Spatializing Poverty Primer
Defining Poverty
What is Poverty?
The answer to this question is complicated and the subject of intense debate. These debates can be summarized across three main tensions:
Absolute vs. Relative poverty
Absolute poverty means that the definition of poverty is the same everywhere while relative poverty means that the definition of poverty varies based on context.
Monetary vs. Non-Monetary poverty
Is poverty defined by the amount of income one needs to satisfy their basic needs? What should be included, absolute needs like food and shelter or should healthcare, education, markets, transportation etc. be factored in as well? How do the needs of the poor vary based on where they live (Siberia versus Sahara desert for example)?
Measured vs. Experienced poverty
There are various metrics for measuring poverty that are used by multilateral institutions. The World Bank uses the $2 a day metric to define poverty while the United Nations uses something called the Human Development Index which factors in GNI index, education index and life expectancy index.Some economists have developed something called the Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI),which tries to get capture the health, education and standard of living dimensions of poverty. According to MPI, individuals are poor if they are deprived in 33% or more of the weighted indicators.
In my research on poverty, I am concerned with the hidden aspects of poverty that are not captured by metrics and maps. In my focus groups with villagers in Morocco, I asked them to define poverty. Their responses included:
not having clean water
not being able to afford sending your kids to school
not being able to see a doctor
not having any work opportunities being landless
not having a road that leads to somewhere
not having access to paved roads
not being able to live a good life
not having enough for subsistence farming
not being able to meet basic needs
not having electricity
not having school transport
What does it mean to think about poverty in relation to geographic space or to consider the spatial dimensions of poverty?
Primarily, it involves thinking about the where of poverty — where does poverty occur and at what scale? What is the relationship between the environment and poverty? It involves location, distance, scale, patterns, temporality and other trends related to the geography of poverty. One might also think about the way to visualize poverty and the multi-dimensionality relationships between people and the environment they live in. We ask why are people poor? What are the structural relations that determine that poverty? How might their remote rural location or overcrowded slum conditions in the city relate to their poverty? What are the differences between urban poverty and rural poverty? Why might some places commonly understood or thought of as poor not show up as poor on poverty maps?
Poverty Mapping captures:
The spatial distribution of poverty
Specific geographical areas as small as villages or hamlets
Survey data, census data, welfare indicators, GIS data and estimation techniques
Why are poverty maps produced?
Comparability
Synthetic panels
Visualization
Policy implications
Poverty determinants
Interventions/Targeting Applications of Poverty Maps usually entail some form of Geographical Targeting:
Conditional Cash Transfers
Disease Mapping
Road networks
Food aid
Regional Planning
