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MEASURING POVERTY – WHAT HAPPENED TO COPENHAGEN?
Author(s) -
Sarlo Chris
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
economic affairs
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.24
H-Index - 18
eISSN - 1468-0270
pISSN - 0265-0665
DOI - 10.1111/j.1468-0270.2007.00749.x
Subject(s) - poverty , absolute (philosophy) , summit , extreme poverty , inequality , basic needs , development economics , poor people , culture of poverty , economic growth , political science , economics , geography , mathematics , mathematical analysis , philosophy , epistemology , physical geography
Absolute poverty can be thought of as a condition of ‘insufficiency’, i.e. the inability to acquire the basic necessities of life. Relative poverty can be thought of as a condition of ‘inequality’. At the World Summit on Social Development in Copenhagen in 1995, all participants made a commitment to produce official measures of both absolute and relative poverty and to strive to eradicate absolute poverty within a reasonable time frame. Despite these commitments, measures of absolute poverty are rare in the developed world. This paper concludes that both kinds of measures are needed for intelligent discussions and good policy‐making.