Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
prevailing economic, social and political factors
make it possible for citizens to avoid premature
death. This indicator has been found to exhibit a
strong correlation with multivariate measures of
living standards or overall well-being (Partha and
Weale 1992) and may therefore be regarded as a
sound indicator of the extent of poverty and
deprivation. Clearly, it is not possible for a country
to exhibit a high average life expectancy if most
of the population do not enjoy access to good
quality housing, safe water supplies, adequate
sanitation and health care provision. Even
prosperous countries cannot rank among those
with highest life expectancies if a significant
proportion of their population lack the income,
living conditions and access to services that protect
against premature death.
While life expectancy provides a useful guide
to national levels of poverty, use of an indicator of
average life expectancy for a country can disguise
major socio-spatial variations in well-being
within
nations. Two of the most important factors found
to explain intra-national variations in poverty refer
to the extent of inequality, and the level of basic
service provision. Thus, in a survey of twenty-two
low-income countries, Anand and Ravallion
(1998) found that one-third of the increase in life
expectancy over the study period was due to
reduced poverty and two-thirds to increased
spending on social services. These results suggest
that the significance of economic growth in
expanding life expectancy is tied to the ways in
which the benefits are
distributed
among the
population. The association between life
expectancy and levels of income inequality has
also been demonstrated in twelve countries of the
European Union (Wilkenson 1992).
Of particular significance for applied
geographical research into poverty and
deprivation is the fact that these data place strong
emphasis on the need for analysis at the intra-
national scale. Accordingly, in the following
sections we examine the conduct and value of
such investigation at three different levels.
URBAN AND RURAL POVERTY
Although socio-spatial variations in the incidence
of poverty and deprivation exist in all countries in
the context of the developing world, particular
attention has been focused on differential levels of
living between urban and rural areas, with most
studies indicating a higher incidence of poverty in
the latter. This conclusion is supported by the data
presented in Table 29.1, which is based on a
nationally defined poverty line related to the
income needed to satisfy basic minimum needs in
each country. A note of caution is required,
however, not least since the use of a single income-
based poverty line across both urban and rural
areas may underestimate the extent of urban
poverty by failing to take account of the higher
costs of urban living. When allowance is made for
differences in living costs between urban and rural
areas, the scale of urban poverty generally increases
(Feres and Leon 1990).
Nothwithstanding the difficulties of
comparative analysis, the evidence from Table 29.1
indicates severe poverty in rural areas. A study of
rural poverty in 114 countries in the South found
that 940 million or 36 per cent of the population
had incomes below the poverty line (Jazairy
et al
.
1992), while in the USA Lyson (1989) found that
the rural and black-belt labour market areas of the
American south have remained poorer and more
underdeveloped than their urban counterparts.
There is, however, little to be gained by seeking to
demonstrate the relative severity of poverty in
urban and rural areas. As Table 29.1 indicates, in
both contexts, the scale of the problem is critical
and demands urgent remedial action.
REGIONAL VARIATIONS IN POVERTY
AND DEPRIVATION
The geographical and statistical overlap between
individual indicators of poverty and deprivation
stimulated the development of composite
multivariate territorial social indicators as a means
of revealing the differential patterns of quality of
life between regions. Early studies in the field
include Wilson's (1969) analysis of inter-state
