Voice of Research

Poverty is an economic issue for the government, but for the poor, poverty is a social issue. Poverty as a global issue is associated not only with insufficient income or consumption but also with insufficient outcomes with respect to health, nutrition, literacy, and with deficient social relations, insecurity, low self-esteem and powerlessness. In poor economies, incomes for rural households may fluctuate during the year, according to the harvest cycle. In urban economies with large informal sectors, income flows may also be erratic. This implies a potential difficulty for households in correctly recalling their income, in which case, the information on income derived from the survey may be of low quality (Coudowel, Hentschel & Wodown, 2002). This is not to deny that poverty has close links with low income. But what about a country like India where poverty is all that the poors have and poverty is the choice they make? In this case income can neither be a measure nor be a remedy to poverty, where people neither have the urge nor the scope to earn. Again this monetary measure is unidimensional and neglects the different characteristics of households. It concentrates on anti-poverty strategies on increasing an individual's income level, rather than on investing in public services (Minujin, Delamonica, Gonzalez & Davidziuk, 2005). The objective of this paper is to throw light on the parameters of poverty other than income, which may be the cause of poverty and can provide remedial measures to eradicate the chronic disease. The paper is prepared to justify that income is not an end to measure poverty but only a means to it and to deal poverty as a social issue with a very common view, rather than dealing with it as an economic issue.