Notes on Poverty and

Inequality

Catherine Barber

This paper looks at a broad UN definition of poverty beyond the

simply economic, bringing together the capabilities approach and the
rights-based approach. It goes on to discuss the importance of
inequality and poverty from a pragmatic and a moral point view,
stressing the role of inequality in perpetuating poverty.

This background paper was written as a contribution to the development of From Poverty
to Power: How Active Citizens and Effective States Can Change the World, Oxfam
International 2008. It is published in order to share widely the results of commissioned
research and programme experience. The views it expresses are those of the author and
do not necessarily reflect those of Oxfam International or its affiliate organisations.
What is poverty? Quotes from key sources
If you want to do something and have no power to do it, it is talauchi (poverty). (Narayan, 2000)

Poverty is hunger. Poverty is lack of shelter. Poverty is being sick and not being able to see a doctor.
Poverty is not having access to school and not knowing how to read. Poverty is not having a job, is
fear for the future, living one day at a time. Poverty is losing a child to illness brought about by
unclean water. Poverty is powerlessness, lack of representation and lack of freedom (Narayan, 2000).

Poverty is often measured in economic terms: one billion people live on less than one dollar a day.
This is because a persons income is a major determinant of their standard of living. Higher income
allows a person to invest in important things like land, education and health and often to achieve
social and political influence. Of course, income is not the only factor that influences quality of life. In
some cases, societies have achieved better general standards of living than might have been expected
given their income levels. In others, high incomes have translated into less improvement in welfare
than might have been expected. For this reason, other indicators such as life expectancy and literacy
are sometimes used when quantifying poverty. (UNDP, Human Development Report, 1990)

However, statistical measures alone do not take account of the myriad social, cultural and political
aspects of the poverty. Poverty is not only deprivation of economic or material resources but a
violation of human dignity too. The UN provides a broader definition of poverty:

a human condition characterized by the sustained or chronic deprivation of the resources, capabilities,
choices, security and power necessary for the enjoyment of an adequate standard of living and other
civil, cultural, economic, political and social rights. (UN, 2001).

The UN definition brings together two important and related themes in contemporary understandings
of poverty: the capability approach of Nobel-prize winning economist Amartya Sen and the human
rights approach.

The capability approach addresses poverty as the deprivation of basic capabilities rather than
merely as lowness of incomes. (Sen, 1999). Suggested basic capabilities for a life with human dignity
include the capability to live a human life of normal length, to ensure ones bodily health and
integrity, to be treated as someone whose worth is equal to that of others, to have control over ones
political and material environment. (Nussbaum, 1999). The understanding of poverty as a deprivation
of these capabilities thus includes situations of low income, under-nourishment, illiteracy, premature
mortality, and also social stigmatisation and low self-esteem. The capability approach allows some
situations of relative poverty (e.g. people in poverty in the UK living on less than 60 per cent of
median income) to be viewed as absolute poverty (see also below - notes on inequality).

The human rights approach sees poverty as a violation of economic, political, social and civil rights.
These may include the right to health, the right to an adequate standard of living and the right to
education and employment opportunities. These rights are established in numerous international
documents, including the UN Charter, the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, the International
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and
Cultural Rights.

The idea of human rights may be interpreted as implying the following moral principle: the
capabilities of human beings should not be permitted to fall below a certain level, insofar as nation-
states and the international community are able to produce that minimum threshold for everyone. To
the extent that citizens affect the actions of their governments and public agencies, they are
responsible for the implementation, or failure to implement, the conditions that promote a fair level of
capabilities for everyone. The advantage of the human rights approach is that it helps determine

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where responsibility lies for tackling poverty. In principle, human rights are everyone's business.
(Garret, 2004).

Perhaps more important than academic definitions of poverty is the lived experience of people in
poverty. At its most basic, poverty is experienced as a source of pain. Sometimes this is physical, as in
the case of violence or ill health; at other times it is emotional or psychological. There is often a
perception that people in poverty are to blame for their circumstances even if they are striving hard
to overcome them which can lead to a sense of stigma or shame. If people in power refuse to listen or
respond to the needs of people in poverty, as happens all too often, there may also be a sense of
helplessness. People in poverty do influence the course of their own lives: but poverty makes it harder
for them to do so.

Oxfams last attempt to define poverty occurred in 1998 in the Fundamental Review of the Strategic
Intent (FROSI). After noting four major approaches to poverty (income poverty, the capability
approach, relative poverty and social exclusion), the review came to the following conclusion:

One approach is insufficient to define poverty in totality. In particular, there are four aspects: not having
enough to live on, not having enough to build from, being excluded from wealth, and being excluded from
the power to change things for the better.

This not only sits comfortably with our analysis and Oxfam's beliefs, but also reflects the outlook of poor
people themselves. Further, it is only when looking at the four aspects together that Oxfam can gain
insights into the causes of poverty and its solutions. (Oxfam, FROSI)

Why does inequality matter in a poverty context?

There are two main arguments about the importance of inequality in the poverty debate. One is
pragmatic, arguing that inequality can exacerbate poverty; the other is moral, arguing that inequality is
a form of poverty.

The pragmatic approach

The availability of internationally comparable data since the mid-1990s has led to a proliferation of
cross-country studies examining the effect of initial inequality on growth. Starting with results from
Persson and Tabellini (1994) and Alesina and Rodrik (1994), the majority of studies have found
inequality to have a significantly negative impact on growth. Benabou (1996) compares the studies;
the more recent draft World Development Report (2006) confirms his interpretation. A number of
explanations have been proposed as to why inequality should inhibit growth including capital market
imperfections, political economy considerations and social conflict.

