JOHANNESBURG: The scourge of chronic poverty in Africa is being redefined in new surveys and more sophisticated analyses that will help policymakers understand the root causes for constantly impoverished people, and plan effective remedies.

No longer are jobs and income looked at as the sole criteria for determining poverty and predicting changes in personal and family fortunes. A holistic approach is now applied by social scientists studying chronic poverty, which considers education levels, the effectiveness of social services, political freedoms and land policies among other factors.

“Chronic poverty is now defined as persistent poverty whose duration is five or more years, and is measured by a multi-dimensional approach that considers more than income and consumption,” says Mike Armstrong, a sociologist with the University of Swaziland.

A report issued by the Southern African Regional Poverty Network (SARPSN) recently noted, “It is now widely accepted that poverty includes deprivation in a range of capabilities, such as education, health, and human and civil rights.”

However, the SARPSN report noted, most of the data for developing countries only measures income and consumption poverty, which is inadequate to predict transitions into and out of poverty.

The addition of human and civil rights, or the lack thereof, as a factor in poverty has implications for authoritarian regimes in Africa, and gives support for advocates of democracy on the continent. The approach is along the lines of economist Amartya Sen, who prescribed democracy to improve the economies of Africa’s developing nations.

Sen won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1998 for establishing the link between elections, a free press and food security, because politicians elected by popular majority and monitored by media scrutiny are more likely to create policies that averted famine.

Sen, an Indian, noted that since independence in 1947 his populous but democratic country had never experienced famine, despite wars and crop failures.

David Hulme, director of the Chronic Poverty Research Centre in South Africa, conducted a study that found only the totality of an individual’s “assets” can predict how a person will fare against economic shocks, and how effectively he or she can “bounce back.”

“These assets include human assets such as health and education, social and political networks, as well as material assets,” wrote Hulme. Africans with AIDS, whatever their income, are more vulnerable to poverty, and less capable of absorbing economic shocks, such as loss of employment, or the effect of natural disasters or social upheavals.

Just as important as income for predicting chronic poverty are such social factors as gender discrimination, which inhibits women from working their way out of poverty, residency in remote rural or violent inner-urban areas, and educational levels, a study by the Chronic Poverty Research Centre showed.

For instance, surveys in Botswana and Lesotho have found people are capable of withstanding economic shocks, allowing them to climb out of poverty or, when shocks occur, resist backsliding into poverty, in proportion to their education level. Learning is therefore an “asset” as important as a bank account or land ownership.

“Nevertheless, studies in South Africa show that the benefits are not automatic — for example, education as an asset becomes unimportant if jobs are not available,” the SARPN report noted.

Along these lines, some poverty analysts have concluded that Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe’s land redistribution scheme will not automatically reduce poverty. Land is an asset, but will not alone guarantee financial gain if divorced from knowledge of how to gainfully exploit the land, or in a political atmosphere where the farmers’ human rights are suppressed.

“Farmers need a democratic system to press government to deliver on things they need, which they cannot do in an autocratic and unaccountable system,” observed sociologist Armstrong.

The aim of studies into poverty analysis is to improve knowledge in the field to guide governments and non-governmental organizations in devising more effective programmes. One indication of the work to be done is a lack of definition in what constitutes poverty. SARPN admits that there is no precise number for chronically impoverished people in the world. The number has been put variously at 450 million to 900 million worldwide.

In 2000, it was estimated that almost 200 million people in sub-Saharan Africa, fully a third of the total population, go to bed hungry and 31 million African children under the age of five are malnourished.

Redefining poverty in developing African countries is affecting legislation, such as minimum wage restructuring in South Africa, and challenging old assumptions, such as the Zimbabwe government’s belief that granting land to landless people will automatically raise them out of poverty. The inability of such farms to be productive has been blamed on lack of capitalization and agricultural instruction, and the reluctance of autocratic authorities to listen to people’s needs.

Law enforcement also plays a role in reducing chronic poverty, and is needed to reduce violence that may eliminate a family breadwinner, and criminal activity that can deprive a struggling family of hard-earned assets.—Dawn/The InterPress News Service.