Social mobility means the ability of an individual to change class. A distinction is made between descending mobility, ascending mobility, absolute mobility, and relative mobility. Absolute mobility is the total number of individuals changing social class, while relative mobility indicates in more detail the actual possibility of some of the individuals belonging to all classes.
The term poverty, on the other hand, refers to the economic condition of certain individuals who find themselves without access to sufficient goods. And according to the importance of these goods, we distinguish absolute poverty and relative poverty. It is an absolute poor person who has no access to vital resources which serve to satisfy fundamental human needs, while it is poor relative to the individual who does not have access to the goods necessary to have a lifestyle sufficiently similar to what is considered the norm within society. According to the international reference system, the poverty threshold is considered to be half of the average per capita income. There is also the concept of floating poverty, which is when the condition of poverty is caused by a temporary situation of economic crisis or a sudden event such as job loss or divorce.
Amartya Sen is an Indian economist and argues that poverty must not be reduced to economic parameters alone, but must assess all aspects of the individual’s life. The UN has also made the same reasoning by establishing the Human Development Index, which is a value of 0 to 1 attributed to each State that takes into account four indices: life expectancy, literacy, schooling, and gross domestic product per capita. Amartya Sen also takes into account four indices for poverty assessment, such as differences in physical characteristics of individuals, climate and environmental factors, the general conditions of the company to which they belong, and the patterns of behavior to which they are exposed.
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