“When they assist you they treat you like a beggar.”
With the beginning of industrialisation and enhancing productivity, the percentage of people living in extreme poverty began to decrease. Thus, the percentage of people in extreme poverty has declined continuously over the last two centuries. This decrease can be undoubtedly seen as one of the most remarkable accomplishments of humankind. Even though the number of people who live in extreme poverty decreased over the last two centuries, about 736 million people still try to live with less than $1.90 (International Poverty Line) a day [1], which means that 1 out of 10 people lives in extreme poverty. The poverty measurement is based on the financial equivalent of people’s consumption. It also needs to be considered that the International Poverty Line is remarkably low. Consequently, living above this threshold does not necessarily mean that poverty and hardship do not apply to those who are living above this threshold [2].
What we understand from poverty portrays the solutions of the poverty problem. Even though income poverty measures are practical due to readily available data allowing comparison of countries over time [3] if we think of poverty just as a number of people who are living with less than a certain amount of money, the solution appears to us in numbers such as number of money to assist their economic situation or amount of food aid help. However, once we understand that poverty is people who struggle with human emotions caused by the most painful conditions such as carrying a child ten kilometres to the hospital to protect him from dying from malaria because of lack of access to local resources [4] or lack of availability of life-saving medications or social exclusion, we can begin to understand the roots of the problem. Poverty also can be a form of experience for people living in marginal social positions, for example, refugees and asylum seekers, and gypsies. Social stigma, economic and social disadvantages such as unemployment, disability and homelessness make the experience of poverty compounded for many people [5].
Poverty is such violence that in order to be understood, it is required to look beyond the numbers but look at the words of people who struggle with poverty. The World Bank published Voices of Poor, which is based on discussions with more than 20,000 poor people from 23 countries in 2000. To illustrate the severity of the situation and suffering it caused to the one who is poor, the following quotation from one of the participants of the discussion group was deemed necessary to point out: “When they assist you they treat you like a beggar”. Poverty is the ultimate symbol of powerlessness. Poverty also requires to be considered that it has the potential of damaging social relationship represented by processes of ‘otherisation’ where the poor are marginalised from the society indirectly [6].
Moreover, according to a study conducted by Reuther et al. [7], people living on low incomes think that there is a common tendency to view them as a burden to society among ‘non-poor’ society members. For the result of this, low-income people develop a strategy to confront the discrimination by isolating themselves from society and concealing their financial conditions as if it is the failure of themselves. This cognitive behaviour, self-blame, can be seen in victims of violence as well [8]. The explanations for the self-blame of victim varies. However, there are three psychological needs have been hypothesised to be served by self-blame. One of them is the need of the victim to believe that he or she is in control of his/her life. Therefore, they can accept blame for their victimisation to maintain this belief. The second one is that victims tend to accept the blame to maintain the idea that the world is a just place in which unfortunate events do not happen by chance. Miller (1983) also points out that, according to Lerner (1980), admitting to the possibility that life is unfair is harder to admit than blaming themselves. The last one is the need of a human to impose meaning on certain occasions, thus self-blame can be the answer for incomprehensible events.
Since poverty is a complex topic itself, for the people who live with less than $1.90 a day or do not have access to primary resources to live, self-blame can be a justification for unfair life conditions that they are living in. However, these lead to overlooking the root causes of the real problem by attributing the whole problem to individuals. On the other hand, 10 per cent of the wealthiest have up to 40 per cent of global income, while the poorest 10 per cent have between 2 and 7 per cent [9]. Due to this fact, poverty is not a problem caused by a lack of resources but the lack of the ability or will to distribute the wealth among the world equally. 25% of the world population is at risk of dying from overeating, another 25 % is at risk of dying from having not enough food, and some people are at risk of dying from both obesity and malnourishment [10]. Having more then what is needed is what has been stolen from the others’ needs, and it is violence. Gandhi may have chosen a powerful word to characterise poverty as ‘violence’ for a call for action that is for social transformation by individual efforts to eliminate the injustice of poverty. Poverty is a quiet form of violence. Poverty is both physical and psychological violence.
Since poverty is complex and interrelated with different factors, we need multidimensional and collective solutions to protect, restore and improve livelihood systems. We need to establish systems that give women and men, poor and wealthy, equal rights to access economic, social and natural resources. In order to accomplish this, we need well-structured policy frameworks at both national and international levels to support investments in poverty reduction activities. Besides, encouraging suitable rural employment and adopting an integrated approach focusing on inclusive economic growth that will benefit small-scale farmers in the region is one of the factors that improve food security resilience. Building good monitoring systems in order to analyse the data in terms of food security is another contribution to improve resilience by facilitating early actions with informed decision-making systems. Implementing educational programmes that pave the way for economic, social and environmental development in developing countries can be another factor in terms of ending poverty.
[3] Collins, S. B. 2005. An understanding of poverty from those who are poor. Action Research. 3(1), pp. 9–31
[4] Sachs, J.D. 2005. The End of Poverty. New York. The Penguin Press.
[5] Ridge, T., 2009. Living with poverty: A review of the literature on children’s and families’ experiences of poverty,
[6] Sutton, E., Pemberton, S., Fahmy, E., Tamiya, Y. 2014
[7] Reutter, L. et al. 2009. Who Do They Think We Are, Anyway?”: Perceptions of and Responses to Poverty Stigma. Qualitative Health Research.
[8] Miller, D. T., Porter, C. A. 1983. Self-Blame in Victims of Violence.
[10] Carolan. M. S. 2011. The Real Cost of Cheap Food. Abingdon, Earthscan
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