Beneath The Surface
Asia's poverty permutations
The continent of Asia claims to have achieved remarkable progress in terms of poverty reduction in the past decade. The claim is apparently appeasing but, down to earth, disheartening when pitted against the prevailing pervasiveness of poverty in the region.
Reportedly, the specter of hunger still haunts millions in the continent everyday. In poverty discourse, lifting a certain portion of the people out of poverty may sound soothing but, in acute situations, the comfort could wither away in the face of the nature of the movement in and out of poverty.
Akhter U Ahmed of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) recently delved deep into the dynamics of changing poverty in this region. He argues that -- as far as poverty reduction in Asia is concerned -- what appears to glitter for the whole region may not be gold for its every part.
It is true that the number of poor people fell during this fourteen-year period but, equally true is that the regional composition of Asia's poor has also changed dramatically. For example, in 1990, about half of Asia's poor lived in South Asia but, today, it is three-quarters of 614 million Asian poor.
As compared to this, East and Southeast Asia almost halved the rate of poverty during the same period of time. Rapid growth, good governance and openness could be the cause for the seeming comfort. In another attempt, Martin Ravallion and others have shown that poverty measured at a dollar per day is basically rural in East Asia, with 93 percent of the poor living in rural areas, whereas the same is relatively more urban in South Asia where three-fourths of the poor live in rural areas.
For many countries in Asia, those living on below a dollar a day are already the poorest of the poor. However, in some cases, large sections of the population live on below a dollar a day -- India 34 percent and Bangladesh 33 percent -- and the poorest are those who live far away from the $1 a day line. It is being argued that those who benefited from the recent growth in the region were already staying close to the line. Fortune did not favour those far off from the poverty line.
Whether we consider the extreme poor (between $1 and 0.60/day), hardcore poor (between $0.60-.50/day) or ultra poor (living on less than $0.50/day), South Asia's share in each of these three was lower in 1990 compared to 2004. Again, in all parts of the region, the prevalence of ultra poor fell by a smaller margin than extreme and hardcore poor, while it is the hardcore poor in South Asia who witnessed a remarkable waning. In rural India, poverty reduction has benefited those well below the poverty line more than those close to it.
Akhter Ahmed also uses IFPRI's Global Hunger Index (GHI) to locate the hot spots of hunger in Asia to look at trends of hunger in Asia. It may be mentioned here that IFPRI's index is considered a powerful tool to help mobilise political will and promote good policies by ranking countries, and illustrating trends in terms of hunger and malnutrition. In general, values greater than 10 indicate serious problems in terms of food availability, shortfalls in nutritional status of children and child mortality.
More than 20 is alarming, and exceeding 30 points is extremely alarming. The index so calculated shows that South Asia is a current hot spot of hunger and under-nutrition but made large strides in combating hunger and under-nutrition in the 1990s.
The improvement in South Asia's GHI came about largely as a result of a reduction of the prevalence of underweight children in this region. However, in South Asia, relatively high food energy deficiency prevalence (below the 2,200 kilocalorie cut-off) ranges from 51 percent in Pakistan to 61 percent in Bangladesh. Interestingly, the deficiency occurs in spite of satisfactory food grain output, implying that not food shortage but the lack of the exchange entitlements invites hunger in the region.
While poverty is predominantly rural, urban dwellers have higher food energy deficiency than rural dwellers. Again, the prevalence of hunger is higher among urban poor living on less than a dollar per day. This may sound surprising, as the poor mostly throng to cities in the hope of tackling hunger. But a close scrutiny of the budget shows that the urban poor may face sharper trade-offs among competing needs for their meager incomes than do the rural poor.
They may only be able to cut their food consumption after meeting the bare minimum expenses for housing, health, transport etc. This means that if the policy intention is to address both poverty and hunger in urban areas, then it will be necessary to have dual objectives, requiring different stages.
The first Millennium Development Goal aims to reduce poverty by half between 1990 and 2015. That is, the proportion of the poor living on less than a dollar per day and suffering from hunger should come down by half during the targeted period. It seems that Asia is on the track to achieve that goal.
One might expect that those lying close to the poverty line would go up -- even for a transient period -- but those far below will continue to lag behind. Policy makers, therefore, should tinker less with the arithmetic of poverty reduction, rather, they should deal more with its dynamics. Policy prescriptions need to emphasise education, credit and organisations for those trapped permanently in poverty.
Abdul Bayes is a Professor of Economics at Jahangirnagar University.
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