ABSTRACT
The elimination or minimisation of poverty is and must be the aim of any genuine interpretation of development, at least in the developing world. It is also a worthy national goal for countries of the industrialised North, even if the degree of urgency may not necessarily be the same, although that is getting less true of some countries. The subsistence approach to poverty is the oldest and has its origins in the Poor Laws regime of nineteenth century Britain. The reference point under the Poor Laws was crude and largely limited itself to bread and bread-flour measurements, although some Parishes routinely made insignificant allowances for other necessities. Arising out of the structural and other weaknesses of the subsistence approach, especially as pertains to the developing world, the desire for a re -conceptualisation of poverty resulted in the formulation, or more accurately, the adoption of the ‘Basic Needs’ approach by the international community led by the International Labour Organisation.
