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Poverty

Entry 775, on 2008-05-21 at 20:58:41 (Rating 3, Politics)

What is poverty? According to the dictionary it is "the state of being extremely poor". There's an obvious problem with that: how poor does someone need to be before they are "extremely" poor. New Zealand government and social agencies use this definition: "families earning below 60 per cent of the median income". There are two problems with this definition though. First, the number 60 is essentially arbitrary. And second, as the median income goes up the point where someone is thought to be living in poverty also goes up. So this definition specifies a point relative to society as a whole.

I'm a bit uncomfortable with a definition that might include people who are much better off than those living in genuine poverty (where more direct measurements such as facing imminent death from starvation and having no medical help at all). Changing the definition of a phenomenon is a common way to change people's perception of an issue and this has happened in several other areas where a social phenomenon has been made to look far more serious than it might really be.

I'm not saying poverty isn't a problem in New Zealand and in many other countries where it really shouldn't be. I support the latest leaflet from several major churches here who are launching a campaign to make poverty a political issue. I'm not really interested in the other issue regarding whether they should register as third parties under the new Electoral Finance Act. It doesn't seem that they are recommending a particular political course so they probably don't need to, but if they do I don't see that as being a big issue either.

The whole question of poverty is linked up with the topics I have been discussing recently: global economics, corporatisation, and free market economics. It seems to me that the most successful economies are those who have a resource to exploit. In the Middle East that resource is oil, in China it is cheap labour. While we see our social structure as something to achieve economic success instead of the other way around we will always have serious social issues like child poverty.

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