Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
of dereliction, little landscaping, and shopping and
leisure facilities that reflect the poverty of the area.
The extreme degradation that characterises the
poor areas of third world cities frequently poses a
threat to the very survival of inhabitants (Main and
Williams 1994). The residents of poverty areas are
often also victims of stigmatisation, which operates
as an additional obstacle to obtaining employment
or credit facilities. Many deprived areas are socially
and physically isolated from the mainstream, and
those who are able to move away do so, leaving
behind a residual population with limited control
over their quality of life.
these key objectives are often impeded by the non-
availability of accurate and comparable statistics.
Accordingly, researchers must make explicit the
assumptions and limitations of the data employed
and must be aware of the fact that in some situations
what is measurable and measured becomes what is
real, standardising the diverse and excluding the
divergent and different (Chambers 1994).
As indicated, most estimates of the scale of
poverty employ an income level as the poverty
threshold. However, as the WHO (1992) reported,
poverty defined solely by level of personal income
cannot cover health, literacy or access to public
goods or common property resources. To
overcome the deficiencies of a simple income-
based measure of poverty, researchers may either
select a single indicator of more direct relevance
to the problem, or employ a suite of social,
economic and demographic variables to produce
a multivariate measure of the condition. One of
the most valuable single indicators of social
conditions in a country is life expectancy at birth
(Figure 29.2). This measures the extent to which
MEASURING THE EXTENT OF POVERTY
The measurement of poverty and deprivation is one
of the most direct means of monitoring socio-
spatial variations in quality of life, and of assessing
the performance of public agencies charged with
improving the well-being of the poor. Applied
researchers must be aware, however, that, in practice,
Figure 29.2
Life expectancy at birth, 1990.
Source:
Findlay 1994.
