{"title":"Poverty in Jordan","authors":"Maha Dawas","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3162257","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Poverty is a complex phenomenon with diverse economic and social dimensions. The concept of poverty differs according to countries, cultures and times. However, it is agreed that poverty is simply the inability to provide the minimum socially required and desired standard of living. It is the state of financial denial, whose features include low consumption of food in terms of quality and quantity, poor health, low educational level and housing circumstances, denial of the ability to purchase durable goods and other financial assets, and lack of reserve or security to face difficult cases such as illness, handicap, unemployment, disasters and crises. The importance of poverty data and measurement methods lies in raising the issue of poverty to gain support in order to confront this problem, to identify the impacts of state policies, the external influences and other factors. We should explore the situation before proceeding to implement the poverty-related programs, monitor the evolution of poverty - particularly with regard to the effects of policies and programs to alleviate poverty - and prepare reports on poverty measurement and evaluation of its features, reports on achieving the Sustainable Development Goals and the reports on Human Development. The Household Income and Expenditure Survey is considered to be the optimal survey and the main source for measuring poverty indicators according to the international methodology issued by the World Bank. If the definition of poverty is important, then measuring it is no less important, so that poverty alleviation policy makers can identify the priorities and necessary programs to implement these policies and consequently guarantee that these programs are accessible by those who deserve them – i.e. targeting the poor. It is necessary for poverty studies to identify who are the poor, their location, their relative size and the depth and severity of suffering from poverty. This requires poverty criteria and measurement tools on the basis of which the poor are diagnosed, the size of poverty is measured, and the basic characteristics of the poor are identified, in addition to their geographic distribution, their demographic characteristics, their educational levels, their economic activities, and their housing, health and food circumstances. According to the 2010 results, the population of the poor was specified as those whose per capita expenditure is less than the absolute poverty line of JD.814 per year. Thus, the poverty ratio in Jordan was 14.4% for 2010. Also the results show that the poverty gap ratio was 3.6% at the Kingdom’s level. Finally, the severity of poverty at the level of the Kingdom was 1.21%.","PeriodicalId":350026,"journal":{"name":"ERN: Human Development in Developing Economies (Topic)","volume":"9 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0000,"publicationDate":"2017-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"2","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"ERN: Human Development in Developing Economies (Topic)","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3162257","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"","JCRName":"","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 2
Abstract
Poverty is a complex phenomenon with diverse economic and social dimensions. The concept of poverty differs according to countries, cultures and times. However, it is agreed that poverty is simply the inability to provide the minimum socially required and desired standard of living. It is the state of financial denial, whose features include low consumption of food in terms of quality and quantity, poor health, low educational level and housing circumstances, denial of the ability to purchase durable goods and other financial assets, and lack of reserve or security to face difficult cases such as illness, handicap, unemployment, disasters and crises. The importance of poverty data and measurement methods lies in raising the issue of poverty to gain support in order to confront this problem, to identify the impacts of state policies, the external influences and other factors. We should explore the situation before proceeding to implement the poverty-related programs, monitor the evolution of poverty - particularly with regard to the effects of policies and programs to alleviate poverty - and prepare reports on poverty measurement and evaluation of its features, reports on achieving the Sustainable Development Goals and the reports on Human Development. The Household Income and Expenditure Survey is considered to be the optimal survey and the main source for measuring poverty indicators according to the international methodology issued by the World Bank. If the definition of poverty is important, then measuring it is no less important, so that poverty alleviation policy makers can identify the priorities and necessary programs to implement these policies and consequently guarantee that these programs are accessible by those who deserve them – i.e. targeting the poor. It is necessary for poverty studies to identify who are the poor, their location, their relative size and the depth and severity of suffering from poverty. This requires poverty criteria and measurement tools on the basis of which the poor are diagnosed, the size of poverty is measured, and the basic characteristics of the poor are identified, in addition to their geographic distribution, their demographic characteristics, their educational levels, their economic activities, and their housing, health and food circumstances. According to the 2010 results, the population of the poor was specified as those whose per capita expenditure is less than the absolute poverty line of JD.814 per year. Thus, the poverty ratio in Jordan was 14.4% for 2010. Also the results show that the poverty gap ratio was 3.6% at the Kingdom’s level. Finally, the severity of poverty at the level of the Kingdom was 1.21%.