Rural Poverty Sociology

Worldwide, extreme poverty continues to be a rural phenomenon despite increasing urbanization. Of the world’s 1.4 billion extremely poor people, 70 percent live in rural areas, most of them depend partly, or to a large degree, on farming (IFAD, 2011). Poverty can be persistent (chronic) or transient, but transient poverty, if acute, can trap succeeding generations. Most rural community development efforts aim to relieve causes or symptoms of rural poverty; as a consequence the range of explanations on rural poverty has proliferated.

On one hand rural poverty, as defined by economists, means that the consumption or income level of a person falls below a certain threshold necessary to meet basic needs. Income or consumption proxies are the most

These biases are what push professionals to accept and settle with partial explanations of rural poverty. According to chambers the only way to counter these power differentials is through “Participation” (Chambers1997). However Chambers’ notion of participation has been criticized for its discrete and socially homogenous understanding of the local and the disregard of intra-group power differences (Cooke and Kothari, 2001). It is crucial to bear in mind that the way resources and other livelihood opportunities are distributed locally is often influenced by informal structures of social dominance and power within the communities themselves. Gender is an aspect of social relations and in most rural communities rural women tend to suffer far more than rural men. Their poverty and low social status in most societies is a major contributor to chronic

Poverty never results from the lack of one thing but from many interlocking factors that cluster in poor people's experience and definitions of poverty (Narayan D. 1999) Numerous characteristics of a country's economy and society, as well as some external influences, create and perpetuate rural poverty(World Bank, 2001) but some causes are more prevalent than others. Having land for example, controlling it and using it are critical dimensions of rural livelihoods, and determine rural wealth and rural poverty. Land is fundamental to the lives of poor rural people. It is a source of food, shelter, income and social identity. Secure access to land reduces vulnerability to hunger and poverty (EU 2004, Cox et al 2003, El Ghonemy 1994). But for many of the world’s poor rural people in developing countries, access is becoming more tenuous than