Is poverty a lack of basic resources, or instead the unequal distribution of resources? Is it the absolute income or wealth of people that matters, or the fact that other people are richer and can afford more luxuries? Intuitively, one would go with the former of those options: people are poor when they are starving or homeless or when they lack some other basic necessity. People can have enough of all basic necessities and still be a lot worse of than some group of ultra-rich. One the other hand, what counts as a basic necessity is not always obvious, and people may form their ideas about necessities in light of the lifestyle of the average member of their society at the current moment in history.
This is another way of expressing the difference between absolute and relative poverty. In the US, it’s common to defend and use an absolute definition of poverty (as does the World Bank), whereas in Europe the focus is on relative poverty. The difference is an important one, because the use of one or the other definition of poverty determines who counts as poor or not. Hence, it also determines who gets government assistance.
Now, something strange is going on here. Intuitively most people favor an absolute definition of poverty – that’s what my own intuition and an unscientific sample of friends tells me – and yet, if you ask people what one needs to get by in life, the amounts they give you are far above commonly used absolute poverty thresholds. In fact, these amounts are closer to median income. And as median income rises, the amounts supposedly necessary in order to get by also rise. This tells us that people actually use a relative notion of poverty. And this is true even for the country that is supposedly most naturally in favor of an absolute notion of poverty, namely the US:
(source)
I made a similar point here. More posts in this series are here.
