Question

1. If you were about to create a profile of the poor, which demographic characteristics would you focus on?

2. How do economists define poverty?

3. What is the relationship between poverty status and work?

4. How does poverty differ from inequality

5. Contrast absolute and relative poverty standards. Which does US use?

6. How did Orshansky develop poverty thresholds? How are they updated?

7. How important were food expenditures in 1963? Today

8. What two adjustments are equivalence scales used for?

9. What are the three I’s of poverty? How does the headcount and poverty gap relate?

10. What is the data used to construct subjective equivalence scales?

11. What types of income sources are excluded from the official poverty measure?

12. What in-kind transfer is excluded from all poverty measures? Why?

13. How does consumption poverty differ from income poverty? Why?

14. Contrast the permanent and transitory poor.

15. Does adjustment for regional cost of living matter? Give an example

16. What is the purpose of the supplemental poverty measure? How does it differ from the official poverty measure?

17. Why is Medicaid excluded from all poverty measures?

Answer 1

1) while creating profile of the poor the main characteristics to focus on are as follows-

a- occupation

b- level of income

c- size of family

d- level of education

e-age,sex, religion

f- age at marriage etc.

2) poverty is defined as a condition where the basic needs of food shelter and clothing is not met or the person is not able to get the minimum needs of servival. there are various definition given by different economists to define poverty but the basic and most general one is the state f inability to get basic minimum needs. there are two types of poverty as given by absolute and relative. absolute povert is when people are unable to maintain a minimum level of physical health and relative poverty is different for different country because it takes into account different physical possession of people and not just the minimum needs.

3) poverty status and work are inter related with each other.if some one is under the poverty line or we can say is poor then he will not be able to get enough nutrition to be able to work, the person will be sick and will lack in many areas like education health and other socio economic indicator which will eventually lead to unemployment. if a person is not enough qualified for a certain job then he will not get that. on the other hand if a person is job less then there is no income and if there is no income the person will become poor so work and poverty is integrally related.

4) inequality is a situation where there is difference in wellbeing of a groupof population from the other or we can say some are well of while others are not. its a relative term which makes comparision between two different groups on the other hand poverty is a situation where there is no comparision between groups its a absolute thing which tells us about how a persons is in terms of economic wellbeing or we can say a state where a person is not able to make basic requirment for its own servival.