The term community has two distinct meanings:

a group of interacting people, possibly living in close proximity, and often refers to a group that shares some common values, and is attributed with social cohesion within a shared geographical location, generally in social units larger than a household. The word can also refer to the national community or international community, and

in biology, a community is a group of interacting living organisms sharing a populated environment.

In human communities, intent, belief, resources, preferences, needs, risks, and a number of other conditions may be present and common, affecting the identity of the participants and their degree of cohesiveness.

In sociology, the concept of community has led to significant debate, and sociologists are yet to reach agreement on a definition of the term. There were ninety-four discrete definitions of the term by the mid-1950s.

The word "community" is derived from the Old French ''communité'' which is derived from the Latin ''communitas'' (''cum'', "with/together" + ''munus'', "gift"), a broad term for fellowship or organized society.

Since the advent of the Internet, the concept of community no longer has geographical limitations, as people can now virtually gather in an online community and share common interests regardless of physical location.

Perspectives from various disciplines

Sociology

Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft

German sociologist Ferdinand Tönnies distinguished between two types of human association: ''Gemeinschaft'' (usually translated as "community") and ''Gesellschaft'' ("society" or "association"). In his 1887 work, ''Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft'', Tönnies argued that ''Gemeinschaft'' is perceived to be a tighter and more cohesive social entity, due to the presence of a "unity of will." He added that family and kinship were the perfect expressions of ''Gemeinschaft'', but that other shared characteristics, such as place or belief, could also result in ''Gemeinschaft''. This paradigm of communal networks and shared social understanding has been applied to multiple cultures in many places throughout history. ''Gesellschaft'', on the other hand, is a group in which the individuals who make up that group are motivated to take part in the group purely by self-interest. He also proposed that in the real world, no group was either pure ''Gemeinschaft'' or pure ''Gesellschaft,'' but, rather, a mixture of the two.

Social capital

If community exists, both freedom and security may exist as well. The community then takes on a life of its own, as people become free enough to share and secure enough to get along. The sense of connectedness and formation of social networks comprise what has become known as social capital.

Social capital is defined by Robert D. Putnam as "the collective value of all social networks and species (who people know) and the inclinations that arise from these works to do things for each other (norms of reciprocity)." Social capital in action can be seen in all sorts of groups, including neighbors keeping an eye on each others' homes. However, as Putnam notes in ''Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community'' (2000), social capital has been falling in the United States. Putnam found that over the past 25 years, attendance at club meetings has fallen 58 percent, family dinners are down 33 percent, and having friends visit has fallen 45 percent.

The same patterns are also evident in many other western countries. Western cultures are thus said to be losing the spirit of community that once were found in institutions including churches and community centers. Sociologist Ray Oldenburg states in ''The Great Good Place'' that people need three places: 1) the home, 2) the office, and, 3) the community hangout or gathering place. With this philosophy in mind, many grassroots efforts such as The Project for Public Spaces are being started to create this "Third Place" in communities. They are taking form in independent bookstores, coffeehouses, local pubs, and through new and innovative means to create the social capital needed to foster the sense and spirit of community.

Psychology

Community

In a seminal 1986 study, McMillan and Chavis identify four elements of "sense of community": 1) membership, 2) influence, 3) integration and fulfillment of needs, and 4) shared emotional connection. They give the following example of the interplay between these factors:

Someone puts an announcement on the dormitory bulletin board about the formation of an intramural dormitory basketball team. People attend the organizational meeting as strangers out of their individual needs (integration and fulfillment of needs). The team is bound by place of residence (membership boundaries are set) and spends time together in practice (the contact hypothesis). They play a game and win (successful shared valent event). While playing, members exert energy on behalf of the team (personal investment in the group). As the team continues to win, team members become recognized and congratulated (gaining honor and status for being members), Influencing new members to join and continue to do the same. Someone suggests that they all buy matching shirts and shoes (common symbols) and they do so (influence).

A ''Sense of Community Index'' (SCI) has been developed by Chavis and colleagues and revised and adapted by others. Although originally designed to assess sense of community in neighborhoods, the index has been adapted for use in schools, the workplace, and a variety of types of communities.

Studies conducted by the APPA show substantial evidence that young adults who feel a sense of belonging in a community, particularly small communities, develop fewer psychiatric and depressive disorders than those who do not have the feeling of love and belonging.

Anthropology

Cultural (or social) anthropology has traditionally looked at community through the lens of ethnographic fieldwork and ethnography continues to be an important methodology for study of modern communities. Other anthropological approaches that deal with various aspects of community include cross-cultural studies and the anthropology of religion. Cultures in modern society are also studied in the fields of urban anthropology, ethnic studies, ecological anthropology, and psychological anthropology. Since the 1990s, internet communities have increasingly been the subject of research in the emerging field of cyber anthropology.

Archaeology

Archaeological studies of social communities. The term “community” is used in two ways in archaeology, paralleling usage in other areas. The first is an informal definition of community as a place where people used to live. In this sense it is synonymous with the concept of an ancient settlement, whether a hamlet, village, town, or city. The second meaning is similar to the usage of the term in other social sciences: a community is a group of people living near one another who interact socially. Social interaction on a small scale can be difficult to identify with archaeological data. Most reconstructions of social communities by archaeologists rely on the principle that social interaction is conditioned by physical distance. Therefore a small village settlement likely constituted a social community, and spatial subdivisions of cities and other large settlements may have formed communities. Archaeologists typically use similarities in material culture—from house types to styles of pottery—to reconstruct communities in the past. This is based on the assumption that people or households will share more similarities in the types and styles of their material goods with other members of a social community than they will with outsiders.

Social philosophy

Communitarianism

Communitarianism as a group of related but distinct philosophies (or ideologies) began in the late 20th century, opposing classical liberalism and capitalism while advocating phenomena such as civil society. Not necessarily hostile to social liberalism, communitarianism rather has a different emphasis, shifting the focus of interest toward communities and societies and away from the individual. The question of priority, whether for the individual or community, must be determined in dealing with pressing ethical questions about a variety of social issues, such as health care, abortion, multiculturalism, and hate speech. Gad Barzilai has critically examined both liberalism and communitarianism and has developed the theory of critical communitarianism. Barzilai has explicated how non-ruling communities are constructing legal cultures while interacting with various facets of political power. Being venues of identity construction justifies collective protections of communities in law, while the boundaries with other communities, states, and global forces should be sensitive to preservation of various cultures. Gad Barzilai has accordingly offered how to protect human rights, individual rights, and multiculturalism in inter-communal context that allows to generating cultural relativism.

Business and communications

Organizational communication

Effective communication practices in group and organizational settings are very important to the formation and maintenance of communities. The ways that ideas and values are communicated within communities are important to the induction of new members, the formulation of agendas, the selection of leaders and many other aspects. Organizational communication is the study of how people communicate within an organizational context and the influences and interactions within organizational structures. Group members depend on the flow of communication to establish their own identity within these structures and learn to function in the group setting. Although organizational communication, as a field of study, is usually geared toward companies and business groups, these may also be seen as communities. The principles of organizational communication can also be applied to other types of communities.

