Abstract

The major problem facing developing countries is poverty; therefore, this paper attempts to conceptualise poverty in the context of developing countries. The paper provides an absolute definition of the concept as suitable for the poverty situation in developing countries, what this paper coins the term poverty qua poverty to explain. Four works (Sandbrook, 1982; Oppenheim, 1993; Spicker, 1992 and Alcock, 1997) were reviewed extensively in an attempt to resolve some controversy surrounding the understanding of the concept ‘poverty’, while reference made to the works of other scholars in less detail. This paper employs some comparative evidence with Britain (which obviously eliminated poverty at absolute level ‘poverty qua poverty’ as far back as at the end of 1950s) on this subject in order to achieve its conceptual analytical effects.

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