include the poverty rate, educational attainment, unemployment rates, percentage of population who are speakers of a minority language, violent crime rate, and per capita income.

In Denmark, the Copenhagen Declaration described a condition of absolute poverty as one that is characterized by severe deprivation of basic human needs. The human needs, the omission of which created the deprivation, include food, safe drinking water, sanitation facilities, healthcare, shelter, education, and access to information.

The World Bank has described deprivation as “extreme poverty.” It defines this as being compelled to live on less than $1 per day. Living on less than $2 per day is mere “poverty.” These standards of income or resources available for living show, in terms of demographic statistics and charts, that a fifth of the world's people live in extreme poverty and at least half were poor in 2004. These statistics show that deprivation, that is, living without food, safe drinking water, sanitation facilities, healthcare, shelter, education, informational resources, and more, is caused by a number of factors.

The causes of deprivation include a natural lack of resources, social disorder, and political failure. People living in the Sahara or other harsh environmental conditions are compelled to survive with few resources available for meeting needs. The lack of safe drinking water can be due to arid conditions, but it can also be due to a lack of technology or resources for digging wells or for impounding water in the wet season for use in the dry season.

Sometimes the lack of water or food or other necessities is due to social conditions. People trapped in poverty can become so physically exhausted that they lack the energy for envisioning improvements in their situation. Not only are individuals affected, but whole societies may see no way to improve life. The need to protect the few resources available may give rise to social attitudes hostile to new methods or technologies. These are perceived as very risky. If they fail, people will die rather than merely continue to subsist. In these circumstances people may be so deprived that they fear innovation.

Deprivation affects people not only physically but also socially so that the poverty endured can give rise to a culture of poverty. People in these circumstances do not have the social resources for uniting to provide water or irrigation for their crops.

The lack of social resources may be due to a destructive political history. Even if the natural resources are available to the people of the country, they may be too divided ethnically or so lacking in skills that they cannot unite in the common cause of economic development. Another reason for deprivation is thievery. In addition slavery, the theft of a person's liberty and labor, has been reported as returning to Africa and the Middle East in various guises.

...