It has been a
matter of intense debate since the 1950s to date that the economic growth and
development also positively affects the poor population. As the socio
economic inequality increases in the initial period of the development of the
country, the economic growth does little in reducing poverty (Kuznets (1955).
But economic growth is unequally distributed and effects of growth on poverty
reduction will be less or more depending on whether the incomes of the poor
grow by less or more than average (Deaton, 2003).
In fact, the
economic growth plays vital role in reducing poverty at large scale, but
economic growth is not a magic bullet to reduce poverty. Within the past
decades in China, consistent economic growth has lifted more than 20 percent of
the poor population out of poverty. Nearly 250 million poor people were
out of poverty, but the income inequality during the same period of time has
doubled. The income and wealth gap between urban and rural communities in China
is highest in the world. Life expectancy of an urban Chinese person is 5 years
more than his rural counterpart. In highly developed provinces, the literacy
rate is significantly high but, there are many provinces including Tibet, where
merely half of the populations are able to read and write (UNDP, 2005).
Even the success of reducing poverty in the East Asian countries, Japan,
South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore is largely based on policies ranging from
land reform, universal basic education, public housing and primary health care
system. This is also true in most part of the world that the nature of
the political economy is also responsible for creating more poor people and
more inequality in the country. When the inequality is high, the
rich use their wealth to secure outcomes favorable to their interests,
influencing everything from government spending in the area of higher education
rather the primary education, using tariffs and protection mechanism in trade to
maintain monopolies, private health service provisions and its concentration in
the urban areas (Perkins, Radelet, Lindauer 20006).
Even global
economic impact affects the poor population locally in a significant manner.
The number of people living in extreme poverty in 2009 is expected to be 55
million to 90 million higher than originally anticipated before the global
economic crisis (MDG, 2009). This shows that poverty is not static but a new
set of group falls in the poverty while the effort of reducing poverty goes on.
There are many studies (Krishna 2007) that show that there are significant
numbers of people falling into poverty while at the same time people coming out
from the poverty. The debate of falling and coming out has its own importance in
recognizing effective measures to address the poverty. But, The poverty is
relative term and this ‘can not be understood unless in relation to how others
in society live( Haskins and Sawhill,2009).
The poverty
travels from one generation to another generation with the same nature or may
be in the worse form. The changes in the education and professional
status in the poor families within a generation is still a distant dream. Having
food, shelter and clothing that meet basic needs of poor people not just
sufficient to move up in the social and economic ladder, the most important to
provide and give their children a greater opportunities (Uphoff,
2005). I did a study in my Master course during Duke University, interviewed
300 families in Rajasthan state in India, which clearly shows that there is no
major change between the father and son professions. Here, the change in the
profession has been evaluated on the basis of income and status. The good news
is that the educational level of the son has been improved in comparison with
the father education level.
This has also been studied
in the United States , where ‘42 percent of American sons whose fathers had
earning in the lowest quintile remained stuck at the bottom, and slightly
smaller fraction of American sons rise from the very bottom to very high’ (Haskins and Sawhill,2009). In this kind of
socio economic situation in major part of the world give new insight to
understand the complexity of poverty and its impact over the health.
