Comparing Poverty in India and Uk

Comparing poverty in India and in the UK

I have focussed my essay on poverty in the UK and in India. Moore, Aiken and Chapman (2009/10) say ‘sociologists have defined poverty in two ways, absolute poverty and relative poverty.’ Absolute poverty is based on what resources are needed for a person to be able to live healthily and work efficiently, for example, food, clothes and housing. Relative poverty places poverty in relationship to the ‘normal’ expectations of society. If a person/family is unable to achieve a moderate standard of living then they are poor. I have researched development indicators and all of the statistics I used for my comparison came from ‘The CIA world factbook’ and ‘wikipedia’ online. I am going to evaluate and compare measures of population and percentages below the poverty line, Human development index, Gross Domestic Product (spent on welfare), Life Expectancy, Infant Mortality and Birth/Death rates. I have chosen these explicit indicators as they all link together, they are good for comparison and all countries measure them. These measures of poverty attempt to reflect aspects of poverty in different countries and regions and vary according to levels of development.

UK India

Population 62, 698,362 1,189,172,906

Population below poverty line 14% 25%

Human Development Index 0.849 0.519

Gross Domestic Product spent on welfare 25.9% 1.7%

Life Expectancy 80.05 years 66.8 years

Birth Rate 12.29 per 1000 20.97 per 1000

Death Rate 9.33 per 1000 7.48 per 1000

Infant Mortality Rate 4.62 per 1000 47.57 per 1000

In the UK, 14% of the population are under the relative poverty line, giving a total of 8,777,770 people who are income poor. In India the total population under the poverty line is 297,293,226. The poverty line was conceived to identify families and individuals in need of help and aid. It has been successfully used to help those below increase their standard of living. The deeper you become in poverty the more excluded you become socially. The poverty line acts to prevent this range of disadvantages that interconnect with certain groups leading to extra problems. The difference between the population under the poverty line in the UK and in India is 288,515,456; this could be down to how developed the country is. In India, due to the vast size of the country- proper infrastructure such as roads and general communications is far more expensive than in the UK.

The Human Development Index (HDI) is a composite indicator that measures three aspects of achievement in human development, a