Main Article Content
Abstract
Poverty is a serious social and economic problem. The phenomenon of poverty does not only affect the individual (poor) but also is a danger to the nations’ economy. The Phildelphia Charter has postulated that poverty anywhere constitutes a danger to prosperity everywhere.”
Poverty is both an economic and social phenomenon in which a person is unable to fulfill his minimum needs of life, according to Rowntree, a family is in poverty if “its total earnings are insufficient to obtain the minimum necessaries for the maintenance of merely physical efficiency. The ‘minimum necessaries’ were food, clothing, housing, heating, lighting and utensils for cooking and washing-all purchased at the lowest prices and in quantities necessary for physical subsistence only.”1 Therefore, poverty is the main problem and it has affected and continues to affect every aspect of human life.
The present micro-level empirical study is conducted in Chittoor district of Rayalaseema region in Andhra Pradesh and the objective is to assess poverty among the women agricultural labour households. This study framed hypothesis as considerable proportion of sample women agricultural labour live still below the poverty line among all castes and mandals. Sen’s measure of poverty (P) has been used to test the determined hypothesis. The author concluded that among the different categories of women agricultural labour households, Scheduled Tribe households are suffering at a higher level of impoverishment in all the three selected mandals in chittoor district of Andhra Pradesh.