Question

write and compare the basic definitions of Max Weber’s term life chances, absolute poverty, relative poverty, and subjective poverty. Describe how life chances change from one type of poverty to the next. Who/where around the world is most likely to experience these types of poverty? Why? Provide descriptions of where these types of poverty are found worldwide and what social issues contribute to them.  

Answer 1

Max Weber used the term life chances to describe the opportunities to increase one’s position in the social class structure. There are various categories that afffect life chances includes social class one is born into depending upon the area, Lifestyle, race, location, age and gender. For eg, compare a child born in a wealthy family than a child born in a poor famuly the child born in wealthy family will have good lifestyle, education, class, status and power. Whereas a child born in a poor family will likely attend underfunded public schools and watch his or her parents struggle economically to find sustainable work and obtain health care. More than likely, he or she will experience racism from a very young age.

Relative poverty - Relative poverty is a state of living where people can afford necessities but are unable to meet their society’s average standard of living.

Absolute poverty - people lack even basic needs in absolute poverty such as food, clean water, safe housing and access to health care. When someone lives on less than $1.25 a day then they are defined under absolute poverty by word bank.

Subjective poverty - It describes poverty that is composed of many dimensions; it is subjectively present when your actual income does not meet your expectations and perceptions. With the concept of subjective poverty, the poor themselves have a greater say in recognizing when poverty is present. In short, subjective poverty has more to do with how a person or a family defines themselves.

Life chances changes from one type of poverty to another, this is not a systamatic shift , if poverty is reduced then it may help in improving various things such as way of living, building decent living standards so that everyone has the freedom to participate in society, whatever their talent or potential is. Romania switched from measuring poverty in absolute terms to measuring poverty in relative terms in 2006. Absolute poverty headcount ratios steadily declined from 35.9% in 2000 to 13.8% in 2006. However, by relative measures, the national poverty headcount ratio in 2006 was 24.8%.

Many of the world’s poorest today live in countries that had very low economic growth in the past. Consider the case of Madagascar: In the last 20 years GDP per capita has not grown; and the number in extreme poverty increased almost one-for-one with total population.This is an important reminder that one poverty line is not enough and we need to rely on several poverty lines – higher and lower than the international poverty line – to understand what is happening.