A note of caution: causal links between inequality and growth probably goes in both directions, and
there have been some challenges to the statistical results. Still, two recent studies add weight to the
idea that inequality is harmful to growth. Birdsall and Londono (1997) find strong evidence that high
asset inequality inhibits growth, while Barro (2000) finds that inequality is a particular hindrance to
growth in developing countries.

As well as being bad for growth, inequality is certainly bad for poverty reduction at any level of
growth. For example: if the poorest decile (10 per cent of the population) only has a one per cent share
in national income, as in Lesotho, then, even if there is no worsening in inequality, this decile will
capture only one per cent of the benefits of growth. At current rates of growth, it will take the average
person in the poorest decile of Lesotho 48 years to escape absolute poverty - four times as long as her
counterpart in Indonesia, even though the two countries have similar GDP per capita levels and
similar growth rates. The difference is purely due to greater inequality of income distribution in
Lesotho.

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The moral approach
Inequality is sometimes seen as a form of poverty, and the capability approach to poverty shows us
why. By definition, any society with inequality means that some people have less money, resources or
power than others do. These people will often be described as relatively poor but there are
sometimes questions about whether they are absolutely poor. From a purely financial perspective,
they may even seem well off. Can someone living in Europe or North America, however low their
income, really be compared to someone in a Least Developed Country who earns less than one dollar
a day?

At this point it is helpful to think in terms of human freedoms or capabilities. The requirements to
realise ones basic needs are often higher in rich countries. For example, a secondary education may be
necessary to find a steady job in industrialised countries, whereas this may not be necessary in a
developing country. Someone with material resources may thus still be absolutely poor, i.e. lacking
basic capabilities. 1 This may explain why almost all societies place some intrinsic value on equality, as
well as much political philosophy, the international system of human rights, and many of the core
moral and ethical teachings of the worlds leading religions.

How inequalities interact and are perpetuated

Inequality is not just about income. Different ethnic, racial or religious groups often have different
rights or opportunities. In almost all societies, women and men face different expectations, are
accorded different opportunities and have different degrees of access to resources. Various kinds of
inequality interact, so access to schooling, clinics, water and sanitation, electricity and other
infrastructure is systematically unequal across categories such as geographic location, gender, ethnic,
racial or social group.

Recent research also highlights the stickiness of poverty that is, the extent to which it persists across
generations the ultimate form of chronic poverty. Disadvantaged children from families at the
bottom of the wealth distribution do not have the same opportunities as richer children to receive
good quality education. So, they can expect to earn less as adults. If wealth is in any way related to
political participation, they willlike their parentsbe less able to participate in the political process,
and thus less able to influence decisions to improve public schools for their children. And the cycle
continues. This phenomenon is known as the inequality trap. (World Development Report, 2006).

In Ecuador the three-year-olds from all socio-economic groups have similar test scores for
vocabulary recognition and are close to a standard international reference population. But by the time
they are five, all have faltered relative to the international reference group, except for those in the
richest groups and with highest levels of parental education.

Source: World Development Report, 2006, Exec. Sum.

References
Alesina, Alberto and Dani Rodrik (1994) Distributive politics and redistributive growth, Quarterly
Journal of Economics, 109: 465-89.

Barro, Robert. (2000) Inequality and growth in a panel of countries, Journal of Economic Growth, 5 (1).

Benabou, R. (1996) Inequality and growth, in NBER Macroeconomics Manual, pp 11-76. National
Bureau of Economic Research: Cambridge, MA.

1 The capability approach also helps explain why we tolerate basic levels of inequality in outcomes - we would expect some
differences due to preferences, talents, effort and luck - but find severe differences in outcomes distressing, and inequality of
opportunities likewise.

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Birdsall, Nancy and Juan Luis Londono (1997) Asset inequality does matter: lessons from Latin
America, American Economic Review, 87 (2).

Garrett, J. (2004) Martha Nussbaum on Capabilities and Human Rights,

www.wku.edu/~jan.garrett/ethics/nussbaum.htm, Last checked 22 May 2008.

Narayan, D. (ed.) (2000) Voices of the Poor: Can Anyone Hear Us? Washington DC: World Bank.

Nussbaum, M. (1999) Sex and Social Justice, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Oxfam GB (1998) Fundamental Review of the Strategic Intent (FROSI). Oxford: Oxfam GB. [Internal
document].

Persson, Torsten and Guido Tabellini (1994) Is Inequality harmful for growth? Theory and evidence,
American Economic Review, 84 (3), 600-621.

Sen, Amartya. (1999) Development as Freedom, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

UN (2001) Poverty and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, UN Committee
on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, E/C.12/2001/10, New York: United Nations.

UNDP (1990) Human Development Report 1990: Concept and Measurement of Poverty, New York: United
Nations.

World Bank (2005), World Development Report 2006: Equity and Development, World Bank: Washington,
D.C..

Oxfam International June 2008

This paper was written by Catherine Barber in December 2005. It is one of a series
written to inform the development of the Oxfam International publication From
Poverty to Power: How Active Citizens and Effective States Can Change the World,
Oxfam International 2008.

Catherine Barber was formerly Economic Policy Adviser to Oxfam GB. She has
taught at Harvard and Oxford Universities.

The paper may be used free of charge for the purposes of education and research,
provided that the source is acknowledged in full. The copyright holder requests that
all such use be registered with them for impact assessment purposes. For copying
in other circumstances, or for re-use in other publications, or for translation or
adaptation, permission must be secured. Email publish@oxfam.org.uk

For further information on the issues raised in this paper, please email
enquiries@oxfam.org.uk

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