Ecology

In ecology, a community is an assemblage of populations of different species, interacting with one another. Community ecology is the branch of ecology that studies interactions between and among species. It considers how such interactions, along with interactions between species and the abiotic environment, affect community structure and species richness, diversity and patterns of abundance. Species interact in three ways: competition, predation and mutualism. Competition typically results in a double negative—that is both species lose in the interaction. Predation is a win/lose situation with one species winning. Mutualism, on the other hand, involves both species cooperating in some way, with both winning.

Interdisciplinary perspectives

Socialization

The process of learning to adopt the behavior patterns of the community is called socialization. The most fertile time of socialization is usually the early stages of life, during which individuals develop the skills and knowledge and learn the roles necessary to function within their culture and social environment. For some psychologists, especially those in the psychodynamic tradition, the most important period of socialization is between the ages of one and ten. But socialization also includes adults moving into a significantly different environment, where they must learn a new set of behaviors.

Socialization is influenced primarily by the family, through which children first learn community norms. Other important influences include school, peer groups, people, schools, mass media, the workplace, and government. The degree to which the norms of a particular society or community are adopted determines one's willingness to engage with others. The norms of tolerance, reciprocity, and trust are important "habits of the heart," as de Tocqueville put it, in an individual's involvement in community. By :- Balram kumar jha MBA

Community development

Community development, often linked with Community Work or Community Planning, is often formally conducted by non-government organisations (NGOs), universities or government agencies to progress the social well-being of local, regional and, sometimes, national communities. Less formal efforts, called community building or community organizing, seek to empower individuals and groups of people by providing them with the skills they need to effect change in their own communities. These skills often assist in building political power through the formation of large social groups working for a common agenda. Community development practitioners must understand both how to work with individuals and how to affect communities' positions within the context of larger social institutions.

Formal programs conducted by universities are often used to build a knowledge base to drive curricula in sociology and community studies. The General Social Survey from the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago and the Saguaro Seminar at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University are examples of national community development in the United States. In The United Kingdom, Oxford University has led in providing extensive research in the field through its '' Community Development Journal,'' used worldwide by sociologists and community development practitioners.

At the intersection between community ''development'' and community ''building'' are a number of programs and organizations with community development tools. One example of this is the program of the Asset Based Community Development Institute of Northwestern University. The institute makes available downloadable tools to assess community assets and make connections between non-profit groups and other organizations that can help in community building. The Institute focuses on helping communities develop by "mobilizing neighborhood assets" — building from the inside out rather than the outside in.

Community building and organizing

In ''The Different Drum: Community-Making and Peace,'' Scott Peck argues that the almost accidental sense of community that exists at times of crisis can be consciously built. Peck believes that conscious community building is a process of deliberate design based on the knowledge and application of certain rules. He states that this process goes through four stages:

# # Chaos: When people move beyond the inauthenticity of pseudo-community and feel safe enough to present their "shadow" selves. This stage places great demands upon the facilitator for greater leadership and organization, but Peck believes that "organizations are not communities", and this pressure should be resisted. # Emptiness: This stage moves beyond the attempts to fix, heal and convert of the chaos stage, when all people become capable of acknowledging their own woundedness and brokenness, common to us all as human beings. Out of this emptiness comes # True community: the process of deep respect and true listening for the needs of the other people in this community. This stage Peck believes can only be described as "glory" and reflects a deep yearning in every human soul for compassionate understanding from one's fellows. More recently Peck remarked that building a sense of community is easy but maintaining this sense of community is difficult in the modern world. Community building can use a wide variety of practices, ranging from simple events such as potlucks and small book clubs to larger–scale efforts such as mass festivals and construction projects that involve local participants rather than outside contractors.

Community building that is geared toward citizen action is usually termed "community organizing." In these cases, organized community groups seek accountability from elected officials and increased direct representation within decision-making bodies. Where good-faith negotiations fail, these constituency-led organizations seek to pressure the decision-makers through a variety of means, including picketing, boycotting, sit-ins, petitioning, and electoral politics. The ARISE Detroit! coalition and the Toronto Public Space Committee are examples of activist networks committed to shielding local communities from government and corporate domination and inordinate influence.

Community organizing is sometimes focused on more than just resolving specific issues. Organizing often means building a widely accessible power structure, often with the end goal of distributing power equally throughout the community. Community organizers generally seek to build groups that are open and democratic in governance. Such groups facilitate and encourage consensus decision-making with a focus on the general health of the community rather than a specific interest group. The three basic types of community organizing are grassroots organizing, coalition building, and "institution-based community organizing," (also called "broad-based community organizing," an example of which is faith-based community organizing, or "congregation-based community organizing").

If communities are developed based on something they share in common, whether that be location or values, then one challenge for developing communities is how to incorporate individuality and differences. Indeed, as Rebekah Nathan suggests in her book, My Freshman Year, we are actually drawn to developing communities totally based on sameness, despite stated commitments to diversity, such as those found on university websites. Nathan states that certain commonalities allow college students to cohere: “What holds students together, really, is age, pop culture, a handful of (recent) historical events, and getting a degree” (qtd. In Barrios 229). Universities may try to create community through all freshman reads, freshman seminars, and school pride; however, Nathan argues students will only form communities based on the attributes, such as age and pop culture, that they bring with them to college. Nathan’s point, then, is that people come to college and don't expand their social horizons and cultural tolerance, which can prevent the development of your social community. (Barrios, Barclay. ''Emerging: Conetmporary Readings for Writers''. New York: Bedford St. Martins, 2010.)

Community currencies

Some communities have developed their own "Local Exchange Trading Systems" (LETS) and local currencies, such as the Ithaca Hours system, to encourage economic growth and an enhanced sense of community. Community Currencies have recently proven valuable in meeting the needs of people living in various South American nations, particularly Argentina, that recently suffered as a result of the collapse of the Argentinian national currency.

Community service

Community service is usually performed in connection with a nonprofit organization, but it may also be undertaken under the auspices of government, one or more businesses, or by individuals. It is typically unpaid and voluntary. However, it can be part of alternative sentencing approaches in a justice system and it can be required by educational institutions.

Types of community

A number of ways to categorize types of community have been proposed; one such breakdown is: # Geographic communities: range from the local neighbourhood, suburb, village, town or city, region, nation or even the planet as a whole. These refer to communities of ''location''. # Communities of culture: range from the local clique, sub-culture, ethnic group, religious, multicultural or pluralistic civilisation, or the global community cultures of today. They may be included as ''communities of need'' or ''identity'', such as disabled persons, or frail aged people. # Community organizations: range from informal family or kinship networks, to more formal incorporated associations, political decision making structures, economic enterprises, or professional associations at a small, national or international scale.

