MODULE 4.1 URBAN POVERTY AND DATA SOURCES Lesson 4.1.1 Urban Poverty, Slums, Remote Sensing and GIS Summary of Educational Packages I, II and III Urban Poverty: a multidimensional concept; Educational Package I

Urban Poverty: a multidimensional concept; Educational Package I Poverty: monster with many heads; income poverty, poor living conditions, social and political exclusion. Defining urban poverty is the basic requirement for conceptual thinking and relevant policy discussions, especially because poverty is not that easily defined and well understood. A generally-agreed thinking on poverty could be phrased as a comparison of individuals’ income, consumption, education, or other attributes with some defined threshold below which individuals are considered as being poor in that particular attributes. This way-of-thinking captures one of the most essential aspects on poverty: the multidimensional characteristics (figure 4.1.1). By focusing on a certain aspect of poverty e.g. income the welfare level of households can be compared and the number of households living in poverty (income below an agreed benchmark or poverty line) can be calculated. However, the weakness of this definition is also obvious because it is irrational to draw a universal poverty line and then apply it across the board to everyone or everywhere in the same way, without taking into account of personal and geographic variations.