The blog post Poverty and Disability In Uganda noted that there is a strong link between poverty and disability. It would be expected that the majority of disabled people would be in the lowest social class and have the lowest SES because disabled people are disproportionately affected by poverty. What is poverty and how can poverty be measured?
Poverty may be considered in several different ways (see Measuring Poverty):
- Economic: As access to material needs and the necessities of life like food, clothing, housing and safe drinking water. It can be measured from income or wealth. It may be understood as not having access to basic needs for a minimum standard of well-being.
- Social: Is a lack of access to education, health care, information or political power. It is expressed as unequal social relationships and as social exclusion or reduced ability to take part in society.
- Absolute: Is based on the ability to access work and resources to meet basic needs. It is defined by the world bank as income less than US$1.25 per day for extreme poverty and for moderate poverty US$2-5 per day.
- Relative: Is defined in a social context. Commonly measure as a percentage of the population with income less than the median income by a fixed proportion. Because it is socially defined relative poverty takes no account of the total wealth.
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| What does poverty look like in Uganda? |
Poverty like SES and social class has dramatic effects throughout life. Wikipedia states that some of the effects listed below might also be causes of poverty. In other words living in poverty may cause bad health as well as bad health causing poverty. Thus creating a cycle of poverty. Some of the effects of poverty are listed below:
- Health: One third of deaths – some 18 million people a year or 50,000 per day – are due to poverty-related causes. Those living in poverty suffer lower life expectancy. The reduced capability for problem solving can lead to suboptimal decisions and further perpetuate poverty. 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 making poor people less able to afford items. Poor people spend a greater portion of their budgets on food than wealthy people. As a result, poor households and those near the poverty threshold can be particularly vulnerable to increases in food prices. 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, Sub-Saharan Africa had the highest child malnutrition rate of the world's regions over the 2001-2006 period.
- Education: Research has found that there is a high risk of educational underachievement for children who are from low-income housing circumstances. Because of poverty, "Students from low-income families are 2.4 times more likely to drop out than middle-income kids, and over 10 times more likely than high-income peers to drop out".
- Participation: Poverty has been also considered a real social phenomenon reflecting more the consequences of a lack of income than the lack of income per se (Ferragina et al. 2016). According to Townsend: humans are social animals entangled in a web of relationships, which exert complex and changing pressures, as much in their consumption of goods and services as in any other aspect of their behaviour (Townsend 1979).
- Shelter: 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.
- Water and Sanitation: As of 2012, 2.5 billion people lack access to sanitation services and 15% practice open defecation.
- Electricity: Similarly, the poorest fifth receive 0.1% of the world’s lighting but pay a fifth of total spending on light, accounting for 25 to 30 percent of their income. Indoor air pollution from burning fuels kills 2 million, with almost half the deaths from pneumonia in children under 5.
- 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 to contribute to the family income, putting them at risk of being exploited.
- Personality: Max Weber and some schools of 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. Studies have shown that poverty changes the personalities of children who live in it.
- Discrimination: Cultural factors, such as discrimination of various kinds, can negatively affect productivity such as age discrimination, stereotyping, discrimination against people with physical disability, gender discrimination, racial discrimination, and caste discrimination. Women are the group suffering from the highest rate of poverty after children; 14.5% of women and 22% of children are poor in the United States.
About 67% of Ugandans are either poor or highly vulnerable to poverty, the expenditure review for Uganda 2012 by the Directorate of Social Protection in the gender ministry has revealed.Poverty is an issue affects more than two thirds of people in Uganda. It is therefore an important concern for all people with disabilities (PWDs). The cycle of poverty has a greater effect upon PWDs because it is a major risk factor for causing disability and likewise being disabled is a major cause of poverty. It is possible to conclude that more than two thirds of Uganda's 5,625,000 (see Number of Persons With Disabilities in Uganda), that is more than 3,768,750 PWDs are affected by poverty. Poverty is a major issue for PWDs that should be urgently addressed.
Dr. Fred Matovu, a senior lecturer of economics at Makerere University, who participated in the review, said the study was aimed at establishing the number of Ugandans who require social protection due to their susceptibility to poverty.
Matovu said the 67% represented both Ugandans who spend below the poverty line of $ 1.20 (about sh3,170) per day and those who are below twice the poverty line, $2.40 (about sh6,340) per day.
“According to the World Bank, even those who are below twice the poverty line are likely to fall back into poverty,” Matovu explained.
Severity of the matter: Going by the United Nation’s Fund for Population Activities (UNFPA), Uganda currently has 34.5 million people, meaning about 23.1 million are prone to poverty, and about 8.4 million of them (about 24.5%) are trapped in absolute poverty.
Matovu was speaking last week at Makerere University at the release of the report he co-investigated with Dr. Patrick Birungi of the National Planning Authority.
The study sampled 1,496 households in the districts of Moroto, Dokolo and Masindi. The two-year study was funded by the International Development Research Centre. Birungi noted that the research was also aimed at establishing the shocks and risks faced by vulnerable groups in Uganda, coping mechanisms used to address the risks and the role of formal and informal social protection systems in addressing the shocks.
Findings: Through literature reviews, focus group discussions, structured household interviews and stakeholder consultations, it emerged that social protection mechanisms are central to protecting and uplifting the poor and vulnerable communities to a level where they can achieve their full productivity potential.
However, it also emerged that, most of the existing social protection initiatives are inadequate in scope and coverage and in many cases do not benefit vulnerable groups. Birungi noted that there are many informal but often undocumented social protection initiatives such as remittances, community social insurance schemes, rotating savings and credit schemes, community food granary and health insurance initiatives.
Drought and floods and economic shocks such as high prices for goods and inputs and low prices of farm produce are the most reported risks. Most households, according to the study, responded to shocks by depleting assets and savings, but were less reliant on external assistance, thereby worsening their vulnerabilities.
The way forward: Providing school meals for children significantly promotes education outcomes by improving enrolment, school attendance and scholastic materials, but lack of scholastic materials posed a significant barrier to these gains, said the report.
The report also noted that about 53% of women had received financial assistance from social protection type of initiatives to start and run businesses. The report recommended that the Government implements a comprehensive national school feeding programme to improve primary school enrollment and regular attendance and reduce dropout rates.
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