Communities are nested; one community can contain another—for example a geographic community may contain a number of ethnic communities.

Location

Possibly the most common usage of the word ''"community"'' indicates a large group living in close proximity. Examples of local community include:

A municipality is an administrative local area generally composed of a clearly defined territory and commonly referring to a town or village.

Although large cities are also municipalities, they are often thought of as a collection of communities, due to their diversity.

A neighborhood is a geographically localized community, often within a larger city or suburb.

A planned community is one that was designed from scratch and grew up more or less following the plan. Several of the world's capital cities are planned cities, notably Washington, D.C., in the United States, Canberra in Australia, and Brasília in Brazil. It was also common during the European colonization of the Americas to build according to a plan either on fresh ground or on the ruins of earlier Amerindian cities.

Identity

In some contexts, ''"community"'' indicates a group of people with a common identity other than location. Members often interact regularly. Common examples in everyday usage include:

A "professional community" is a group of people with the same or related occupations. Some of those members may join a professional society, making a more defined and formalized group. These are also sometimes known as communities of practice.

A virtual community is a group of people primarily or initially communicating or interacting with each other by means of information technologies, typically over the Internet, rather than in person. These may be either communities of interest, practice or communion. Research interest is evolving in the motivations for contributing to online communities.

Overlaps

Some communities share both location and other attributes. Members choose to live near each other because of one or more common interests.

A retirement community is designated and at least usually designed for retirees and seniors—often restricted to those over a certain age, such as 56. It differs from a retirement home, which is a single building or small complex, by having a number of autonomous households.

An intentional community is a deliberate residential community with a much higher degree of social communication than other communities. The members of an intentional community typically hold a common social, political or spiritual vision and share responsibilities and resources. Intentional communities include Amish villages, ashrams, cohousing, communes, ecovillages, housing cooperatives, kibbutzim, and land trusts.

Internet communities

To a growing part of people the meaning of the word ''"community"'' indicates a smaller or larger group of internet users signing up to become members of a community page/system on internet. Examples of internet communities include:

A business community is often an administrative community with possibilities to add CV's and other business-related information.

An interest community is a based on specialized areas such as art, golf or bird watching.

A general community is wider in its range - opening for its users to create areas, pages and groups.

Special nature of human community

Definitions of community as "organisms inhabiting a common environment and interacting with one another," while scientifically accurate, do not convey the richness, diversity and complexity of human communities. Their classification, likewise is almost never precise. Untidy as it may be, community is vital for humans. M. Scott Peck expresses this in the following way: "There can be no vulnerability without risk; there can be no community without vulnerability; there can be no peace, and ultimately no life, without community."

See also

Outline of community

Community theatre

Notes

References

Barzilai, Gad. 2003. ''Communities and Law: Politics and Cultures of Legal Identities.'' Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

Beck, U. 1992. ''Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity.'' London: Sage

:— 2000. ''What is globalization?'' Cambridge: Polity Press.

Canuto, Marcello A. and Jason Yaeger, eds. (2000) ''The Archaeology of Communities.'' Routledge, New York.

Chavis, D.M., Hogge, J.H., McMillan, D.W., & Wandersman, A. 1986. "Sense of community through Brunswick's lens: A first look." Journal of Community Psychology, 14(1), 24-40.

Chipuer, H. M., & Pretty, G. M. H. (1999). A review of the Sense of Community Index: Current uses, factor structure, reliability, and further development. ''Journal of Community Psychology, 27''(6), 643-658.

Christensen, K., et al. (2003). ''Encyclopedia of Community.'' 4 volumes. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Cohen, A. P. 1985. ''The Symbolic Construction of Community.'' Routledge: New York.

Durkheim, Émile. 1950 [1895] The Rules of Sociological Method. Translated by S. A. Solovay and J. H. Mueller. New York: The Free Press.

Cox, F., J. Erlich, J. Rothman, and J. Tropman. 1970. ''Strategies of Community Organization: A Book of Readings.'' Itasca, IL: F. E. Peacock Publishers.

Effland, R. 1998. The Cultural Evolution of Civilizations Mesa Community College.

Giddens, A. 1999. “Risk and Responsibility” ''Modern Law Review'' 62(1): 1-10.

Lenski, G. 1974. ''Human Societies: An Introduction to Macrosociology.'' New York: McGraw- Hill, Inc.

Long, D.A., & Perkins, D.D. (2003). Confirmatory Factor Analysis of the Sense of Community Index and Development of a Brief SCI. ''Journal of Community Psychology, 31'', 279-296.

McMillan, D.W., & Chavis, D.M. 1986. "Sense of community: A definition and theory." American Journal of Community Psychology, 14(1), 6-23.

Nancy, Jean-Luc. ''La Communauté désœuvrée'' - philosophical questioning of the concept of community and the possibility of encountering a non-subjective concept of it

Newman, D. 2005. ''Sociology: Exploring the Architecture of Everyday Life,'' Chapter 5. "Building Identity: Socialization" Pine Forge Press. Retrieved: 2006-08-05.

Peck, M.S. 1987. ''The Different Drum: Community-Making and Peace.'' New York: Simon and Schuster. ISBN 0-684-84858-9

Perkins, D.D., Florin, P., Rich, R.C., Wandersman, A. & Chavis, D.M. (1990). Participation and the social and physical environment of residential blocks: Crime and community context. ''American Journal of Community Psychology, 18'', 83-115.

Putnam, R. D. 2000. ''Bowling Alone: The collapse and revival of American community.'' New York: Simon and Schuster

Sarason, S.B. 1974. ''The psychological sense of community: Prospects for a community psychology.'' San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

:— 1986. "Commentary: The emergence of a conceptual center." ''Journal of Community Psychology'', 14, 405-407.

Smith, M. K. 2001. Community. Encyclopedia of informal education. Last updated: January 28, 2005. Retrieved: 2006-07-15.

Tönnies, F. 1887. ''Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft,'' Leipzig: Fues's Verlag, 2nd ed. 1912, 8th edition, Leipzig: Buske, 1935; translated in 1957 as ''Community and Society.'' ISBN 0-88738-750-0

External links

Category:Types of organization

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Poverty is the state of one who lacks a certain amount of material possessions or money. Absolute poverty or destitution refers to being unable to afford basic human needs, which commonly includes clean and fresh water, nutrition, health care, education, clothing and shelter. About 1.7 billion people are estimated to live in absolute poverty today. Relative poverty refers to lacking a usual or socially acceptable level of resources or income as compared with others within a society or country.

For most of history poverty had been mostly accepted as inevitable as traditional modes of production were insufficient to give an entire population a comfortable standard of living. After the industrial revolution, mass production in factories made wealth increasingly more inexpensive and accessible. Of more importance is the modernization of agriculture, such as fertilizers, in order to provide enough yield to feed the population.

