Poverty more than simply a lack of income or food

The following is an excerpt from the book Another Way to Love: Christian Social Reform and Global Poverty (2009). It is really worth reading.

What do Australians need to understand about the nature of poverty and what it is like for people to be living in poverty? How is poverty more than simply a lack of income or food?

Jayakumar Christian: The concrete expressions, or symptoms, of poverty are familiar to us all - social and economic deprivation, low income and unemployment. The causes of poverty, however, are flawed relationships. Poverty is about the oppressive relationships between the poor and the non-poor - how the poor and the social systems relate, and how the poor relate to civil society and government. Within the context of these flawed relationships, power is abused. This abuse of power is then expressed in low income, lack of food security, lack of nutrition and all those usual ways we measure poverty.

(Dr Jayakumar Christian is National Director of World Vision India. Click here for the book detials.)