فصلنامه رفاه اجتماعی
پیاپی 17 (تابستان 1384)

Most of poverty analysis is done in terms of income shortage. The poverty definition, poverty measurement, and other socio-economic policies related to this subject are followed by income-oriented view. However, poverty is influenced by many factors rather than only income. Since, we are ultimately concerned with the lives, we can lead (and income is only instrumentally important in helping us to lead adequate lives), we need to see poverty as the inability to meet some elementary and essential needs. If that view is taken, then seeing poverty as capability deprivation makes considerable sense. There is likely to be wide agreement that poverty exists when a person lacks seizing the real opportunity of avoiding hunger or malnutrition or homelessness. In this paper, we intend to discuss the idea of seeing poverty as capability deprevation and its differences with the income-base poverty.

Social deprivation is an important discussion of social welfare and social policy that is considerable through facts such as poverty, social exclusion and inequality. Although in conceptual and empirical aspects there are different from each other, in this essay the conceptual, theoric and empirical aspects of social deprivation are investigated by empirical test. Recognition of social deprivation indices by factor analysis through declared factors, essential dimensions of social deprivations are recognized. Recognized dimensions of this essay are social alienation, citizenship, social interaction and satisfaction of life. These dimensions have inter-compatibility together and contain the construct of social deprivation.

All simple methods of the measurement of poverty, such as ratio of the poor in total population and income gap are in fact unable to reflect inter-transformation society, with respect to change in money making groups, income transformation, gathering of the social groups, symmetry, asymmetry (dependency of the index to the other specification of the individuals in the society), monotonicity, social welfare, social justice etc. Therefore, these indices are weak and deficient to show dynamism of the poverty. the more complicated indices that started to introduce from Sen work, reflect The income distribution circumstance and income ranking and some of them are admitted to Gini coefficient. Nearly fifteen such principal indices that apply income distribution content and income transformation, poverty line and distribution among the poor are recognized. Some of these indices deal with social welfare, which is not a calculable issue. However the total number of secondary and/or related indices are amounted to more than seventy. Selecting a proper index for every society relies on data access, the structure and distribution of the population and the income of the society under consideration, the goals of planning as well as policy making and finally choosing the researcher. In this article I have analyzed the ability and power of the main indices, with special regard to Iran situation. To accomplish this fact, I have introduced a nine-item principles that are necessary in index, Then I introduced analyzed the sen, Kakwani Takayama and some other indices. Finally, bringing Iran poverty and income distribution condition into consideration, I have represented a propose index as the geometric mean of the third Kakwani's and the first sen indices. Using Some appraises and non-parametric estimate as well as official data for Iran, I have calculated the poverty index of the country. This index is considered as a high index with respect to percupita income of the country.

The main object of any rational human being is a better standard of living, peace and welfare. Looking at the past, the history of nations around the world shows that most of them have been successful in achieving this goal and the standard of living and welfare of people in most countries has considerably raised. This article seeks to survey the poverty of Iranian households during the last two decades (1983-2003). For this purpose, the authors have gathered and calculated the deflated states of household's expenditure and income published by Iran Statistical Center Yearbooks. The results show that the real consumption of households has decreased during some twenty past years and both rural and urban families have become poorer. Although the Engel's theory indicates that the share of consumed amount of food stuff in the household's budget decreases when the income is increasing, the paper proves that the declining share of expenditure for food of Iranian households is not the evidence of better economic situation.

Traditional trade theories argued that absolute or relative or comparative advantages are basis of trade. Each country will specialize in producing goods in which she has absolute or comparative advantage. H.O. Theory argued that factor abundance determines the commodities that each country produces, exports or imports. Linder theory states that similarity of demand determines the pattern of commodity export and import of a country. In his opinion the best index for similarity of demand is per capita income. So if the gap between two countries per capita income increases, trade between these two decreases and vice versa. Our aim in this paper is to investigate this hypothesis for Iranian economy. To do so we have used three methods. Two simple methods and another one which is more advanced. First we divided the intended time period for which we test Linder hypothesis into two sub-periods. The first one covers years 1974-1987 and the second covers years 1979-2002. In our first method we show that in the first sub-period most of 10 top trade partners of Iran were. Industrial and advanced countries of Western Europe and USA in second sub-period these were replaced by Asian countries. In second method we show that compared to the first sub-period in the second one share of Asian countries in trade with Iran has increased and share of advanced countries with Iran has decreased. In third motheod, panel data Regression fixed effect method, we found that the coefficient of independent variables in both regression equations (Iran and Europeans… Iran and Asians) are negative. This shows that increase in income gap with Europeans has decreased Iran’s trade with them and decreased in income gap with Asian has reduced Iranian trade with them. So we can not reject Linder hypothesis for Iranian economy.

In this article, the Poverty Line in urban and rural is estimated according to four methods during the years (1984-2000) as follows: a) needing for Calorie, b) the percentage of family average income, c) the average of family expenses, and d) the parasite inverted indices. The results point to this fact that Poverty is not a fixed extemal phenomenon and to some extent relies on the researcher's definition and attitude towards poverty and the variables used for assessment that totally will lead to different values and search of poverty. The findings of this article indicate to this fact that urban poverty line steadily placed in a higher rank than rural poverty line, and the poverty line based on the smaller in concept is a relative definition of poverty line. The vast amount of urban and rural poverty lies on parasite inverted indices.