The supply of basic needs can be restricted by constraints on government services such as corruption, debt and loan conditionalities and by the brain drain of health care and educational professionals. Strategies of increasing income to make basic needs more affordable typically include welfare, accommodating business regulations and providing financial services. Today, poverty reduction is a major goal and issue for many international organizations such as the United Nations and the World Bank.

Etymology

The English word "poverty" came from Latin ''pauper'' = "poor", via Anglo-Norman povert. There are many definitions of poverty depending on the context of the situation and the views of the person giving the definition.

Measuring poverty

Definitions

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Absolute poverty

Poverty is usually measured as either absolute or relative poverty (the latter being actually an index of income inequality). Absolute poverty refers to a set standard which is consistent over time and between countries. The World Bank defines extreme poverty as living on less than US $1.25 (PPP) per day, and ''moderate poverty'' as less than $2 a day (but note that a person or family with access to subsistence resources, e.g. subsistence farmers, may have a low cash income without a correspondingly low standard of living - they are not living "on" their cash income but using it as a top up). It estimates that "in 2001, 1.1 billion people had consumption levels below $1 a day and 2.7 billion lived on less than $2 a day." A ''dollar a day'', in nations that do not use the dollar as currency, does not translate to living a day on the amount of local currency as determined by the exchange rate. Rather, it is determined by the purchasing power parity, which would look at how much local currency is needed to buy the same things that a dollar could buy in the United States. Usually, this would translate to less local currency than the exchange rate in poorer countries as the United States is a more expensive country.

Six million children die of hunger every year - 17,000 every day. Selective Primary Health Care has been shown to be one of the most efficient ways in which absolute poverty can be eradicated in comparison to Primary Health Care which has a target of treating diseases. Disease prevention is the focus of Selective Primary Health Care which puts this system on higher grounds in terms of preventing malnutrition and illness, thus putting an end to Absolute Poverty.

The proportion of the developing world's population living in extreme economic poverty fell from 28 percent in 1990 to 21 percent in 2001. Most of this improvement has occurred in East and South Asia. In East Asia the World Bank reported that "The poverty headcount rate at the $2-a-day level is estimated to have fallen to about 27 percent [in 2007], down from 29.5 percent in 2006 and 69 percent in 1990." In Sub-Saharan Africa extreme poverty went up from 41 percent in 1981 to 46 percent in 2001, which combined with growing population increased the number of people living in extreme poverty from 231 million to 318 million.

In the early 1990s some of the transition economies of Eastern Europe and Central Asia experienced a sharp drop in income. The collapse of the Soviet Union resulted in large declines in GDP per capita, of about 30 to 35% between 1990 and the trough year of 1998 (when it was at its minimum). As a result poverty rates also increased although in subsequent years as per capita incomes recovered the poverty rate dropped from 31.4% of the population to 19.6% The World Bank issued a report predicting that between 2007 and 2027 the populations of Georgia and Ukraine will decrease by 17% and 24% respectively.

World Bank data shows that the percentage of the population living in households with consumption or income per person below the poverty line has decreased in each region of the world since 1990:

! Region	! 1990	! 2002	! 2004
East Asia and Pacific	15.40%	12.33%	9.07%
Europe and Central Asia	3.60%	1.28%	0.95%
Latin America and the Caribbean	9.62%	9.08%	8.64%
Middle East and North Africa	2.08%	1.69%	1.47%
South Asia	35.04%	33.44%	30.84%
Sub-Saharan Africa	46.07%	42.63%	41.09%

Other human development indicators have also been improving. Life expectancy has greatly increased in the developing world since WWII and is starting to close the gap to the developed world. Child mortality has decreased in every developing region of the world. The proportion of the world's population living in countries where per-capita food supplies are less than 2,200 calories (9,200 kilojoules) per day decreased from 56% in the mid-1960s to below 10% by the 1990s. Similar trends can be observed for literacy, access to clean water and electricity and basic consumer items.

There are various criticisms of these measurements. Shaohua Chen and Martin Ravallion note that although "a clear trend decline in the percentage of people who are absolutely poor is evident ... with uneven progress across regions...the developing world outside China and India has seen little or no sustained progress in reducing the number of poor".

Since the world's population is increasing, a constant number living in poverty would be associated with a diminishing proportion. Looking at the percentage living on less than $1/day, and if excluding China and India, then this percentage has decreased from 31.35% to 20.70% between 1981 and 2004.

The 2007 World Bank report "Global Economic Prospects" predicts that in 2030 the number living on less than the equivalent of $1 a day will fall by half, to about 550 million. An average resident of what we used to call the Third World will live about as well as do residents of the Czech or Slovak republics today. Much of Africa will have difficulty keeping pace with the rest of the developing world and even if conditions there improve in absolute terms, the report warns, Africa in 2030 will be home to a larger proportion of the world's poorest people than it is today.

Relative poverty

Relative poverty views poverty as socially defined and dependent on social context, hence relative poverty is a measure of income inequality. Usually, relative poverty is measured as the percentage of population with income less than some fixed proportion of median income. There are several other different income inequality metrics, for example the Gini coefficient or the Theil Index.

Relative poverty measures are used as official poverty rates in several developed countries. As such these poverty statistics measure inequality rather than material deprivation or hardship. The measurements are usually based on a person's yearly income and frequently take no account of total wealth. The main poverty line used in the OECD and the European Union is based on "economic distance", a level of income set at 60% of the median household income.

Other aspects

Economic aspects of poverty focus on material needs, typically including the necessities of daily living, such as food, clothing, shelter, or safe drinking water. Poverty in this sense may be understood as a condition in which a person or community is lacking in the basic needs for a minimum standard of well-being and life, particularly as a result of a persistent lack of income.

Analysis of social aspects of poverty links conditions of scarcity to aspects of the distribution of resources and power in a society and recognizes that poverty may be a function of the diminished "capability" of people to live the kinds of lives they value. The social aspects of poverty may include lack of access to information, education, health care, or political power.

Poverty may also be understood as an aspect of unequal social status and inequitable social relationships, experienced as social exclusion, dependency, and diminished capacity to participate, or to develop meaningful connections with other people in society. Such social exclusion can be minimized through strengthened connections with the mainstream, such as through the provision of relational care to those who are experiencing poverty.

The World Bank's "Voices of the Poor," based on research with over 20,000 poor people in 23 countries, identifies a range of factors which poor people identify as part of poverty. These include:

Precarious livelihoods

Excluded locations

Physical limitations

Gender relationships

Problems in social relationships

Lack of security

Abuse by those in power

Dis-empowering institutions

Limited capabilities

Weak community organizations

David Moore, in his book ''The World Bank'', argues that some analysis of poverty reflect pejorative, sometimes racial, stereotypes of impoverished people as powerless victims and passive recipients of aid programs.

Ultra-poverty, a term apparently coined by Michael Lipton, connotes being amongst poorest of the poor in low-income countries. Lipton defined ultra-poverty as receiving less than 80 percent of minimum caloric intake whilst spending more than 80% of income on food. Alternatively a 2007 report issued by International Food Policy Research Institute defined ultra-poverty as living on less than 54 cents per day.

