Socio Economic Implications of Urban Poverty in Tamil Nadu: A Field Survey Study

Abstract

Though Poverty has been a serious issue in the development process across the world for quite a long period of time and alleviation of poverty has been one of the major challenges faced by most of the countries of the world, the issue of urban poverty is not new, but it is often narrowly viewed as an economic issue that is best addressed by economic policies and interventions. The SDG 1, also known as the “No Poverty” goal, is a global effort to eradicate extreme poverty and reduce income inequality by 2030. This goal is of utmost importance because poverty is a pervasive and complex issue that affects billions of people around the world. It can have serious consequences for individuals, communities, and economies, including poor health, limited access to education and other essential services, and reduced economic opportunity. Poverty is currently a serious socio economic concern in India. In spite of a number urban poverty alleviation measures taken by the government still the incidence of poverty exists and further there are social, economic and regional variations observed both at macro level as well as micro level. Hence, the present study tries to study the socio economic implications of urban poverty in one of the recently incepted Corporations of Tamil Nadu, Thanjavour through field survey. This analysis attempts to study the Socio Demographic background of the sample respondents; to analyse the Income and Expenditure Pattern of the selected sample respondents; and to suggest possible policy measures to reduce the incidence of urban poverty to improve the standard of living of the respondents of the study area. Urban poverty today, as driven by globalization and rapid uncontrolled urbanization, also needs to be recognized as a social, political, and cultural process that has profound impacts on overall economic progress.