A substantial proportion of population in each of the developing countries is living below the poverty line. The percentage of population below the poverty line in Bangladesh is more than 40 per cent.
In central African countries also, most of the people are living below the poverty line. The people below the poverty line are unable to meet the minimum human needs, such as adequate food, clothing, shelter, health care and education, even by developing world standard.
In spite of its widespread existence, estimates of absolute poverty are difficult to obtain for a number of reasons. It is not only that reliable and comparable data are not available, the indicators such as lack of security, lack of political freedom, inability to participate freely in the life of a community and threats to sustainability can not be measured and qualified. Moreover, a major difficulty also stems from the arbitrary nature of the definition of poverty line itself.
Image Source: thewanderer2436.files.wordpress.com
ADVERTISEMENTS:
The question is: What is the standard poverty line below which absolute poverty exists? This is a problematic question in the context of the Third World, where the level of tolerance of poverty and survivability under difficult circumstances is considered to be remarkably high.
The main importance of Human Poverty Index (HPI) lies in the fact that it draws attention to deprivations in three essential elements of human life, i.e., longevity, knowledge and decent living standard.
The main difference between the HDI and HPI is that the former measures progress in a community or country as a whole, while the latter measures the extent of deprivation of the proportion of people in the community/country who are left out of progress.
ADVERTISEMENTS:
The Population Divisions of the UNO and the UNDP have estimated the HPI for 77 developing countries with comparable data and the results have been presented.
The HPI value reflects the proportion of people affected by the three key deprivations providing a comparative measure of the prevalence of human poverty.
Poverty line in defined as the monthly expenditure required for a daily intake of 2,400 calories per person in rural areas and 2,100 calories in urban areas. In India, this expenditure is Rs 368 per person per month in rural areas and Rs 559 per person per month in urban areas.
In India, about 22 per cent of the total population is below the poverty line. In Odisha, 40 per cent and Jharkhand 35 per cent of the total population is below the poverty line followed by Bihar, 33 per cent and Madhya Pradesh, 32.4 per cent.