Characteristics

The effects of poverty may also be causes, as listed above, thus creating a "poverty cycle" operating across multiple levels, individual, local, national and global.

Health

One third of deaths - some 18 million people a year or 50,000 per day - are due to poverty-related causes: in total 270 million people, most of them women and children, have died as a result of poverty since 1990. Those living in poverty suffer disproportionately from hunger or even starvation and disease. Those living in poverty suffer lower life expectancy. According to the World Health Organization, hunger and malnutrition are the single gravest threats to the world's public health and malnutrition is by far the biggest contributor to child mortality, present in half of all cases.

Hunger

Rises in the costs of living make poor people less able to afford items. Poor people spend a greater portion of their budgets on food than richer people. As a result, poor households and those near the poverty threshold can be particularly vulnerable to increases in food prices. For example, in late 2007 increases in the price of grains led to food riots in some countries. The World Bank warned that 100 million people were at risk of sinking deeper into poverty. Threats to the supply of food may also be caused by drought and the water crisis. Intensive farming often leads to a vicious cycle of exhaustion of soil fertility and decline of agricultural yields. Approximately 40% of the world's agricultural land is seriously degraded. In Africa, if current trends of soil degradation continue, the continent might be able to feed just 25% of its population by 2025, according to UNU's Ghana-based Institute for Natural Resources in Africa. Every year nearly 11 million children living in poverty die before their fifth birthday. 1.02 billion people go to bed hungry every night.

According to the Global Hunger Index, South Asia has the highest child malnutrition rate of the world's regions. Nearly half of all Indian children are undernourished, one of the highest rates in the world and nearly double the rate of Sub-Saharan Africa. Every year, more than half a million women die in pregnancy or childbirth. Almost 90% of maternal deaths occur in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, compared to less than 1% in the developed world.

Women who have born children into poverty may not be able to nourish the children efficiently and provide adequate care in infancy. The children may also suffer from disease that has been passed down to the child through birth. Asthma and rickets are common problems children acquire when born into poverty.

Education

Research has found that there is a high risk of educational underachievement for children who are from low-income housing circumstances. This often is a process that begins in primary school for some less fortunate children. In the US educational system, these children are at a higher risk than other children for retention in their grade, special placements during the school's hours and even not completing their high school education. There are indeed many explanations for why students tend to drop out of school. For children with low resources, the risk factors are similar to excuses such as juvenile delinquency rates, higher levels of teenage pregnancy, and the economic dependency upon their low income parent or parents.

Families and society who submit low levels of investment in the education and development of less fortunate children end up with less favorable results for the children who see a life of parental employment reduction and low wages. Higher rates of early childbearing with all the connected risks to family, health and well-being are majorly important issues to address since education from preschool to high school are both identifiably meaningful in a life.

Poverty often drastically affects children's success in school. A child's "home activities, preferences, mannerisms" must align with the world and in the cases that they do not these students are at a disadvantage in the school and most importantly the classroom. Therefore, it is safe to state that children who live at or below the poverty level will have far less success educationally than children who live above the poverty line. Poor children have a great deal less healthcare and this ultimately results in many absences from the academic year. Additionally, poor children are much more likely to suffer from hunger, fatigue, irritability, headaches, ear infections, flu, and colds. These illnesses could potentially restrict a child or student's focus and concentration.

Housing

Poverty increases the risk of homelessness. Slum-dwellers, who make up a third of the world's urban population, live in a poverty no better, if not worse, than rural people, who are the traditional focus of the poverty in the developing world, according to a report by the United Nations. There are over 100 million street children worldwide.

Most of the children living in institutions around the world have a surviving parent or close relative, and they most commonly entered orphanages because of poverty. Experts and child advocates maintain that orphanages are expensive and often harm children's development by separating them from their families. It is speculated that, flush with money, orphanages are increasing and push for children to join even though demographic data show that even the poorest extended families usually take in children whose parents have died.

Violence

According to experts, many women become victims of trafficking, the most common form of which is prostitution, as a means of survival and economic desperation. Deterioration of living conditions can often compel children to abandon school in order to contribute to the family income, putting them at risk of being exploited, according to ECPAT International, an NGO designed to end the commercial sexual exploitation of children. For example, in Zimbabwe, a number of girls are turning to prostitution for food to survive because of the increasing poverty.

In one survey, 67% of children from disadvantaged inner cities said they had witnessed a serious assault, and 33% reported witnessing a homicide. 51% of fifth graders from New Orleans (median income for a household: $27,133) have been found to be victims of violence, compared to 32% in Washington, DC (mean income for a household: $40,127).

Poverty reduction

Various poverty reduction strategies are broadly categorized here based on whether they make more of the basic human needs available or increase the disposable income needed to purchase those needs. Some basic needs, such as improving access to education, may also help increase income.

Increasing the supply of basic needs

Before the industrial revolution, poverty had been mostly accepted as inevitable as economies produced little, making wealth scarce. The initial industrial revolution led to high economic growth and eliminated mass absolute poverty in what is now considered the developed world. Today, mass production of goods in places such as rapidly industrializing China has made what were once considered luxuries, such as vehicles and computers, inexpensive and thus accessible to many who were otherwise too poor to afford them. In addition to industrialization, agricultural technologies such as nitrogen fertilizers, pesticides and new irrigation methods have dramatically reduced food shortages in modern times by boosting yields past previous constraints.

Providing basic needs

Infectious diseases such as malaria and tuberculosis can perpetuate poverty by diverting health and economic resources from investment and productivity; malaria decreases GDP growth by up to 1.3% in some developing nations and AIDS decreases African growth by 0.3-1.5% annually. Nations do not necessarily need wealth to gain health. For example, Sri Lanka had a maternal mortality rate of 2% in the 1930s, higher than any nation today. It reduced it to .5-.6% in the 1950s and to .06% today while spending less each year on maternal health because it learned what worked and what did not. Cheap water filters and promoting hand washing are some of the most cost effective health interventions and can cut deaths from diarrhea and pneumonia. Knowledge on the cost effectiveness of healthcare interventions can be elusive and educational measures have been made to disseminate what works.

Strategies to provide education cost effectively include deworming children, which costs about 50 cents per child per year and reduces non-attendance from anemia, illness and malnutrition, while being only a twenty-fifth as expensive as increasing school attendance by constructing schools. A study by Oxford University shows that schoolgirl absenteeism could be cut in half by providing free sanitary towels. Also, when women are given more capabilities and opportunities, they seem more altruistic in helping the family and more likely to prioritize education.

Desirable actions such as enrolling children in school or receiving vaccinations can be encouraged by a form of aid known as Conditional Cash Transfers. In Mexico, for example, dropout rates of 16-19 year olds in rural area dropped by 20% and children gained half an inch in height. Initial fears that the program would encourage families to stay at home rather than work to collect benefits have proven to be unfounded. Instead, there is less excuse for neglectful behavior as, for example, children stopped begging on the streets instead of going to school because it could result in suspension from the program.

