This is one of the most ever-sensitive topics in the history of mankind. There are some more topics or issues like this, but this one has got a special notion of its own. This is because poverty is one of the most natural tendencies of human life in this world and education is perhaps the most challenging as well as the highest rewarding endeavor of human life. And both stand at the opposite poles of our personalities, poverty at the negative end and education at the positive end. And so naturally, they both affect each other in a counteracting manner. That is, poverty can prevent education and education can prevent or eradicate poverty.
In this article series I would discuss some basic definitions of the terms related to poverty and education. I would also try to explore the relationships between poverty and education. Though this is a very complex and too exhaustive to be properly treated and covered in this small article. There are a large number of variables that are certain to arise in the studies of relationships between education and poverty with numerous case studies. It is not possible to explore all those variables and case studies in one article like this, instead it can easily consume up one big treatise on the subject. But I would try to superficially touch some of the most basic and prominent ones.
Then there I will try to find some roles of education for reducing or eradicating poverty. This is also a very exhaustive issue to be discussed in depth in one article, but some idea of this is also essential for helping us realize the power and function of education in our life. This can generate some motivation and inspiration to people who are suffering from chronic or acute poverty so that they can try to explore some options in their life for minimizing their sufferings and tragedies.
And I would try to put some light on education in poverty, some of its problems and methods for workable solutions. This will be under two different focuses, like teaching in poverty and learning in poverty. This part will be the most vital part of the article, as in a country like ours, huge numbers of students and teachers are constantly battling against mild to severe poverty for achieving the purpose of education becoming operative and successful as well, with an expectation of a better life without poverty or at least with a lesser poverty.
These points of teaching and learning in poverty will include multiple domains ranging from the infrastructure to the health of the teachers and students. This article will be a starting point of such domains, and I will continue to study and discuss many of those domains in articles to appear in future and other forms of publications here as well as elsewhere.
I am expecting this article to be useful for students, teachers and even to parents who are fighting against poverty and continuing education for a better future. Many of the discussions within may be quite evident or obvious, but still we often miss things that are too simple or obvious in nature or may sometimes underestimate them. But in many cases such simple and evident things can carry a subtle signal of a grand solution for a critical problem. Just we need to align and tune our antenna for grabbing and converting the signal into actionable information. And also with that we need to exercise some regulations and disciplines to convert those actionable information into some perceptible actions which can be expected to generate reactions in form of solutions. If something like that happens even to a miniature magnitude then my endeavour of writing this article will become a good success.
[This article is based on studies and outcomes, and so it is necessarily time-dependent. By that I mean, you can expect this article to grow over time as I will keep on adding more information and discussion. It will be like a series under gradual publication. So please keep checking from time to time for updates and addition of new discussions]
Before I start any discussion about education and poverty, it is necessary to define and explain poverty. Many of you are perhaps thinking that who does not know the meaning of poverty? And what is there to discuss about it? Well you are true that almost all of us know the meaning and implications of poverty. Even perhaps many of us have suffered one at some point of time or may be many of us are still suffering from poverty. So we all are supposed to know poverty. Well obviously we do know, but not enough for a formal discussion on poverty, its causes and effects and possible solutions. So let me define poverty here and let’s check our understanding over it.
Definition of Poverty
Basic definition of poverty is lack of financial resources and resulting scarcity of essentials for a minimum standard of living. This definition is very superficial as there is no information about the essentials of minimum standard of living, or no idea about how much lack of financial resources will be defined as poverty.
The World Bank introduced a measure of the poverty line which it named as “dollar a day” back in 1990. This meant that, if a person does not have the capacity to spend 1 dollar per day on an average then the economic condition of that person is to be measured as below extreme poverty line. This was back in 1990, and later the value was updated to $1.25 in 2008. In 2015, the value was further updated to $1.90 per day and this is considered as a basic standard till today. Now let me explain what this $1.90 per day means in terms of poverty and also its actual relevance to poverty.
Today, it is 7th December of 2020 and Indian Rupee is going Rs.73.82 per US Dollar. So $1.90 will amount to Rs.140.26 as per today’s rate. So according to the World Bank standard of extreme poverty line, a person is below extreme poverty line whose daily average expenses will be less than Rs.140.26 in Indian monetary value. So it amounts to Rs.4207.80 per month of average 30 days each and Rs.50,493.60 annually. This is a numerical measure. I will get deeper into this, but let me first describe some of the basic needs of a person. Until and unless we can measure the basic needs, we cannot assess the required expenses on account of those needs.
