Global Poverty Defining, Measuring and Analyzing Trends

Defining Poverty Poverty Line: Estimated minimum level of income required to meet basic necessities of life. This is also referred to as “relative poverty.” Absolute Poverty: Is based on the minimum income level required to meet an adequate standard of living (relative to poverty line). Extreme Poverty: Is the most severe form of poverty wherein people live on $1.25USD or less a day and can barely subsist Working Poor: Refers to those people who maintain regular employment but remain below the poverty line. PPP: Strategy used to determine relative value of currency. It is used to compare how much money is needed to buy the same products and services in two or more countries.

Measuring Poverty Check out how poverty is measured by the World Bankmeasured

Millennium Development Goals

A Human Rights Issue? Is poverty a human rights issue and if so, why? Article 25 Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstance beyond control

Causes Review the causes of economic disparity

GapMinder 1. Go to GapMinder and analyze the graph showing poverty (less than $2/day) and income. Play the timeline from 1980 to the present.GapMinder a)What patterns do you notice with how the graph changes over time? b)What factors may explain these changes? 2. Change the y-axis indicator to extreme poverty, less than $1.25/day, and the x-axis to life expectancy. Play the timeline and analyze the trends over time. a)What correlation exists between extreme poverty, life expectancy and time? b)Consider the cycle of foreign debt and poverty from our previous lesson. How might this cycle challenge the outcomes/observations you have made in question 2a? Explain.