|
An encyclopedia project—and more!
Welcome to Citizendium, a wiki-based endeavor to provide free knowledge with the highest standards of writing, reliability, and informativeness. We welcome anyone who wants to share their knowledge by writing well-researched and authoritative articles on virtually any subject, and by improving articles written by others. Please read through our easy registration procedures, then join us as an Author and perhaps also as a recognised expert Editor.
- We have 16,469 articles at different stages of development, of which 0 are expert-approved.
- Our community is collegial and congenial; everyone writes under his or her verified real name.
- We welcome anyone who has knowledge, broad or narrow, about any subject. Sign up—we need Authors, and from amongst them, specialist Editors.
- We prefer new material but allow work from other sites to be imported and improved under certain conditions.
- For a brief guide on what Citizendium is and is not, see Myths and Facts; for more details, see the frequently-asked questions page.
- Students in higher education write here as part of their courses under our Eduzendium initiative.
- We have a Charter to provide a framework for governance.
- For more details on participation, see Why Citizendium? and Why I Contribute.
- To learn more about the project, see our article on ourselves, our Help System, our financial report and our Statistics page.
- Follow us on Twitter (general news; new pages), Facebook or Google+.
Join us
| Our help system
|
| Questions and answers to help you find the information you need
|
From the HOME page you can get started, get technical help, see our policies, and explore our organization in detail.
|
Some of our finest
Approved Articles (0)
Developed Articles (1,128)
(16,469 total articles)
|
What does education often do? It makes a straight-cut ditch of a free, meandering brook.
— Henry David Thoreau
—add a quotation about knowledge or writing
•Did You Know?
•Citizendium Blog - Latest entry: 01-Jan-2013
|
Monthly Donation Day | Monthly Donor Honor Roll
CZ:Monthly Honor Roll of Users Editing the Wiki
Featured Article about
 The Mathare Valley slum near Nairobi, Kenya, in 2009. Poverty is deprivation based on lack of material resources. The concept is value-based and political. Hence its definition, causes and remedies (and the possibility of remedies) are highly contentious.[1] The word poverty may also be used figuratively to indicate a lack, instead of material goods or money, of any kind of quality, as in a poverty of imagination.
Definitions
Primary and secondary poverty
The use of the terms primary and secondary poverty dates back to Seebohm Rowntree, who conducted the second British survey to calculate the extent of poverty. This was carried out in York and was published in 1899. He defined primary poverty as having insufficient income to “obtain the minimum necessaries for the maintenance of merely physical efficiency”. In secondary poverty, the income “would be sufficient for the maintenance of merely physical efficiency were it not that some portion of it is absorbed by some other expenditure.” Even with these rigorous criteria he found that 9.9% of the population was in primary poverty and a further 17.9% in secondary.[2]
Absolute and comparative poverty
More recent definitions tend to use the terms absolute and comparative poverty. Absolute is in line with Rowntree's primary poverty, but comparative poverty is usually expressed in terms of ability to play a part in the society in which a person lives. Comparative poverty will thus vary from one country to another.[3] The difficulty of definition is illustrated by the fact that a recession can actually reduce "poverty".
Causes of poverty
The causes of poverty most often considered are:
- Character defects
- An established “culture of poverty”, with low expectations handed down from one generation to another
- Unemployment
- Irregular employment, and/or low pay
- Position in the life cycle (see below) and household size
- Disability
- Structural inequality, both within countries and between countries. (R H Tawney: “What thoughtful rich people call the problem of poverty, thoughtful poor people call with equal justice a problem of riches”)[4]
As noted above, most of these, or the extent to which they can be, or should be changed, are matters of heated controversy.
- ↑ Alcock, P. Understanding poverty. Macmillan. 1997. ch 1.
- ↑ Harris, B. The origins of the British welfare state. Palgrave Macmillan. 2004. Also, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
- ↑ Alcock, Pt II
- ↑ Alcock, Preface to 1st edition and pt III.
|
|
