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The main cause of poverty are the shortfalls in the ownership entitlements, endowments, production and exchange options of the poor and different poverty groups due to their weak bargaining power within existing social relations and institutions (Murthy and Rao, 1997).
Poverty is a vicious cycle. It shows hazardous impact on the life of individuals. A poor person has a low income status, due to which the family members can not have adequate food to meet both the dietary as well as nutritional requirements. Consequently, the members are vulnerable and are easily prone to ill health. In ill health the productivity is low. In order to meet the expenditure of the family, the individual is compelled to take some kind of loan. Due to lack of institutional credit, he/she depends on local money leader or any other non institutional credit sources. These sources demand bonded labour, mortgaging or selling of assets, which makes him more poor. Due to pressures there is also a danger of habituated to mal practices, which increases poverty further.
Poverty is experienced more severely by poor women than poor men with the resultant feminization of poverty due to less access to food, education and health care, unequal inheritance rights, lack of equal opportunities, etc. Poor women’s ability to overcome poverty is much lower (i,e., shortfalls from what is required for survival are often more for women than for women).
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