What are a Person’s Basic Needs for Living
This question is very tough to analyze and answer as this is a highly variable parameter for every person. Moreover many demographic features have deterministic influences on the values of this parameter. Like for a child of 10 years of age, the basic needs are different than one of 18 years or age. Similarly elders of 60 years age can have very different sets of basic needs. It also varies with the gender as well. Men need shaving but women don’t. Women need sanitary napkins but men don’t. So you can see expenses can vary by age, gender, location, and on even many other factors like married or unmarried, with a child or childless, education level and so on.
The basic needs of a teenager includes high expenses of his or her education, whereas the basic needs of an elder of 60 may not include educational expenses but there can even higher medical expenses. And eventually none of these expenses you can say as optional and hence absolutely basic and mandatory. Yes, it is true that more than often we tend to over-indulge in the expenses that look basic and mandatory but can be avoided or at least minimized if appropriate steps can be taken. And in such cases also I would like to add a personal note within and thus it follows.
I prefer to categorize expenses in categories like constructional, preventional, curative, maintenance and so on. All our expenses can be classified as one of the type or other. Let me give some examples. The educational expenses are obviously constructive expenses. The medical expenses are usually curative as they are used to cure a diseased condition to return back to the original healthy state. Then there can be preventional expenses. Preventational expenses are usually in the medical sector but may be very relevant in many other sectors as well. Like buying a good quality lock for the door of your home can be said to be preventional. And if you are taking a daily multivitamin for staying healthy and efficient, then that is also a preventive expense. Now if I say that buying a lock or buying a good multivitamin is not a basic need of a person then maybe I have to accept a theft at home or some disease at my elder age as eventually insignificant both economically and medically.
Similarly one can consider that education can be considered as an optional expense instead of basic. Then he has to accept his lack of skill development or academic development for doing a job or a business and thus compromise any economic development that could have counteracted his poverty. So purposefully demoting a crucial basic need into an optional one does not help to reduce poverty or any substantial development in life.
So by now perhaps I am successful to make it clear that the notion of basic needs is not anything fixed but keep changing with the demographic characteristics of humans. But still the most common to mention are shelter, food, clothes, personal care, education and medical. And there are a lot of variations within these categories also as I have discussed above. So you can see that poverty is a very complex system of variables which can take all sets of different values for me as well as for you and anybody else.
But still, governments and different economic regulatory systems try to standardize the notion of poverty primarily on just one demographic variable and that is location. Current Indian poverty line is defined at Rs.1059.42 per month at rural sector and Rs.1286 per month at urban sectors. These are far lower values than the World Bank threshold of $1.90 per day. These are even lower than the “dollar a day” threshold of the 1990s which amounts to Rs.2210.40 per month of 30 days! Now what do you think about this? In an urban region can Rs.1286 cover all the needs of shelter, food, clothes, personal care, education and medical needs of a person of any gender and any age whatsoever?
What are the types of poverty?
After the definition of poverty the next question arises is on types of poverty. Types of poverty do not happen to be much discrete from the question of causes of poverty. This is so because the cause or the source of poverty often determines the type of poverty. So when discussing the types of poverty, we are likely to refer to the source and cause of poverty more often. Still I choose to discuss the types of poverty before the cause of poverty because I think that would enrich our understanding better on the different causes of poverty, which in turn would help us to deal with them and try to minimize or eradicate such poverty.
The types of poverty is a complex question and thus treated in varied different ways by different authors and researchers. There is no fixed model for this and often the model keeps changing based on demographics like time and location. But I would try to find out a generic model that may find acceptance in all diverse demographic views and applications. No way anyone can predict that any model will be totally contained when it is on such a complex social system like poverty but still some better approximation can be attempted.
Let me enlist the types of poverty before we enter into a detailed discussion on them –
[3.1] Absolute poverty
(1) Cyclical poverty
(2) Constant poverty
(3) Situational poverty
(4) Concentrated poverty
(5) Case poverty
[3.2] Relative poverty
(1) Cyclical poverty
(2) Constant poverty
(3) Situational poverty
(4) Concentrated poverty
(5) Case poverty
Thus you can see that poverty as a whole can be broken down into 2 broad categories, viz. Absolute poverty and Relative poverty. This categorization is based on the social nature of poverty. Then each category can be broken down into further more sub-categories which are based on the source or cause of poverty. So let me start with the 2 main categories first.
