Medidas de pobreza e de empobrecimento

Resumo

This paper aims at showing the evolution of poverty and impoverishment
throughout the world. The quantification and the comparison of the
problem between the different points where it proliferates evolved from the
classical statistical approaches to modern indicators that evaluate the
phenomena in depth and in scope. The article affirms that for more than
half a decade the relationship between "adjustment policies" and the
impoverishment of stratums of the population of the Third World is being
discussed. It points out that the fundamental feature of the evolution of
poverty is the increase of the inequality among the poor rather than the
increase of its numbers in relative terms. Comparing impoverishment and
poverty in the Third World over the eighties the study concludes that not
only poverty has increased but also that new forms have been shaped. In
addition the paper shows that, besides the exclusion of a growing portion
of the population in some countries, poverty became more heterogeneous.
Finally the article maintains that the increasing heterogeneity of the poor
may cause greater hostility among them, including the risk of generating
violence.