Extended abstract
Introduction: Poverty is an undesirable socio-economic phenomenon that endangers the political stability, social solidarity, and mental health of the different sections of society. Poverty is mostly related to material needs, which arise due to insufficient tools available to meet the minimum needs for food, housing, and health. According to the Asian Development Bank, poverty is the deprivation of the assets and opportunities that everyone deserves. However, poverty is a multidimensional phenomenon, and this feature makes it difficult to recognize. There are several definitions of poverty, all of which emphasize a kind of deprivation of the normal possibilities of life. By identifying the patterns of poverty, instead of prejudging the suitable economic and social policies to combat poverty, we can explain the appropriate and effective policy on poverty at the community level in accordance with the nature of these patterns.
Sen (1985) stated that poverty is not just a one-dimensional phenomenon that can be defined as a lack of income. In the literature, the various dimensions of poverty have been significantly considered and a multidimensional approach to poverty has been used. This approach is capability-based and more comprehensive than the income-based approach, in which instead of measuring poverty using the income criterion as a unique welfare indicator, the structure of poverty is expressed as a reflection of human failure to objectify capabilities in various dimensions of welfare. In this context, each person has several capabilities that show different dimensions of his welfare. If for a person, the level of utilization of a trait is less than the threshold value, that person behaves like a poor person in that trait. In this state, the person is experiencing a superficial level of failure in one aspect of life. Thus, if a person is poor in one dimension, this person is considered poor and his level of poverty is an increasing function of his failures in various aspects of life. A review of previous studies shows that no study has been conducted to assess poverty indicators in government-sponsored households. Therefore, the present study was conducted with the aim of helping policy-making and reducing the income and poverty gap, as well as targeting government policies to support households. In the present study, with a multidimensional approach to poverty (including educational poverty, housing poverty, food poverty, health, and income poverty), the vulnerability of government-supported households in Iran were investigated. For this purpose, the expenditure information of government-supported households in 2017 was the basis of the study.
Method: In this study, in order to use the multidimensional approach of poverty-based capabilities in poverty assessment among government-supported households, five dimensions of poverty including income poverty, health poverty, food poverty, education poverty, and housing poverty were investigated. In the income dimension of poverty, the ratio of total expenditures to household income was used. In the health poverty dimension, the quality of financial management was considered as an indicator. In the food poverty dimension, following the Ravallion (1992), the food poverty index was employed. In the educational poverty dimension, information literacy indicators and in the housing dimension, the most important appropriate housing indicators including housing security, sewerage system index, facilities index, and density index were used.
Findings: According to the results, 75.09% of the households in the current study have no income poverty and 24.09% of them suffer from income poverty. Also, the poverty gap among households is on average equal to 1.32 percent. According to calculations, 63.039 percent of households lack health poverty. Therefore, 36.961% of households suffer from poor health. The quality and depth of health poverty in the study population was such that the poverty gap in this dimension of poverty of supported households is equal to 0.149 percent. On the other hand, the limit of 12 to 30 percent has the largest share of surveyed households with poor health. Thus, health poverty, although covers nearly a quarter of supported households, it has low depth. Moreover, nearly 47% of the households are below the food poverty line. This means that food expenditures for this group of households are defined below the threshold. Calculations showed that 38.87% of households suffer from educational poverty in the real educational index. Also, the gap of educational poverty in the index of real education is equal to 39.55%. High poverty rate has been observed in the indicators of facilities, lack of proper access of households to facilities and welfare in residential units.
Discussion: Comparing the number of households without income poverty and the number of households without health poverty, it can be seen that health poverty is less prevalent among the households than income poverty. The occurrence of educational poverty in the households was due to the deprivation of this community of proper access to facilities and equipment needed to accept and use the information. In terms of income poverty, if an average monthly income of 994,248 Rials is considered for each person, income poverty in the studied households will be completely eliminated. Also, in the field of health, the average need for assistance is estimated at about 783.850 thousand Rials per month for each of the households. In terms of depth and quality of dominance of different dimensions of poverty among the studied households, housing poverty has the largest poverty gap, followed by education poverty with a poverty gap of nearly 40%. In summary, the poverty gap in income and health dimensions in this study is very low compared to the mentioned dimensions. In the dimension of food poverty, the results show that although universal food subsidies are an effective policy to reduce relative food poverty, but this policy is not able to curb food poverty in general. According to the results, food poverty is still one of the most important dimensions of poverty. Therefore, poverty reduction requires the adoption and formulation of a policy-support in which poverty in its various dimensions is considered in the form of a comprehensive system. In this policy support, items such as focusing on providing physical security of housing units through renovation and retrofitting of housing units, making the necessary arrangements to insure the housing unit to ensure the spiritual security of housing, creating appropriate incentives to encourage households to increase skills and continue higher education and the provision of facilities for more households to receive income support can be considered.
Ethical considerations Authors Contribution
All of four authors were involved in writing this article.
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In order to publish the article, it has not received direct or indirect financial support from any organization.
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All of data has gathered with participants’ prior consent, remaining anonymous. In addition, we have obeyed all of research principles including piracy, manipulation etc.