Urban Poverty Essay

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Urban poverty in India
Urban poverty is a term used to describe the deprivation of the urban poor. These may include factors such as shortage or poor access to employment opportunities and income, inadequate housing and basic services, violent and unhealthy environments, very less or no social protection mechanisms, and limited access to health and education opportunities.
Urban poverty in India is closely related with the fast development of the country. India had its first report on urban poverty in 2009, which was backed by the United Nations development program. Indicators of urban poverty as stated by the report include: Income, Health, Education, Security of tenure and personal empowerment.
Poverty Indices
Quantifying poverty has always been a crucial and tough task for the committees. There are various indices developed over time which deal with fundamental questions such as how many people will be considered poor in a society. For this, first of all we need to define a poverty line which can differ in urban and rural area, then what is the distribution of income among poor and how much money will be required to take the affected people out of poverty. Let us assume that information is available on a welfare measure such as income per capita, and a …show more content…

It is famous because it is easy to understand and measure. But it does not indicate how poor the poor are.

The poverty gap index (P1) measures the extent to which individuals fall below the poverty line (the Poverty gap) as a proportion of the poverty. The sum of these poverty gaps gives the minimum cost for eliminating poverty, if transfers were perfectly targeted. The measure fails in reflecting changes in inequality among the poor.

The poverty severity index (P2) averages the squares of the poverty gaps relative to the poverty line. It is one of the Foster-Greer-Thorbecke (FGT) class of poverty measures that may be written

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