Relative Deprivation and Social Groups

The concept of deprivation originated from Runciman’s theory of relative deprivation which was proposed in 1966. This theory defines relative deprivation as the degree of deprivation inherent in not having X as an increasing function of the proportion of persons in society who have X . It implies that people make comparisons of their economic status with others’, and they feel some sense of deprivation when they find that they are worse off than others in income (or consumption) or other possessions such as assets. Other than income (or consumption), deprivation can also be measured in terms of different dimensions of living standards, such as lack of access to education, health, and other basic services. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.