This paper evaluates the government policies taken toward at poverty alleviation and equality enhancement after the 1979 revolution and examines the new government's institutional capacity to battle poverty and inequality in the next few years. For this purpose, the evolution of the absolute poverty and inequality of income distribution are measured. There is a clear indications that both factors have been improved in the post revolution era. Author has argued that inequality is the product of class relations and the nature of political power in the society. To this end, the historical economic changes of Iran in the last century is briefly reviewed and ample evidences provided showing how the state power intervened to upgrade the social and economic positions of protected new classes and to eliminate the ancient modes of production. It is argued that in Iran, state has a relative independence from the social classes due to the fact that rich oil resources belongs to govemment and it can distribute economic rents to different groups. Islamic republic of Iran has followed two unsuccessful strategies to eliminate poverty and inequality in the country. The first strategy was to abolish capitalist mode of production and establish an Islamic economy in the country. But in practice this utopia was not realized and a new capitalist class was brought up which has close ties with the political factions of the Islamic state. It is shown that this strategy has produced a giant state owned economy which is inefficient and corrupt and hampered the economic growth in the country and because of the very existence of this economic system the poor can achieve enough income and employment opportunities. The second strategy was to extend the social safety network and protect and enable the deprived. After the revolution government has provided free education and health services and in this area has been very successful. But its program to provide energy and basic food items with subsidized prices to all has benefited rich people more than the poor and caused major misallocation of resources in the economy. It is worth mentioning that the prolonged war between Iran Iraq and rapid growth of population has aggravated poverty and income disparity in the country, hence offsetting part of the government's efforts in this area. It was argued that the chance of newly elected government's program for poverty alleviation to be successful is meager. In fact the good governance is main prerequisite for the desing and implementation of program to chance economic development and poverty reduction. But the governance indicators in Iran have been weak in recent years and the policies of new government is expected to aggravate it move. It is argued that in the absence of badly needed institutional capacity, the government's slogans to improve the situation of poor will end up with a lower economic growth, higher inflation and more unemployment. All of which is harmful for the poor and deprived.

In this article the authors study the effect of oil profit on profit distribution in Iran during 1968 through 2002. Gini coefficient in the index used for income distribution. In the present article, Jha (1999) which is as abase on cobb – Douglas function is used. Model estimation method is adopted from the discussions relating to Auto – Regressive Distributed Lag (ARDL). The results obtained from model estimation show that oil income leads to inequality in profit distribution throughout the estate as well as in city areas. However, regarding such an effect in rural areas, one cannot explicitly make a statement.

Women are deprived from the capacities and capabilities needed for poverty reduction. The anxieties of women falling into the group of “poorest of the poor” has resulted in the development of different approaches including “Women Empowerment”. It seems the Process of empowerment of the poor women requires changes in all the institutions which have deprived them from the capabilities and have put them at the risk of poverty. This article presents part of the findings of a research conducted by the methods of group discussion and survey among the female headed households of Arak (a city in central part of Iran). It is shown that because of their sex, women are more vulnerable against poverty. Their Poverty is not only income but in the social and psychological dimensions which are as important as economic aspect. To eradicate poverty, women’s empowerment as well as structural changes are required.

This article is mainly based on this fact that: "Poverty is the production of power structure and social principles." It is not a natural phenomenon, or even, as a result of human relations. The relationship between power and domination has been considerably enforcing human societies. Despite of big scientific and technological achievements made in many countries recently, we see half of the world population starving and even in countries lie on enormous natural resources, we find millions of people strive for survival. This confusion raises simple miserable historical questions with no answers. "Why do most of the people around the world still have problems with famine and food shortage while a widespread technology can be observed in the realm of science and technology?" "Isnt it as a consequence of ethical failures and turbulence in human societies, political interventions or both of them? What is a Logical reason for delining of such incidents even in countries rich in natural resources?" The Social, humanities and economy sciences have shown a cold shoulder to this inequality and inequity and considered their ignorance as non-existence of these phenomena, because they themselves are the productions of such disorder. Providing some responses to these questions, this article discusses the role of oil income and it's influence on formation of power and development of poverty and inequality in Iran.

The valuable studies over the rural poverty is originated in the last 4 decades in the country, but no exact and precise assessment is achieved from these studies and therefore, it can be considered that the lack of such data and achievements related to rural poverty play a role as obstacles in recognition of causes and reasons in this regard. In this article, it is tried to represent a variety of assessment and recognition methods and attitudes, and even this phenomenon (rural poverty) is defined in a clear way. This article has taken advantages of documents and evidences related to the phenomenon, so that it can provide a clear definition and its situation in village societies in country. Finally, we have tried to bring some facts into consideration in order to make a perfect evaluation system for studying the poverty in rural areas. The method which is used to provide this article is documentary method and meta-analysis for obtaining a better recognition about the situation of poverty in rural communities in Iran.