Removing constraints on government services

Government revenue can be diverted away from basic services by corruption, such as in Nigeria, where its leaders stole an estimated $400 billion of the country's oil revenue. Funds from aid and natural resources are often diverted into private hands and then sent to banks overseas as a result of graft. Preventive measures, according to UNODC, include requiring public officials to disclose earnings and assets and stricter rules on funding to political parties and electoral campaigns. If Western banks rejected stolen money, says a report by Global Witness, ordinary people would benefit “in a way that aid flows will never achieve”. The report asked for more action from banks as they have proved capable of stanching the flow of funds linked to terrorism and money-laundering. A report by the African Union found that more than $150 billion a year is taken from Africa through tax evasion by foreign corporations such that the poverty stricken continent is a net creditor to the rest of the world. It estimated that about 30% of sub-Saharan Africa's GDP has been moved to tax havens.

Developing countries' debt to banks and governments from richer countries are often more than a country can generate per year on profits from exports. If poor countries do not have to spend so much on debt payments, they can use the money instead for basic services such as health-care and education. For example, Zambia spent 40% of its total budget to repay foreign debt, and only 7% for basic state services in 1997. One of the proposed ways to help poor countries has been debt relief. Zambia began offering services, such as free health care even while overwhelming the health care infrastructure, because of savings that resulted from a 2005 round of debt relief.

The World Bank and the IMF, as primary holders of developing countries' debt, attach structural adjustment conditionalities to loans which generally include the elimination of state subsidies and the privatization of state services. For example, the World Bank presses poor nations to eliminate subsidies for fertilizer even while many farmers cannot afford them at market prices. In the case of Malawi, almost five million of its 13 million people used to need emergency food aid. However, after the government changed policy and subsidies for fertilizer and seed were introduced, farmers produced record-breaking corn harvests in 2006 and 2007 as production leaped to 3.4 million in 2007 from 1.2 million in 2005, making Malawi a major food exporter. In the former Soviet states, the reconfiguration of public financing in their transition to a market economy called for reduced spending on health and education, sharply increasing poverty.

A major proportion of aid from donor nations is tied, mandating that a receiving nation spend on products and expertise originating only from the donor country. For example, Eritrea is forced to spend aid money on foreign goods and services to build a network of railways even though it is cheaper to use local expertise and resources. US law requires food aid be spent on buying food at home, instead of where the hungry live, and, as a result, half of what is spent is used on transport.

Reversing brain drains

The loss of basic needs providers emigrating from impoverished countries has a damaging effect. For example, an estimated 100,000 Philippine nurses emigrated between 1994 and 2006. As of 2004, there were more Ethiopia-trained doctors living in Chicago than in Ethiopia. Proposals to mitigate the problem by the World Health Organization include compulsory government service for graduates of public medical and nursing schools and creating career-advancing programs to retain personnel.

Controlling overpopulation

Some argue that overpopulation and lack of access to birth control leads to population increase to exceed food production and other resources. The world's population is expected to reach nearly 9 billion in 2040. However, the reverse is also true, that poverty causes overpopulation as it gives women little power to control giving birth, or to have educational attainment or a career. Empowering women with better education and more control of their lives makes them more successful in bringing down rapid population growth because they have more say in family planning.

Increasing personal income

Raising farm incomes is described as the core of the antipoverty effort as three quarters of the poor today are farmers. Estimates show that growth in the agricultural productivity of small farmers is, on average, at least twice as effective in benefiting the poorest half of a country’s population as growth generated in nonagricultural sectors.

Income grants

Aid in its simplest form is a basic income grant, a form of social security periodically providing citizens with money. In pilot projects in Namibia, where such a program pays just $13 a month, people were able to pay tuition fees, raising the proportion of children going to school by 92% while child malnutrition rates fell from 42% to 10% and economic activity grew by 10%.

The famine relief model increasing used by aid groups calls for giving cash or cash vouchers to the hungry to pay local farmers instead of buying food from donor countries, often required by law, as it wastes money on transport costs.

Philosopher Thomas Pogge is a supporter of gathering funds for the poor by using a sort of Global Resources Dividend.

Economic freedoms

In Canada, it takes two days, two bureaucratic procedures, and $280 to open a business while an entrepreneur in Bolivia must pay $2,696 in fees, wait 82 business days, and go through 20 procedures to do the same. Such costly barriers favor big firms at the expense of small enterprises, where most jobs are created. Often, businesses have to bribe government officials even for routine activities, which is, in effect, a tax on business. Noted reductions in poverty in recent decades has occurred in China and India mostly as a result of the abandonment of collective farming in China and the ending of the central planning model known as the License Raj in India, where GDP grew slower in the 1970s than the preceding 100 years.

The unwillingness of governments and feudal elites to give full-fledged property rights in land to their tenants is cited as one of the chief obstacles to development. The business environment can be further worsened by the failure of governments to provide essential infrastructure.

Financial services

Another form of aid is microloans, made famous by the Grameen Bank, where small amounts of money are loaned to farmers or villages, mostly women, who can then obtain physical capital to increase their economic rewards. For example, the Thai government's People's Bank, makes loans of $100 to $300 to help farmers buy equipment or seeds, help street vendors acquire an inventory to sell, or help others set up small shops. However, microlending has been criticized for making hyperprofits off the poor even from its founder, Muhammad Yunus and in India which has seen a growing wave of defaults and suicides.

Those in poverty place overwhelming importance on having a safe place to save money, much more so than receiving loans. Also, a large part of microfinance loans are spent on products that would usually be paid by a checking or savings account. Lack of financial services, as a result of restrictive regulations, such as the requirements for banking licenses, makes it hard for even smaller microsavings programs to reach the poor. Mobile banking addresses the problem of the heavy regulation and costly maintenance of saving accounts. Mobile financial services in the developing world, ahead of the developed world in this respect, could be worth $5 billion by 2012. Safaricom’s M-Pesa launched one of the first systems where a network of agents of mostly shopkeepers, instead of bank branches, would take deposits in cash and translate these onto a virtual account on customers' phones. Cash transfers can be done between phones and issued back in cash with a small commission, making remittances safer.

Remittances

The World Bank says foreign workers sent $328 billion from richer to poorer countries last year, more than double the $120 billion in official aid flows from OECD members. India got $52 billion from its diaspora, more than it took in foreign direct investment.

Cultural factors to productivity

Cultural factors, such as discrimination of various kinds, can negatively affect productivity such as age discrimination, stereotyping, gender discrimination, racial discrimination, and caste discrimination.

Max Weber and the modernization theory suggest that cultural values could affect economic success. However, researchers have gathered evidence that suggest that values are not as deeply ingrained and that changing economic opportunities explain most of the movement into and out of poverty, as opposed to shifts in values.