As I said, these categories are based on the nature of poverty. Or you can also say on the intensity of poverty. When poverty is below the baseline or survival threshold then it is without doubt an absolute poverty. These types of poverty are usually seen in poor or under developed countries where either the total or a large part of the population is affected by the poor economic conditions. People under absolute poverty suffer from extreme poverty with scarcity in the most basic requirements of survival such as food, clean drinking water, shelter, medical facilities, and so on. Also they are usually deprived from education and information which makes it impossible for them to fight against poverty and get rid of it. The actual intensity and continuity of absolute poverty depends on which sub-category the poverty belongs to, or in other words, what are the probable causes of the poverty. Let me discuss in brief the subcategories of the absolute poverty below.
Cyclical poverty arises from natural or socio-economic events whose occurrence are cyclic in nature. For example it can be natural events like drought or famine, or flood, or it can be economic events like fluctuations of business cycle or economic depression cycle, etc.
Those regions which are more dependent on agriculture, are more affected by cyclical weather conditions. Some years they experience good crop production but again periodically they face extreme crop deficits due to poor agricultural production due to climate effects. Events like flood and storm, can destroy lives and assets, including near and dear ones as well as shelter and important belongings. These types of loss usually carry very long term loss in terms of economy and earning of a family. Sometimes it can even take generations to make up such losses.
In areas which are more dependent on industries economic events create more impact than natural. There are many cyclical economic events like economic depression and business cycle fluctuations. During any great economic depression, many industries get affected and some get permanently closed. Now suppose if one family has got its middle aged earning member working for a certain industry which got badly impacted by some economic depression and closed. As a result, the only working members of that family become jobless and thus the whole family sinks into deep poverty which can easily threaten their survival. It is not usually easy for a middle aged factory worker to find an alternative job or source of income especially when it is already an economic depression. Neither it is logical to believe that he will acquire new skill sets in that age standing in the midst of extreme poverty. So usually there remains no way out for the family to get out of that poverty which may carry on to several generations as well.
Moreover in cases of economic depression the market production and consumption gets so much damaged that those who are already rich find it hard to maintain their daily necessities like education and medical requirements, so the poverty stricken find it even harder to survive the survival competition.
(In the annexure section of this article I will include a special brief case study for the economic depression due to the current pandemic of Covid 19 and its effects on poverty levels of different economic zones like developed countries, under-developing countries and economically backward countries.
Please keep following for the new release of sections of this article)
It is not that one cannot overcome this kind of poverty, though it can be very tough to do so. To overcome this kind of cyclical absolute poverty the interventions should be at least from three levels, viz. the administrative level, social level and individual level. If these three levels can perform in alignment and properly planned targets then overcoming cyclical absolute poverty becomes possible. Individual level interventions are usually achievable by change of place and in many cases change of profession as well. In many wars like the world war 2 and great socio-economic depressions and like the one of USSR in late 1980s and early 1990s witnessed huge amounts of brain drain as well as change of profession in a desperate attempt to create survivable conditions. But that resulted into degeneration of respective countries and cultures, destruction of delicate systems of art and culture as well as science and technology. And there was an immense amount of human resource and talent loss which was never to be recovered.
This is almost like the cyclic absolute poverty but even more dangerous and tragic in respect to intensity and calamity. In this case also people live much below the poverty baseline set by the local governing body and also usually much below the World Bank assigned international base poverty line. And what is extra for constant absolute poverty than cyclical absolute poverty is the duration factor. Cyclical absolute poverty stings for a period and then gives some relief period for any possible damage-control and rehabilitation whereas constant absolute poverty carries on from year after year or decade after decade or maybe often generation after generation.
Constant absolute poverty usually occurs in those places where there was already prevalence of some other kind of poverty such as cyclical absolute poverty or situational poverty, or generational poverty and so on. I will discuss this point in more detail later, after I finish discussing all the types of poverty here. Constant absolute poverty is one of the highest levels of poverty and many regard it as the most painful one. And the most painful part of it is being unable to access resources like education and medicine in order to counter such poverty and hence remain in this poverty for quite a long time, sometimes one whole lifetime or even from generations to generations.
Situational absolute poverty arises from some sudden crisis conditions like any natural disaster, job loss, health problems or death and so on. Usually the crisis arises for a temporary period of time and then people help themselves out of the crisis event with some help or assistance from one or more varied sources. So the poverty comes due to the unfortunate event also slowly diminishing to considerable extent and often totally eradicated. But there are some cases where things never return for the same and instead in many cases turns worse with time. Such cases give rise to what can be called Situational Absolute Poverty.
