Social Exclusion and Poverty: EU 2020 Objectives and Turkey

Poverty As A Social Phenomenon

It is possible to mention about poverty in every period of the history. Poverty which is caused by individual or social circumstances can be evaluated as the inadequacies or difficulties faced in meeting the needs of an individual stemming from being a human. But poverty, as a social phenomenon, can be accepted as a product of the industrial revolution. It characterizes the struggles of masses in factories flooding to cities from rural areas with the thought of a better life and more freedom. Individuals earning their keep as agricultural laborers have become unsuccessful in meeting their basic needs against the competitive wage systems of the factories. This situation not only causes absolute poverty for individuals but also makes social life change as it has never changed before. Loss of the culture of solidarity and support of traditional society created the need to take institutional precautions and caused poverty to become more structural.

In modern world, however, the causes of poverty are based on many economic and social reasons. Even if the short income is always a leading reason among these, the poverty of the modern world together with the weakness sensation against the state and the society has become a social issue containing the insufficiency in dealing with these and the vulnerability for negative situations.

The first studies towards understanding the poverty are seen in the sixteenth century. Vives's “The Relief of the Poor” published in 1526, Paine's “Agrarian Justice” published in 1796 and Mill's studies in which he foresaw relief to the poor draw attention as the first studies to try to explain the notion of poverty (Bugra, 2007, p. 77). Many studies were made in the following days towards evaluating the poverty. Poverty was attempted to be evaluated within the frame of different definitions in these studies. However in present day, it is generally researched in three groups as relative and human poverty, approximation poverty and absolute poverty.