Voluntary poverty

Among some individuals, poverty is considered a necessary or desirable condition, which must be embraced to reach certain spiritual, moral, or intellectual states. Poverty is often understood to be an essential element of renunciation in religions such as Buddhism (only for monks, not for lay persons) and Jainism, whilst in Roman Catholicism it is one of the evangelical counsels.

Benedict XVI distinguishes “poverty ''chosen''” (the poverty of spirit proposed by Jesus), and “poverty ''to be fought''” (unjust and imposed poverty). He considers that the moderation implied in the former favors solidarity, and is a necessary condition so as to fight effectively to eradicate the abuse of the latter.

See also

Accumulation by dispossession

Multidimensional Poverty Index

Bottom of the pyramid

2007–2008 world food price crisis

Climate change and poverty

Cycle of poverty

Development state

Diseases of poverty

Distribution of wealth

Economic development

Economic inequality

Economic Vulnerability Index

Feminization of poverty

Financial exclusion

Food security

Food vs fuel

Fuel poverty

Full employment

Great Depression

Green Revolution

Hunger

Immiserizing growth

Income disparity

Income deficit

International inequality

International Development

Life expectancy

Literacy

Migrant worker

Minimum wage

Neo-imperialism

Neoliberalism

Poor Law

Poverty reduction

Poverty threshold

Poverty trap

Rural ghetto

Shanty town

Social exclusion

Subsidized housing

Street children

Structural adjustment

Theories of poverty

Underclass

Welfare

Working poor

Nations:

Poverty by country

Least Developed Countries

Countries by fertility rate

Countries by GDP (PPP)

Countries by poverty rate

Theology:

Relational care

Sadaqah

Zakat

Organizations and campaigns

Abahlali baseMjondolo - South African Shack dwellers' organisation

Appropedia

Azafady

Brooks World Poverty Institute

Catholic Charities USA

Center for Global Development

Child Poverty Action Group

Compassion Canada

Department for International Development

End Poverty Now

Eurodad

Food First

Five Talents - Gives poverty stricken people another chance

Free the Children

Grameen Bank A micro lending bank for the poor.

Global Call to Action Against Poverty (GCAP)

Habitat for Humanity International

Harlem Children's Zone

Homeless International

17 October: UN International Day for the Eradication of Poverty (White Band Day 4)

International Food Policy Research Institute

International Fund for Agricultural Development

Islamic Development Bank

Islamic Relief

Southern Poverty Law Center

The Make Poverty History campaign

Microgiving Direct charitable giving

Mississippi Teacher Corps

ONE campaign

Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development

United Nations Millennium Campaign

United Prosperity (organisation)

U.S. Agency for International Development

World Bank

World Congress of Muslim Philanthropists

World Food Day

World Food Program

In documentary photography and film

;Authors with significant work:

Diane Arbus

Richard Avedon

Jim Goldberg

Dorothea Lange

Manuel Rivera-Ortiz

Sebastião Salgado

Tom Stone

;Significant titles:

''Born into Brothels'' (2004)

''Harlan County, USA'' (1976)

''Streetwise'' (1984)

References

Further reading

Adato, Michelle & Meinzen-Dick, Ruth, eds. Johns Hopkins University Press, [http://www.ifpri.org/publication/agricultural-research-livelihoods-and-poverty International Food Policy Research Institute">Agricultural Research, Livelihoods, and Poverty: Studies of Economic and Social Impacts in Six Countries (2007), Johns Hopkins University Press, [http://www.ifpri.org/publication/agricultural-research-livelihoods-and-poverty International Food Policy Research Institute

Anzia, Lys "Educate a Woman, You Educate a Nation" - South Africa Aims to Improve its Education for Girls WNN - Women News Network. Aug. 28, 2007.

Atkinson, Anthony. ''Poverty in Europe'' 1998

Banerjee, Abhijit & Esther Duflo, Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty (New York: PublicAffairs, 2011)

Bergmann, Barbara. "Deciding Who's Poor", Dollars & Sense, March/April 2000

Betson, David M. & Warlick, Jennifer L. "Alternative Historical Trends in Poverty." ''American Economic Review'' 88:348-51. 1998. in JSTOR

Brady, David "Rethinking the Sociological Measurement of Poverty" ''Social Forces'' 81#3 2003, pp. 715–751 Online in Project Muse. Abstract: Reviews shortcomings of the official U.S. measure; examines several theoretical and methodological advances in poverty measurement. Argues that ideal measures of poverty should: (1) measure comparative historical variation effectively; (2) be relative rather than absolute; (3) conceptualize poverty as social exclusion; (4) assess the impact of taxes, transfers, and state benefits; and (5) integrate the depth of poverty and the inequality among the poor. Next, this article evaluates sociological studies published since 1990 for their consideration of these criteria. This article advocates for three alternative poverty indices: the interval measure, the ordinal measure, and the sum of ordinals measure. Finally, using the Luxembourg Income Study, it examines the empirical patterns with these three measures, across advanced capitalist democracies from 1967 to 1997. Estimates of these poverty indices are made available.

Buhmann, Brigitte, et al. 1988. "Equivalence Scales, Well-Being, Inequality, and Poverty: Sensitivity Estimates Across Ten Countries Using the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS) Database." Review of Income and Wealth 34:115-42.

Cox, W. Michael & Alm, Richard. ''Myths of Rich and Poor'' 1999

Danziger, Sheldon H. & Weinberg, Daniel H. "The Historical Record: Trends in Family Income, Inequality, and Poverty." Pp. 18–50 in ''Confronting Poverty: Prescriptions for Change,'' edited by Sheldon H. Danziger, Gary D. Sandefur, and Daniel. H. Weinberg. Russell Sage Foundation. 1994.

Firebaugh, Glenn. "Empirics of World Income Inequality." ''American Journal of Sociology'' (2000) 104:1597-1630. in JSTOR

Frank, Ellen, ''Dr. Dollar: How Is Poverty Defined in Government Statistics?'' Dollars & Sense, January/February 2006

Gans, Herbert J., "The Uses of Poverty: The Poor Pay All", Social Policy, July/August 1971: pp. 20–24

George, Abraham, Wharton Business School Publications - Why the Fight Against Poverty is Failing: a contrarian view

Gordon, David M. ''Theories of Poverty and Underemployment: Orthodox, Radical, and Dual Labor Market Perspectives.'' 1972.

Haveman, Robert H. ''Poverty Policy and Poverty Research.'' Madison: University of Wisconsin Press 1987 ISBN 0-299-11150-4

Iceland, John ''Poverty in America: a handbook'' University of California Press, 2003

McEwan, Joanne, and Pamela Sharpe, eds. ''Accommodating Poverty: The Housing and Living Arrangements of the English Poor, c. 1600-1850'' (Palgrave Macmillan; 2010) 292 pages; scholarly studies of rural and urban poor, as well as vagrants, unmarried mothers, and almshouse dwellers.

