Poverty, a word with Latin roots, is simply a state of privation when human beings lack necessities. In the not too distant past, a large proportion of the world’s population lived in extreme poverty. About a third of the population of modern-day Bangladesh, West Bengal and parts of Assam, Orissa, Bihar and Jharkhand died in the great famine of 1770. British exploitation caused this famine and such rapacious behavior by colonial powers led to much poverty around the world.

Till the middle of the 20^th century, poverty in Latin America, Africa and Asia was a common phenomenon. But the studies of Charles Booth and Seebohm Rowntree demonstrated that poverty was not uncommon even among the industrialized nations. Furthermore, they challenged the commonly held view that poverty resulted from the weaker morals of the working classes. Instead, they proved that poverty was largely caused by endemic social and economic conditions. Rowntree found that nearly 30% of the population of York was living in poverty in 1899. They did not have enough food, fuel and clothing to keep them in good health.

Rowntree’s work has now been taken up by others. International institutions attempt to measure poverty on an ongoing basis. The World Bank aims to rid the world of poverty and defines it as a state when someone earns less than $1.90 per day. In a report published by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the number of those who earn less than $1.90 a day is estimated to be around 700 million. This is less than 10% of the world population. In 1990, this figure was 37% and Jim Yong Kim, the president of the World Bank, has triumphantly declared poverty eradication to be the best story in the world today. He has gone on to declare “that we are the first generation in human history that can end extreme poverty.”

Image: Poverty in Vietnam. UN.