Thus situational poverty being itself not absolute in nature but can give rise to absolute poverty. For example let us suppose a case where the only earning member of the family dies prematurely. Let us suppose the children are not grown enough for a job, the wife can get a job but may not be at the earning level of the husband and there are multiple dependencies inside the family including elders and children. Suppose the husband may be a doctor, or defence staff or an higher administrative staff with a high salary. So substituting that salary or income will not be an easy task for anyone in the family unless another one becomes equivalent to the husband in terms of profession and earning. So naturally the earning and spending capacity of the family may decrease to even below poverty baseline. Only in case of a businessman such problems are less acute as the wife or any other person of the family can charge for the business and continue the earning. Thus this unfortunate event can cause the family to enter into what can be called the situational absolute poverty which can even continue through generations.
Another example can be given in the same context. Suppose a region is struck by an intense natural calamity like one earthquake. Earthquakes can cause widespread damage through a big stretch of region. Now suppose one family loses their house and belongings in the earthquake. And parallely they can lose the earning member or may be the business or the office of employment of the earning member. There remains very narrow chances for recovering back quickly and the only fastest option can be relocation or rehabilitation but that can take a lot of economic power which every family cannot afford. Governments usually try to intervene by economic packages and rehabilitation schemes, but the losses are usually too high to be compensated that way. Only a percentage of the total economic crisis is usually possible to be met and keeping the rest to the discretion of time. Thus when poverty is left to be solved by time then eventually that poverty becomes absolute poverty and takes considerable time, sometimes generations to fully overcome.
Concentrated poverty is usually long term and thus absolute in nature. By the word concentrated we mean a group or section of people who are exposed to the risk of poverty in a particular situation and location. There are locations which are less developed, economically and industrially, and people who belong to such regions suffer from poverty usually with no good at the level of personal endeavour. In such cases the best solution is usually to relocate somewhere else, but poverty-stricken people usually do not have the economic liberty needed for relocation. Rural sectors which are regularly deprived from agriculture for natural causes such as drought or flood also fall under this category. People born in such villages are less expected to do good economically and it continues over time for many generations. They neither have diverse job possibilities and employment schemes locally in order to support their struggles and endeavour to survive and get out of the poverty, nor they have the capacity to arrange for relocation to other prosperous areas.
Case poverty is the kind of poverty that hits either one individual or one family. Ideally when the nation as well as the surrounding social structures are not affected by any kind of poverty, still within that one individual person or together with his family gets affected by poverty then that poverty is exactly what can be called case poverty.
Case poverty can arise from many reasons and can also be the outcome of other kinds of poverty. Let us study some examples to understand the mechanism. Suppose there is a book seller in the community. But with the development of personal computing technologies like laptop and smartphones, and development of internet technologies, the practices of buying and reading books are diminishing day by day. And among the few remaining needs of books, many are taking the option of online ordering to various ecommerce websites and getting home delivery of books. So as the outcome, the local book seller is finding it hard to get enough income from his business which can slowly push the person and the associated family into poverty and even to the extent of absolute poverty at below poverty baseline. Now there can arise two immediate alternative options for him. He can start selling his books through ecommerce or else he can shift to some other business closing the book shop. For the first case, he cannot open his own ecommerce website because that needs lots of funding and also a considerable amount of computer literacy. He can join some ecommerce platforms, but books are not his own product and is a very generic product which many other vendors are already selling through that and other online platforms. And being a small retail vendor, it is unlikely that he can compete in stock and price with larger vendors and wholesalers there in the online platform. So this option may not become much workable for him. He may be able to sell some of his books through the online platforms but that may not necessarily be sufficient to prevent his poverty. Second option is closing the book shop and moving into some other business. There again the question of capital funds and business skill remains a disputable question. For a failing businessman it may not be that easy and seamless to wind up his current business to adopt a new business. So he may reach a position that is like a stalemate in chess.
Case poverties can arise from cyclic poverties or situational poverties. Any situational mishap in the family or with the individual can trigger the poverty which can become long term case poverty of absolute nature, that is, extending to below poverty baseline thus depriving them from their basic rights of food, shelter, clothing, hygiene, medical support and education. Concentrated poverty and case poverty are equal when they are concerned of an individual person or at most one family in a very discrete manner within a societal collective structure.
Relative poverty is more complex than absolute poverty. In absolute poverty, there are two major basic levels, one is below the poverty baseline and the other is over the poverty baseline. The deficiencies in a case of absolute poverty is very prominent, where there are deprivation of most basic necessities like shelter, food, medicine, education and so on. But in case of relative poverty the determinants are not so prominent and decisive.