O'Connor, Alice "Poverty Research and Policy for the Post-Welfare Era" ''Annual Review of Sociology'', 2000

Osberg, Lars & Xu, Kuan. "International Comparisons of Poverty Intensity: index decomposition and bootstrap inference." ''The Journal of Human Resources'' 2000. 35:51-81.

Paugam, Serge. "Poverty and Social Exclusion: a sociological view." Pp. 41–62 in ''The Future of European Welfare'', edited by Martin Rhodes and Yves Meny, 1998.

Philippou, Lambros (2010) "Public Space, Enlarged Mentality and Being-In-Poverty", ''Philosophical Inquiry'', Vol. 32, No. 1-2 pp. 103–115.

Pressman, Steven, ''Poverty in America: an annotated bibliography.'' Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1994 ISBN 0-8108-2833-2

Rothman, David J., (editor). ''The Almshouse Experience'' (Poverty U.S.A.: the Historical Record). New York: Arno Press, 1971. ISBN 0-405-03092-4Reprint of Report of the committee appointed by the Board of Guardians of the Poor of the City and Districts of Philadelphia to visit the cities of Baltimore, New York, Providence, Boston, and Salem (published in Philadelphia, 1827); Report of the Massachusetts General Court's Committee on Pauper Laws (published in [Boston?], 1821); and the 1824 Report of the New York Secretary of State on the relief and settlement of the poor (from the 24th annual report of the New York State Board of Charities, 1901).

Sen, Amartya ''Poverty and Famines: an essay on entitlement and deprivation''. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981

Sen, Amartya. ''Development as Freedom''. New York: Knopf, 1999

Smeeding, Timothy M., O'Higgins, Michael & Rainwater, Lee. ''Poverty, Inequality and Income Distribution in Comparative Perspective.'' Urban Institute Press 1990.

Smith, Stephen C., ''Ending Global Poverty: a guide to what works'', New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005

Triest, Robert K. "Has Poverty Gotten Worse?" ''Journal of Economic Perspectives'' 1998. 12:97-114.

Wilson, Richard & Pickett, Kate. ''The Spirit Level'', London: Allen Lane, 2009

World Bank: "Can South Asia End Poverty in a Generation?"

World Bank, "World Development Report 2004: Making Services Work For Poor People", 2004.

External links

Disease control priorities project Studies the cost effectiveness of health care interventions

Islamic Development Bank

Luxembourg Income Study Contains a wealth of data on income inequality and poverty, and hundreds of its sponsored research papers using this data.

Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development Contains reports on economic development as well as relations between rich and poor nations.

OPHI Oxford Poverty & Human Development Initiative (OPHI)] Research to advance the human development approach to poverty reduction.

Transparency International Tracks issues of government and corporate corruption around the world.

United Nations Hundres of free reports related to economic development and standards of living in countries around the world, such as the annual ''Human Development Report.''

U.S. Agency for International Development USAID is the primary U.S. government agency with the mission for aid to developing countries.

World Bank Contains hundreds of reports which can be downloaded for free, such as the annual ''World Development Report.''

World Food Program Associated with the United Nations, the World Food Program compiles hundreds of reports on hunger and food security around the world.

Category:Aid Category:Article Feedback Pilot Category:Development Category:Development economics Category:Economic development Category:Economics Category:Humanitarian aid Category:Sociology

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Coordinates	26°52′37″N52°24′14″N
name	Melinda Gates
birth name	Melinda Ann French
birth date	August 15, 1964
birth place	Dallas, Texas, U.S.
residence	Medina, Washington, U.S.
citizenship	United States
alma mater	Duke University (B.S. & M.B.A.)
occupation	Co-Chair, operator of Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, philanthropist, and formerly unit manager
spouse	Bill Gates (m. 1994)
religion	Roman Catholic
children	Jennifer Katharine Gates - (b. 1996) Rory John Gates - (b. 1999) Phoebe Adele Gates - (b. 2002)
website	Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Home Page }}

Melinda Ann French (born August 15, 1964), later known as Melinda French Gates, is an American philanthropist and wife of Bill Gates. She is the co-founder and co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and a former unit manager for several Microsoft products such as Publisher, Microsoft Bob, Encarta, and Expedia.

Childhood and career

Gates was born in Dallas, Texas to Raymond Joseph French, Jr., an engineer, and Elaine Agnes Amerland, a homemaker. Gates was raised as a Roman Catholic and attended St. Monica Catholic School, where she was the top student in her class year. She graduated as valedictorian from Ursuline Academy of Dallas in 1982. Gates earned a bachelor's degree in computer science and economics from Duke University in 1986 and an MBA from Duke's Fuqua School of Business in 1987, where she was a member of the Kappa Alpha Theta sorority.

Shortly thereafter, she joined Microsoft and participated in the development of many of Microsoft’s multimedia products including Publisher, Microsoft Bob, Encarta, and Expedia.

Awards and recognition

In December 2005, she and her husband, along with musician Bono, were named by ''Time'' as Persons of the Year. The Gates received the Spanish Prince of Asturias Award for International Cooperation on May 4, 2006 in recognition of their world impact through charitable giving.

She was ranked #40 in ''Forbes'' magazine list of the 100 Most Powerful Women in 2008, #24 in 2007, and #12 in 2006.

In November 2006, she and her husband were awarded the Order of the Aztec Eagle for their philanthropic work around the world in the areas of health and education, particularly in Mexico, and specifically in the program "Un país de lectores". On June 12, 2009, Melinda and Bill Gates received honorary degrees from the University of Cambridge. Their benefaction of $210 million in 2000 set up the Gates Cambridge Trust, which funds postgraduate scholars from outside the UK to study at the University.

Melinda Gates has also donated over 10 million dollars to her high school Ursuline Academy of Dallas. She is one of the major donors of their ''Facing the Future'' Campaign and was honored in their dedication ceremony on May 7, 2010.

Marriage and family

In 1994, she married Bill Gates in a private ceremony held in Lanai, Hawaii after the couple met at a Microsoft press event while she visited Manhattan. Shortly thereafter, she left Microsoft to focus on starting and raising her family. Her last position was Microsoft’s General Manager of Information Products. The Gates have three children: daughters Jennifer Katharine Gates (born 1996) and Phoebe Adele Gates (born 2002), and son Rory John Gates (born 1999).

Gates served as a member of Duke University's board of trustees from 1996 to 2003. Gates attends Bilderberg Group conferences and holds a seat on the board of directors of the Washington Post company. She retired from the board of Drugstore.com in August 2006 to spend more time working for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

The Gates have donated more than US$24 billion to the Foundation.

References

External links

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Melinda Gates Goes Public, ''Fortune'' magazine, January 4, 2008

Category:1964 births Category:American humanitarians Category:American philanthropists Category:American women in business Category:Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation people Category:Bill Gates Category:Fuqua School of Business alumni Category:Living people Category:Microsoft employees Category:People from Dallas, Texas

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