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When we are speaking of whether a country is well developed or not, Human Development Index (HDI) is always be mentioned while Human Poverty Index (HPI) rarely appears in papers. As a matter of fact, this two indexes should be measured together but not separately. Usually, countries with relatively higher poverty level tend to have lower values in HDI, yet the average values in HDI is not sufficiently enough to reveal the actual condition of the poor class hence HPI comes up with this consideration, which is not a commonly used index. Thus, the ideal outcome should be high HDI and low HPI. Added to above, one thing that has drawn world concern is myriads of high HDI countries (affluent city) has resulted in high HPI as well which the poverty scale is not been narrowed but the rich get wealthier. As well as taking HPI into account, Amartya Sen (1992) suggested that poverty should be measured by capability approach but not just income lowness, this approach has been applied into economics concept with add and modified the index that published in UNESCO such as Gender related development index (GDI). And therefore, in the following, this essay is aimed at doing a discussion on the difficulties of anti-poverty and it is divided into two main parts which are the challenges of anti-poverty that are facing by worldwide and Hong Kong respectively by using capability approach.
Sens (1992) recommended that poverty should also be measured with capability rather than simply income lowness. He emphasises on capability and functionings while capability set is determined by 3 types of conversion factors which are personal, social and environmental. Capability set provided a range of choice for people to achieve. A framework is shown below:
With reference to the data in World Bank by 2015, international poverty line (IPL) is updated to USD $1.9 a day and replaced the data of USD $1.25 per day figure as of 2005. People earn under $1.25 a day can be determined to be absolute poverty. Base on the most recent data, it is estimated that there are 10.7% of people in world are living under international poverty threshold which means about 767 million people are still suffering from extreme poverty. Thought the world poverty rate is significantly reducing in all region, the progress has been uneven. There is a 25% in decline of absolute poverty while this huge drop is remarkably due to China and Indonesia – the poverty rate of China largely fell from 85% to 15.9% during 2005 to 2015, more than 600 million mainlanders has gotten rid of poverty and Indonesia has deducted 37 million poor – notwithstanding, without the contribution of China, poverty rate dropped only by about 10% which shown that the situation is not satisfy improved. 96% of poor that live under International Poverty Line focus in Sub-Saharan Africa (Poverty Around The World — Global Issues, 2016). The number of poor has solely fell by 4 million while there are 389 million people living in poverty and it is even more than all other countries combined. Furthermore, people who live in poor context and rural area are always the vast majority of global poor, who are not well educated and usually work in agriculture sectors (Wong, n.d.). Education, healthcare, safety, etc. are still remaining elusive for them. The progress of people to lift out of poverty is often provisional, their hard-won gains are threatened by many aspects such as economic shocks, food insecurity and climate change which push them back into poverty again.
In order to tackle poverty, as a first step, capability failure should be embarked and reduced. Sen (1992) proposed that all poverty problems mentioned above are caused by capability failure instead of just income lowness. Since there are 3 factors that affect capability set, capability failure can also be divided into 3 main reasons which are personal, social and environmental (Nambiar, 2010).
In terms of personal conversion factors, it is actually a congenital component that hard to change such as physical condition and intelligence. People can strengthen their ability if they wish to enrich their capability set.
For those developed/high HDI country, problems are usually induced by social conversion factor. Developed country is able to provide better environmental conversion factors for its citizens but some social conversion factors have hindered their achievements. Public policy usually is the main reason that induces capability failure. For example, gender inequality is a common issue in India which the patriarchal society tend to offer men job opportunity but not for women. Hence capability set of India women is smaller than India men. Women have to work harder to reach the same functionings with man.
For those people in third world country, their capability failure is mostly caused by environmental conversion factors. These country is not able to provide basic needs for citizens such as clean water and food, not to mention hygiene and education. Tons of people who is living in slum have to worry about their survival and living standard. The capability set provided by these countries would not be as large as developed country did. For instance, multitudes of Africa citizens do not have a job, do not have food and suffering from hunger, disaster, disease, etc., their capability set is relatively smaller than other countries can provide which induced other social and personal conversion factors as well, hence people are in the poverty cycle that cannot escape from it.
According to the Hong Kong poverty report in 2015, it is shown that there are 1.34 million of HK people live under poverty line, which means there are 20000 more people live under the poverty threshold from 2014. This is the highest number since 2009. The poverty rate is raised from 19.6% to 19.7% (Fosu, 2016). HK is also well-known that having a high Gini Index. On top of it, working poor becomes more widespread. As of 2015, there are 182000 working poor families in HK, the total number of people living in these household has reached 622300. There are 0.53 million of females living under poverty which is about 14.9% and this percentage is much higher than the males (黃碩紅, 2016). Many people cannot afford a house rent in HK and not to mention to buy a flat. Thought HK government has provided subsidies to people in need but not much of them is approved.
The most evident capability failure of Hong Kong would be public policy inequality which has narrowed the capability set of capable persons. Imagine a situation that there are Citizen A and B who is beyond and under the poverty line respectively by income but the result is in contrast when we measure them by capability, due to subsidies and expenses which is kind of social conversion factors.
Regarding to above official poverty measurement (OPM), it is obvious that citizen A has tried hard to reduce the gap between capability and functionings. Meanwhile, citizen B can live beyond the poverty line since there are subsidies. And hence, poverty problem in HK is just getting much more serious as government do not have any all-round solutions to deal with the “middle class” – those cannot gain any subsidy from government but earn not much enough for living. Then this kind of economic inequality derives its sub-units such as gender inequality and health inequality. Hence the capability cannot be enriched for HK citizens to choose to achieve. Policy should be revised in a bid to solve poverty problems and combat people who squander public money. All revised policy should also in transparency in order to draw public awareness.
HK did much better in environmental aspect for enlarging people’s capability, nevertheless, the main problem of housing has not been coped for two decades. Safety and stable living environment are basic needs of human with regards to Maslow’s theory while HK government cannot satisfy citizens needs in properties. The property price keep on increasing that 80% of HK citizens cannot afford it (Fosu, 2016). Public housing is in craving but the government neglected the concern of people. When people do not feel safe and find difficulty to have a home in HK, the capability set is lessened which has disappointed the public. The government should tackle it brooks no delay in order to widen HKers capability set so as to reach more functionings for solving poverty issue. It is no wonder that build more public housing is one of the way, but there should be more regulations on property speculation.
Thought setbacks of anti-poverty are challenging, the larger capability set people have, the choicer people can choose for their worthy life. In long term, the higher economic growth. Economic activity should be human oriented instead of money oriented. Human is the largest asset to bring along business activity and education is always the best way to tackle to poverty problems. Country should not only concentrate on increasing GDP, as growth in GDP does not mean to have growth in quality. Policy establishment need to emphasis on freedom and ability extension. Myriads of not mentioned inequalities such as rural and urban are inequality should be tackled as soon as possible. Economic structure, political structure and culture are also some other elements that influence capability set as external factor. By increasing people literacy rate, health status and freedom for enhancing people’s quality of life, the outcome of their contribution is much more fruitful.
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