A person or a family can be well over the poverty baseline, may have secure shelter and food, but still can fall back due to poverty. The equation is quite complex and it can need more intense and meticulous case studies to understand the factors. Let me give some examples that can help to understand a bit.
Suppose a family with a well earning member. The family has got secure shelter, good food, necessary medical facilities, proper lifestyle and hygiene and everything else apparently required for a non-poverty-stricken family. Suppose there is a boy student of 10+2 level in the family aspiring to become a doctor. Many of his friends are also doing the same. He and all his friends appeared in the pre-medical JEE and he came with a very good rank, much better than many of his friends. Now the problem arises during the time of admission. It was found that the cost of the medical course is beyond the financial reach of the family. So as a result the boy failed to get an admission though most of his friends got the admission because they can afford it. So this can be a case of relative poverty. That boy of the family, being a very good student is a very eligible candidate for being a doctor in future. But he got deprived from that due to lack of economic support or what can be called poverty also. And it is relative because many around him were able to take the admission which indicates that many people around that family and within their social circle are not equally poor. Now the argument can follow like that the boy can take up a different career, which is possible under their financial capacity and become successful. Well that can be one compelling option but not a desirable and optimal option. A good student like the boy of the example, is expected to execute his right to education and career as he feels comfortable and inspired.
Let us consider another example. Again let us suppose a well-to-do family, with proper shelter, food and all other necessities. Everything was going fine until one of the members was diagnosed with cancer. Suddenly everything changed into a gloomy picture. The family appearing quite well-to-do financially suddenly got stuck into what can be called relative poverty. But why relative? Because they cannot afford the treatment cost available there. Or maybe they can avail some level of treatment but not the exactly needed one. Thus they take up alternatives, resulting in the death of the patient after a long episode of suffering both medically and financially. And even after that, the remaining of the family plunged not only into deep sorrow but with that a dark spell of poverty that can take many years to overcome. And by chance, if the affected individual is the main earning member of the family then there are chances for the rest of the family to get into absolute poverty as well. This is another case of relative poverty, relative because though there are costly and better medical alternatives available and many can afford it but this family failed to afford it. But ideally there should be an equal right to good medical treatment for all and in cases one fails to get that due to financial deficits then that can be a case of poverty.
These are just a few superficial examples of relative poverty. The concept behind the term is complex and needs more exhaustive treatment which is beyond the scope of this article. I have plans to get more deep into the different models of poverty later on. Now let us see some variation in types of relative poverty.
Again one example can be the best tool to explain these kinds of poverty. Suppose an economically well-to-do family of a farmer. Farmer’s wealth depends on the production of crops and harvest. Also depends on the market price of the crops. If due to any situation the production of crops is not good or the market price is not profitable then the economics of the farmer can become vulnerable. Production of crops largely depends on the climate which is highly cyclical. The market is also pretty cyclical. Thus the economic solidarity of the farmer depends on factors that are highly cyclic in nature. If in one cycle or two, the production of crops gets hampered or the market price becomes non-profitable, then perhaps the well-to-do family of the farmer will not get below the poverty baseline, but their overall economic capacity and spending or buying capacity can be heavily affected. This can generate short term relative poverty. And just like the farmer family in my example, many more farmer families are likely to undergo the same condition in the particular region.
Similarly there can be many types of earning either by business or by job which can be affected by cyclic events. People in those kinds of professions can be affected by such events either on a short term basis or in a long term basis, depending on the intensity of the effect on earning and on the financial loss tolerance of that particular person or family. If the person or the family is economically strong then it can tolerate greater extent of loss and thus the poverty will be mild and short term.
As we have already seen, constant poverty means that the poverty is fairly long term and may even remain through generations. This type of poverty arises from poor earning which has its root in lack of acquired skill in a particular generation, or sometimes even through multiple generations. Even within a family this type of poverty can be seen. For example, we can often see a family where all the brothers are well educated, some being doctor or engineer or professor but within that one or two brothers fall short in education and skill to become something like a clerk, or a mechanic or a petty shop owner. Naturally there will be big differences in earning as well as buying power among the brothers of such a family and that type of poverty is usually relative poverty. This was a case example for the type of constant relative poverty, and usually this type of cases appear many in numbers within a particular location and its habitat social structure.
