Experts believe that the words globalization and poverty are deceitful and are mutually conflicting. Globalization has been around for a while now and had started as a means to explore new business destination and opportunities.
But the modern version of the meaning is doing more harm than good to some strata of the world population. The expert's definition of globalization and poverty varies from country to country and usually, the definitions of globalization and poverty as upheld by these experts are biased. This bias crops up from the fact that the corresponding and complimentary parameters which defines globalization, and this varies from country to country. For example, a laborer earning US$ 2 in India can't be defined under 'poor sections of the society' but he shall be defined poor by US standards of payment. So the existence or defining of a more generic definition of globalization is in fact very difficult. In modern times, it has been defined as an "open-market policy" adapted to ensure free flow of commodities and workforce across different nations of the world. In other words, globalization can be defined as practicing and development of "boundary-less trade".
Globalization, if defined under the light of economic globalization, will include the value of increase in trade, foreign investment, and work-force migration. These entail the combination and development of parameters like improvements in technology and decreased transportation costs etc. This is a combination of deliberate economic policy choices promulgated on behalf of national governments. This is done to liberalize their economies and participate in the development of global market. Therefore, it can be comprehended that the policy aspect of economic globalization is an aggregated value that results from the choices of different individual countries and this is practiced to increase their integration with the global economy. Further, if globalization is viewed as an aggregated value of increased integration of many individual countries, what needs to be considered is how individual countries become integrated into the global economy and act as a single unit.
The term 'poverty' is categorized under 'economic globalization' and it is an agglomeration of parameters like the following -
- Total number of poor versus poverty incidence
- Monetary versus multi-dimensional measures
- Level of collation
- Time span
Again, this definition of "poverty" is not comprehensive in nature and is not satisfactorily explained. The definition of parameter 'total number of poor and the incidence of poverty' is differently explained by critics and by the academician and experts representing international development agencies such as the World Bank and United Nations Development Program (UNDP). The experts representing the World Bank and United Nations Development Program (UNDP) relies entirely on incidence as the appropriate measure of poverty but the critics of economic globalization defines it as the total number of people living in poverty. Both the definition has its advantages and disadvantages. An inter-country comparison might reveal that poverty incidence is a much more accurate measure and it is to be evaluated independent of the impact of population growth in a particular geography. This definition finds acceptance amongst the economists and development specialists since according to them, this is a better indicator of how the ease with which poverty could be eliminated in the next targeted period. They define poverty incidence to be progress against poverty, even if the total number of poor has not changed or has risen slightly. This is because the country is better positioned to fight poverty in the next targeted period.
However, critics believe that the utility of a poverty measure is an analytical tool and it holds little importance in defining the said term. These critics are more focused in directly defining the goal. The goal is to minimize the number of people that are deprived of basic needs. Further, it is also defined as the lack of material well-being, humiliation, absence of basic infrastructure, illiteracy, illness, and lack of physical assets (as opposed to income). As per the opinion of the poor themselves, globalization and poverty go hand in glove. The survey made on satisfactory index suggests that the impact of globalization on their lives is less positive than value of changes in their average income would suggest. Further, this fact is corroborated from the report that the perception of the poor and middle-class of their welfare change arising out of globalization does not shows the actual picture of their measured income change.
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