Question

Why is poverty considered a relative concept?

Answer 1

• Poverty refers to the state of lack of minimum income that a person requires for fulfilling his basic needs and to have minimum standards of living.
• Poverty is always considered as a relative concept as we always relate a family's or an individual's poverty state with the people near him or to the people living in the same society.
• We must always measure poverty based on a country's development and using relative poverty for this allows us to categorise a society as number of people who are unable to meet their daily demands, number of people who are not completely facing poverty but lack the means to get better goods and services and the number of people who are out of the poverty state.
• Considering poverty as a relative concept helps the governments in reducing poverty and they try to improve the standards of living of all the people belonging to a particular society by giving them equal rights and Opportunities like the Rich people of that society.
• A Relative concept can categorise people who are both poor and rich for equal considerations in various opportunities and anyone can fall under this category.
• Therefore as the relative measure of poverty indicates the number of people who are left out from equal opportunities among the other people of society who are enjoying the benefits, relative measurement of poverty is considered as a best measure when compared to absolute measure of poverty.