Eradicating this type of poverty is easier than other types but still there are a lot of constraints that can arise. Actually poverty itself is a factor that remains forever hard to eradicate, and in some cases it is almost impossible. Interventions from various sources, such as the governments, social structures, business and commercial structure as well as educational structures need to work together to create enough scope and motivation for removing poverty. Even our family structure also needs to generate enough impulse to get the things going in the positive direction and there will be a need for a lot of individual endeavour to carry on with the process to meet the ends. The number of factors and variables and their volatility, number of participating parties and their mutual discord, the lengthy stretch of time required makes the process of poverty eradication complex and inefficient.
(Eradication of poverty, its methods and procedures, progress and assessments will be a big topic of discussion and very crucial as well. Actually all the studies we do on poverty finally aims to aid in dealing with it and helping to eradicate it. Otherwise there stands no meaning to studying the subject. Later in this article I have plans to discuss the process of minimizing or eradicating poverty in brief as too deep into the matter is beyond the scope of this present article. I am dissecting the whole concept of poverty in so many different types because that will ultimately help to diagnose the cause of the different source of poverty and frame respective methods of dealing with it. With that I will also try to relate the role of education in the different types of poverty and how education can help to reduce or eradicate respective poverty.
Our main goal in this article is to understand the relationship of education and poverty. With that I would like to add that by education I am not only meaning the education of the poor sufferer. Education has a much more holistic role in dealing with poverty where all the people starting from the governments to social bodies, from academic bodies to individuals and families, all are to be properly educated to deal with the problem of poverty. Then only we can expect some positive result in the endeavour of eradication of poverty at a large scale and for a consistent duration of time. But in reality, the total thing can easily become some big research project or perhaps more than one, where each and every type of poverty will have to be separately studied and documented for probable solutions)
This is perhaps one of the most prevalent types of poverty we see around. As I discussed before, the word situational means it is due to some unfortunate event like death, severe health issues or may be natural calamities and so on. When a person or a family or a small group of people are affected due to these kinds of unfortunate situations and thus financially affected to become less solvent.
The causes are almost the same as those were in the situational absolute poverty. But the main difference lies in the financial loss tolerance capacity of the individual or family, etc. If the tolerance is high then that results in relative poverty and stays for a shorter period of time. But if the tolerance is low then that poverty can lead to the absolute one and can continue for a longer stretch of time.
As with the term concentrated, when a definite group or section of people are affected with poverty which is not absolute but relative in nature then we can call that type as concentrated relative poverty. Again the reasons and mechanism of such poverty is almost the same as I have discussed in the section of concentrated absolute poverty, but the difference is in the type of resultant poverty. The resultant poverty is absolute when the affected group or section is financially too weak and thus falls into the below poverty level. But when the affected group is not that much weak then the poverty remains at the level of relative and does not touch the lows of absolute.
As I have already described case poverty before, here also by case relative poverty I mean poverty restricted strictly within one individual person or at most his or her family. Though in many of the above examples I have used the case of an individual or at most a single family but none were strictly limited for such a single case and so parallely many people can suffer by the cause. So you can call this as my attempt for an abstraction just for the purpose of the single case study. So let us see another example which you can regard as most usual and confined for the cases of case relative poverty.
Let me tell you a real story from my experience. A person happened to be a large freight truck driver travelling all across the country with his gigantic truck. He used to earn quite good and his family was also doing quite good. But all of a sudden the person got into some kind of nerve symptoms at quite an early age. Slowly he got almost paralysed and he had to stop driving totally. Quite good earning touched down to nil within a very short time. Savings at banks also got eroded fast in medical bills. Thus the family got enough poor to be classified at least into the relative poverty category. And they were slipping very fast even towards the below poverty threshold line. More than a year, perhaps almost two years, the struggle continued. The truck got sold to meet up debts and medical bills. This is a typical real life example of a case relative poverty and could have been more severe also. But fortunately with God’s Grace the person ultimately responded to the treatments and recovered back. Now he is driving someone else’s truck. Though not as financially solvent as before, still they managed to get struck by the severe absolute poverty for a very long period of time, or may be more than this lifetime to continue even to next generations. What would have happened if the person did not respond to the treatment and got cured to drive again?
This was a short description of the most usual and possible different types of poverty found in a standard human socio-economic structure. More detailed studies on each type is possible but out of scope of the present article. This article is about the relationship of education with poverty. How poverty can affect or prevent education and how education can help to eradicate poverty is going to be my main discussion over here. In that process, it will be essential to relate all the different types of poverty with their effects on education of children and adults. Also I will try to draw a picture about how education can be continued in these types of poverty and how education can help to reduce or eradicate the respective poverty.