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Free Trade and Poverty

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Free Trade and Poverty
Poverty is defined as the state of being without, often associated with need, hardship and lack of resources across a wide range of circumstances. Some of the main uses of the term include description of material need, including deprivation of essential goods and services, and multiple deprivations. Another main uses of the term includes economic circumstances describing a lack of wealth or inequality, social relationships including social exclusion, dependency, and the ability to live what is understood in a society as a normal life (wikipedia).
In the economics, two kind of poverty are considered: the absolute and relative. A measure of absolute poverty quantifies the number of people below a poverty line, and this poverty line is thought to be independent of time and place (Wikipedia). A measure of relative poverty defines ƒÏpovertyƒÏ as being below some relative poverty line (Wikipedia). An example is when poverty is defined as households who earn less than 25% of the median income is a measure of relative poverty. The Copenhagen Declaration describes absolute poverty as a condition characterized by severe deprivation of basic human needs, including food, safe drinking water, sanitation facilities, health, shelter, education and information. The World Bank identifies ¡§extreme poverty¡¨ as being people who live on less than $1 a day, and ¡§poverty¡¨ as less than $2 a day. On that standard, 21% of the world¡¦s population was in extreme poverty, and more than half the world¡¦s population was poor in 2001.

Causes of poverty has been attributed to different factors that includes: individual or pathological causes; familiar causes; subcultural causes such as common pattern of life, learned or shared within a community; agency causes, actions causes by others including war, government, and economics; structural causes (Wikipedia). Other related causes includes land right and ownership, diversion of land use to nonproductive use, increasing emphasis on export

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