Friday 8 June 2012

Needs as the determinant of absolute poverty: …

estimating the cost of nutrition, clothing and footwear, and transportation in Greece

 an article by George Labrinidis, Thanasis Maniatis, Aris Oikonomou and Marianna Papadopoulou (affiliation(s) not provided) published in International Journal of Management Concepts and Philosophy Volume 6 Number 2/1 (2012)

This paper aims at showing that the approach of defining and measuring absolute poverty on the basis of “basic and social needs’ is feasible.

The categories of nutrition, clothing and footwear, and transportation are examined under this light, a basket of use values is formed and subsequently it is priced to provide three corresponding sub-indexes for those constituents of the threshold of absolute poverty for Greece in 2011.

Hazel’s comment:
I have said before, and will no doubt go to my grave still saying, that defining poverty in relative terms is simply wrong. I'm no economist nor am I a statistician (I left the latter behind when I finished my A-levels) but it must be obvious that if you define poverty in relation to average or rich then you will always have poverty. Rich are the people at the top of the tree, average are those around the middle, poor are at the base. People may climb up, people may slide down but the tree will still have people at the top, people at the bottom and at all points in between.
Sorry if that seems too simplistic but I have a very visual style!


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