Etudes par pays volume 2, PDF, 346 p., 1,4 Mo - Femise

11873_02 Study D2: Poverty, Informal Sector, Health and Labour
3. POVERTY
3.1. Definition
Although poverty has many manifestations and causes, but its main driving
force is the process of exclusion from access to certain basic physical,
human and social assets. To define poverty it needs selection of a welfare
criterion in order to put a line that divides population into poor and non-
poor, this criterion could be income-based approach or non income-based
approach:
- Income-based approach is the commonly used measurement to define the
poor, by determining a level of income 7 if not attained by a person or a
family, the later is classified poor. This critical level of income that
separates the poor from non poor is named poverty line which could be in
form of any of the following:
- Absolute poverty line.
- Relative poverty line.
- Subjective poverty line.
Most measurements in Egypt are based on some variant of the absolute
consumption-based poverty line 8 . According to this approach of
definition, three main features, which, characterize the poor people: low
standard of living; low income and high propensity to borrow.
In fact, this approach of defining poverty has two main limitations, as it
does not account for access to essential public goods and services for
instance clean water or environment, education and health, which affect
7 Owing to a number of well-known difficulties of collecting accurate data on income,
consumption expenditure is employed instead of income levels.
8 Although EHRD 1996 introduced estimation of subjective poverty based on people
perceptions and their neighbor's situation.
FONDAZIONE CENSIS
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