ABSTRACT
As was stated in the introductory chapter to this volume, recent discussions of poverty have recognized its multidimensional character. Whereas classic approaches to poverty have focused solely on issues of income and consumption, the newer alternative approaches focus on the multiple sources of deprivation that poor households experience, and which hinder their efforts to obtain higher levels of well-being. These deprivations are linked to ways in which households live and work, the access they do or do not have to collective and/or state-provided resources, and the extent to which poor households can make their needs heard politically or can organize collectively to build up assets (Satterthwaite 1997; Moser 1998; Narayan et al. 2000; McGee and Brock 2001; Rakodi and Lloyd-Jones 2002). A recent characterization of urban poverty lists eight types of deprivations. They include: inadequate and unstable incomes, inadequate, unstable or risky asset bases (such as lack of education and housing), inadequate provision of public infrastructure (piped water, sanitation, drainage, roads and footpaths), inadequate provision of basic ser-vices, limited safety nets for those unable to pay for services, inadequate protection of poorer groups through laws and rights and powerlessness of poorer groups within political and bureaucratic systems (Mitlin and Satterthwaite 2004).
