AUSTRALIA, August 8, 2005 (onlineopinion.com.au):
Most commentators will tell you that “poverty” should be defined and measured relative to the living standards of specific societies. This means that “poverty” in Africa is very different from “poverty” in Australia. To be poor in Africa means you are starving: to be poor in Australia means you cannot afford to eat out at a restaurant.
Peter Saunders of the Centre for Independent Studies continues to water down the findings of welfare advocates –
There is an obvious problem, however, in defining “poverty” in this way, for it swiftly becomes indistinguishable from “inequality”. Conceptually, the two terms are quite distinct: poverty means not having enough; inequality means not having as much as somebody else does. But once “poverty” is defined relatively, this distinction gets horribly blurred.
People who cannot afford to eat out at a restaurant, for example, clearly have a lower living standard than most of their contemporaries, but does this mean they do not have enough money to live on? Doesn’t there come a point where the general level of affluence in a society rises to such an extent that the language of poverty no longer applies to those at the bottom?
Tim Williams of Australia points us to this Source
