What Is Poverty, Exactly?

Basic Income, it is argued, provides an effective and efficient means of conquering poverty. What, exactly, is the problem that we are trying to solve?

Mention poverty to someone and they are likely to immediately think of the Third World. Bringing the focus back to poverty in developed countries is fraught with preconceptions. People have predispositions to think about issues in certain ways. They share these predispositions with all other members of society regardless of specific opinions on social questions. Various models are utilized rather than others based upon how we frame the issue.[1] And so we feel that we have an intuitive grasp of the subject.

Courts will accept eyewitness testimony that someone was drunk. The witness is not an expert. No Breathalyzer test was done; no blood sample taken. It is considered common knowledge. The same can be argued for poverty. Broad definitions of poverty exist, such as: “the condition of a human being who is deprived of the resources, means, choices and power necessary to acquire and maintain economic self-sufficiency or to facilitate integration and participation in society.”[2] “In 1958, John Kenneth Galbraith argued, ‘People are poverty-stricken when their income, even if adequate for survival, falls markedly behind that of their community.’”[3]

The problem is translating this qualitative information into numbers so that policies can be implemented and progress tracked.