POVERTY REDUCTION AND STRUCTURAL REFORMS BY

Poverty has no precise definition. Being a relative concept, it has no universally adopted definition that can be applied to all societies and all nations of the world. We can talk of a poor person or a poor nation. You may describe a person as poor if his income is below subsistence level. But the subsistence levels of income vary from society to society and from nation to nation. In spite of the absence of a precise and an all-embracing definition of poverty, it is quite easy to recognize or identify the attributes of a poor person or the characteristics of a poor nation. A poor person or household generally lacks the basic necessities of life such as adequate shelter, balance diet that meets the standard quality, quantity and composition, and minimum requirements for decent clothing. A poor person may not have any income at all where he is unemployed or unemployable, hence he/she is dependent on charity in one form or the other to eke out a living; or he/she may have low income that is below or at a subsistence level. Such a person thus faces a situation in which the resources available to him are inadequate to provide a socially acceptable standard of living. He lacks the means to give sound education and modern health care to his children/househol