These factors are the determinants of an individuals’ quality of life. To others, if a person is hungry, insecure and powerless, he is poor. According to Mollie Orshansky, a statistician and economist who in the 1960s developed the federal poverty line, a measurement that shaped decades of social policy and welfare programs, “to be poor is to be deprived of those goods and services and pleasures which others around us take for granted.”
A Washington DC-based think tank, the Economic Policy Institute, which is involved in broadening the public debate about strategies to achieve a prosperous life points out that a family with a single wage earner with three children has to make at least $14 per hour to secure the basic necessities of life. Those making below $14 are poor, struggling hard to survive. Interestingly, there are about a billion people in the least developed countries, who survive on less than a dollar a day. The poor in advanced countries are different than the poor in least developed countries.
Given the dramatic increase in urban populations, the rise of squatter settlements and slums and the increasing number of unserviced areas, Nepal’s urban poor are under a major threat.
Even in the US, many elderly peoples’ income is placed technically above the official poverty line. However, their actual living conditions are poor. This has happened largely because of the official calculation using the same old formula developed by Mollie in the 1960s. In the US, the amount a family spends on food has dropped significantly since the 1960s, from 30 percent to 12 percent of total income today. The number of elderly Americans living in poverty is over 10 percent. If out-of-pocket health care costs are also considered, about 19.3 per cent elderly Americans can be classified as poor.
According to the US Census Bureau, in 1990, 62 percent of “poor” households owned a car while 14 percent had two or more cars. About 22,000 “poor” households had heated swimming pools or Jacuzzis and 38 percent of these poor owned a house. Are these poor comparable to the global poor living on less than a dollar a day? What lessons should development partners learn while designing poverty reduction strategy papers?
There is an increasing realization in South Asia that the percentage of the population living in urban centers is increasing, while urban poverty is declining much slower than rural poverty. South Asia’s four mega cities are experiencing a difficult trend. For instance, according to a report, about 70 to 90 of every 100 new households established in Mumbai, Kolkata, Karachi and Delhi during the second half of 1980s were located in slums. The management of slums is a necessary condition to maintain the unmanageable balance of growth of urban population.
The UN reports that the lives in Nepal’s cities are more fragile than in rural areas. Given the dramatic increase in urban populations, the rise of squatter settlements and slums and the increasing number of unserviced areas, Nepal’s urban poor are under a major threat. As urban poverty is multi-faceted, adequate income and assets, availability of housing facilities, access to public infrastructure and basic services, safety net provisions and human rights have become a distant dream to Nepal’s voiceless and powerless populations.
The table shows the growth of urban populations beginning in 1950 through 2005. The estimates for 2015 and 2030 are more alarming.
| Year | 1950 | 1960 | 1970 | 1980 | 1990 | 2000 | 2005 | 2015 (prognosis) | 2030 (prognosis) |
| Urban Population (Percent) | 2.30 | 3.10 | 3.90 | 6.50 | 8.90 | 13.70 | 15.80 | 20.50 | 29.40 |
In 2005, the population of Kathmandu, Patan and Bhaktapur was recorded at 960,000, 250,000, and 165,000 respectively, taking the total population of these three districts to 1,375,000. In all likelihood, the Population Census of 2011 will reveal and alarming growth of urban population, thus posing a great challenge to urban planners. The time has come to seriously look into the likely threats from rising urban populations.
To conclude, we should assess the efficacy of selected African policy measures to combat urban poverty in Nepal. The task of initiating realistic poverty reduction policies should include assessing the magnitude of urban poverty, examining its impact on individual household members, particularly the vulnerable (children, women, and the elderly), considering the structural factors that underlie its severity, examining the functional factors that determine the coping ability of the urban poor and evaluating the capacity of state and international donor agencies to effectively reduce its severity and scope.
bishwambher@yahoo.com
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