United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has identified following categories of poverty. Which one is correct ?

Question

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — C, Both (a) and (b). UNDP works with income poverty and human poverty as two distinct categories, and the distinction is the whole point of its Human Development Report 1997. That report introduced the HUMAN POVERTY INDEX to sit alongside the Human Development Index, and it defined human poverty as deprivation in the three essential elements of human life — longevity, knowledge and a decent standard of living. Income poverty, by contrast, is the older and narrower measure: a household counts as poor if its income or consumption falls below a stated money threshold, and nothing else about its life enters the calculation. UNDP's argument was never that the money measure is wrong, but that it is incomplete — a person can clear an income line and still be illiterate, chronically undernourished and likely to die early, and a measure that cannot see that is not measuring poverty properly. Because the report names and uses both categories, the only option that reflects UNDP's position is the combined one.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) True but incomplete. Income poverty is one of the two categories, not the whole of UNDP's framework — the entire contribution of the Human Development Report 1997 was to add a second, non-monetary category alongside it.  (b) Also true but incomplete, and it inverts the history. UNDP introduced human poverty as a COMPLEMENT to the income measure, not as a replacement for it; income poverty remains part of the framework.  (d) Plainly wrong. Both terms are UNDP's own, set out in the Human Development Report 1997 and carried through the Human Poverty Index and its later successor, the Multidimensional Poverty Index.

Concept: The human-development approach treats poverty as a shortfall in what a person is able to be and do, not only in what they can buy. UNDP therefore distinguishes INCOME POVERTY — falling below a money threshold — from HUMAN POVERTY, deprivation in the essentials of a decent life: longevity, knowledge and a decent standard of living. The Human Development Report 1997 gave the second idea a measure, the Human Poverty Index, built to complement the Human Development Index that the first report had introduced in 1990.

State PCS 2022 Q13 — Economy PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2022 Q13 — Economy PYQ with Answer