Question

1. What is the unsatisfied basic needs method to measure poverty (UBN)?

Answer 1

Unsatisfied basic need method is a method to measure poverty, where unsatisfied basic needs are identifies on the basis of access to healthy life( includes , availability of potable water, sanitation facilities) Nutrition), access to decent household (quality of shelter, size of house in relation to number of people in household, education (enrollment of school age children in school)and access to goods and services one require in day to day life. Under this method of measuring poverty, population has been classified into four main groups.

1. People who have limited opportunities to satisfied their basic needs of day to day life, whose income is low and hence consumption level id also low, it’s called Chronic poor.
2. People, whose basic day to day needs are satisfied, but their income and expenditure are below the poverty line, it is called recent poor in unsatisfied basic need method.
3. Those who have no income or expenditure problems but they have minimum one unsatisfied basic need, it’s called incompetent poor.
4. Those who have no issue of unsatisfied basic needs or we can say, people who have no problem of income and expenditure, it’s called socially integrated person.

This method is also known as the social indicator method which classifies any house in two criteria, either poor or not poor and that is depends on their access to basic needs which are education, health, employment opportunities, nutrition, services etc. UBN indicators are to measure the proportion of households that have one, two, three or four basic needs unmet.

House with unsatisfied basic needs considered as poor and falls under structural poverty.