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Since poverty has many facets, social scientists look at it through a
variety of indicators. Usually the indicators used relate to the levels of
income and consumption. But now poverty is looked through other
social indicators like illiteracy level, lack of general resistance due to
malnutrition, lack of access to healthcare, lack of job opportunities, lack
of access to safe drinking water, sanitation etc. Analysis of poverty
based on social exclusion and vulnerability is now becoming very
common.
According to social exclusion, poverty must be seen in terms of
the poor having to live only in a poor surrounding with other poor
people, excluded from enjoying social equality of better-off people in
better surroundings. Social exclusion can be both a cause as well as a
consequence of poverty in the usual sense. Broadly, it is a process
through which individuals or groups are excluded from facilities,
benefits and opportunities that others enjoy. A typical example is the
working of the caste system in India in which people belonging to
certain castes are excluded from equal opportunities. Social exclusion
thus may lead to, but can cause more damage than, having a very low
income.
Vulnerability to poverty is a measure, which describes the greater
probability of certain communities (say, members of a backward caste)
or individuals (such as a widow or a physically handicapped person) of
becoming, or remaining, poor in the coming years. Vulnerability is
determined by the options available to different communities for finding
an alternative living in terms of assets, education, health and job
opportunities. Further, it is analysed on the basis of the greater risks
these groups face at the time of natural disasters (earthquakes, tsunami),
terrorism etc. Additional analysis is made of their social and economic
ability to handle these risks. In fact, vulnerability describes the greater
probability of being more adversely affected than other people when bad
time comes for everybody, whether a flood or an earthquake or simply a
fall in the availability of jobs!