Photo credit: Youth Off The Streets Australia
In February 2024, the Australian Parliament published a report entitled “The Extent and Nature of Poverty in Australia”. This report sheds light on the levels, realities, drivers and impacts of poverty within the country and provides, among other things, recommendations for poverty eradication. The Parliament’s efforts are commendable, given the well-known fact in poverty studies that success in poverty eradication is significantly impeded by a lack of understanding of poverty; as argued in scholarly articles found here and here, for example. Is diagnosis not, after all, the key to successfully treating an ailment? It certainly is! While reading this report in order to learn about poverty in a country of plenty, I came to the following conclusions about poverty in general:
Poverty is indeed cruel and should be uprooted from modern society. The Australian Parliament Poverty Report begins by citing the Catholic Archdiocese of Sydney’s poignant observation that:
“Poverty is cruel. It creates the conditions that lead to degradation and exploitation as it insinuates itself in intergenerational trauma and humiliation. Families and communities living within its grip report feelings of powerlessness, hopelessness and despair…”
This quote echoes the findings of the World Bank global study entitled ‘Voices of the Poor’, in which one poor woman from Moldova lamented:
“Poverty is pain; it feels like a disease. It attacks a person not only materially but also morally. It eats away one’s dignity and drives one into total despair.”
As highlighted in the Australian Parliament Poverty Report, poverty is having significant and long-lasting effects on the lives of people in Australia, especially women, children, youth, single parents and First Nations Peoples (Indigenous Australians). Where child poverty in the country is concerned, the report includes another poignant quote:
“…We know that growing up in poverty can limit children’s chances of thriving at school, which in turn affects their ability to reach their full potential and limits their overall life outcomes, continuing the cycle of disadvantage. Young people who do not complete their education, enter the labour market, or receive support to recover from past trauma, can suffer long-term psychological, social, and economic harm…They have a greater likelihood of continuing to live on low incomes into adulthood and suffer poor mental health…”
The cruelty of poverty cited in the Australian Poverty Report—as well as that observed in various poverty studies and my interactions with people living in poverty in different countries—provides sufficient evidence for the need to uproot poverty from modern society. I firmly believe in this, and I have shared my thoughts on what it takes to achieve, and not achieve, poverty eradication here, here and here.
Poverty is a multifaceted and intricate phenomenon that cannot and should not, be reduced to a single denominator or dimension, as we argue in a scholarly article found here and as highlighted by Robert Chambers in his ‘Provocation for Development’ book. The Australian Poverty Report reveals how poverty is affecting all aspects of the lives of adults, youths and children living in poverty. It states that:
“The committee received evidence about the negative impacts poverty has on physical and mental health, including inactivity, dietary issues, chronic health conditions, and mental illnesses. Stories were told of how people are unable to seek healthcare or pay for medicines due to their lack of resources, leading to acute and long-term health conditions and poor well-being. It also heard how the constant financial stress and hardship increased risks of depression, anxiety, and suicidal behaviour and ideation.”
As the report reveals, all the poverty dimensions that the poor in Australia experience are interconnected and mutually reinforcing, highlighting the complex nature of poverty. It is important to note, however, that this phenomenon is not peculiar to Australia but common the world over. We found similar results in our study of peri-urban poverty or quality of life in Zimbabwe shared here and here, for example.
Poverty knows no bounds; it is also a pressing issue in wealthy countries. According to the Australian Parliament Poverty Report, more than 3 million Australians live in poverty, which affects 16.6% of Australian children. As already mentioned, this is not limited to Australia. In the United States of America, for example, 37.9 million Americans were poor in 2022. Moreover, in 2022, 14.4 million people in Britain, including 3 out of 10 children, were living in poverty. In Switzerland, too, poverty is also a common phenomenon, as reported here and here.
The world has finally awakened to the stark reality that poverty knows no bounds. Sustainable Development Goal 1 – which aims to eradicate poverty everywhere, irrespective of the country’s economic status – attests to this. In response to this, some affluent countries such as Brunei Darussalam (as I blogged here) and Australia are no longer treating the eradication of poverty as an afterthought.
The extent and nature of poverty in wealthy countries could be greater than what we currently perceive to be. As I argued in a scholarly article found here, how we measure and conceptualise poverty is of the utmost importance: flawed poverty measures and worldviews yield inaccurate knowledge of the level and nature of poverty in society. Australia, as the report acknowledges, does not have a national poverty definition. The over 3 million people living in poverty in Australia were, as explained in the report, determined using 50% of the median income measure. A ‘percentage (50 or 60%) of the median income’ is how poverty is usually measured in rich countries as seen here and here, for example. Measuring poverty this way has an important limitation. It cannot, as explained in a scholarly article found here, give a true and accurate reflection of the extent and nature of poverty, given that poverty is multidimensional and complex. This, and the detailed description of the lived experiences of poverty of Australians, may well have influenced the Australian Parliament to recognise the need to have an official poverty definition.
Child poverty is costing countries dearly: The issue of child poverty has become a pressing global concern, since the majority (50%) of the over a billion multidimensionally poor people worldwide are children, as reported here. As the Australian Poverty Report states:
“Due to poverty, many children have developed, and continue to develop, far from their full potential. As a result of child poverty, it is likely that we have foregone the benefits of many doctors, engineers, artists, leaders, inventors and individuals who could have solved climate change or cancer, and inspired generations of Australians if only they were given the opportunity to maximise their potential rather than being constrained by their experience of poverty.”
This implies that the world is destined to suffer significant losses in human capital as it confronts defining challenges such as poverty and climate change. The situation could be relatively more grave in poor countries, which have a high incidence of poverty and limited resources to fight poverty.
So, dear readers, these are my observations about poverty in general based on the Australian Parliament Poverty Report, which I found to be informative and essential for anyone interested in poverty, especially in affluent countries.
Blessing Gweshengwe PhD 