Hello friends Summarized! This time we will discuss one of the social problems that often occur in Indonesia, namely structural poverty . What is structural poverty? What are the characteristics? And what are the examples? Let’s see this article to the end!
Definition of Structural Poverty
According to Selo Soemardjan, structural poverty is poverty experienced by a group of people because a social structure of society cannot participate in using the sources of income that are actually available to them.
In other words, structural poverty is poverty that makes a community unable to take advantage of the natural resources around it because it has been controlled by others, so they remain in that state for a long time.
Characteristics of Structural Poverty
According to the book Social Sciences (IPS) Sociology by the GTK DIKDAS team, the characteristics of people who experience structural poverty are:
- There is no vertical social mobility (perpendicular from top to bottom). Those who are poor will still live with their poverty.
- The emergence of a strong dependence of the poor on community groups with higher social and economic classes.
Factors Causing Structural Poverty
Quoting the Poverty and Empowerment of the Poor journal written by Bagong Suyanto, the causal factor of structural poverty is that the existing social structure makes members or groups of people not evenly control over economic facilities and facilities.
Then there is a sharp difference between groups of people who live in poverty and groups of people who live in luxury. This happens because groups of people who are wealthy usually succeed in monopolizing and controlling various aspects of life, especially in the economy and politics.
That way, groups of people who are poor do not have the power to improve their lives and structural poverty occurs.
Examples of Structural Poverty
Structural poverty and its examples can be found all around us. Here are examples of structural poverty that we can all know:
- Regions that have a lot of natural wealth, but the people do not live in prosperity
- The evictions caused people to lose their homes
- Local people do not work at the source of the wealth because there are foreign workers
- Farmers whose land is controlled by other parties
Regions that have a lot of natural wealth, but the people do not live in prosperity
Communities in an area that has abundant natural wealth live below the poverty rate. They cannot enjoy the results of natural wealth that is exploited by other people. This is because the rights to manage natural wealth fall into the hands of other parties. The local community is not involved with the assumption that they are unable to manage it properly.
The evictions caused people to lose their homes
Evictions are a frequent example of poverty. Evictions are carried out by certain parties who claim to have more rights to the land occupied by a community. This also makes the evicted people lose their homes without adequate replacement money.
Local people do not work at the source of the wealth because there are foreign workers
Another example that often occurs is that people in an area are not given the opportunity to be able to work in the management of that natural resource. The reason is because foreign workers or outside the area have priority. This is also due to consideration of the community’s ability to fill available employment opportunities.
Farmers whose land is controlled by other parties
The last example of structural poverty is a farmer whose land is controlled by another party. These farmers do not own private land or only have small plots of land so that the produce is not sufficient for their daily needs. They have to pay land rent or give part of their crops to the land owner.
Conclusion and Closing
So, that’s an explanation and an example of structural poverty, one of the social problems that often occurs in Indonesia. Hope this article will be more useful and increasing the knowledge all of us.
If Summarized friends have questions, suggestions, or criticisms about this article, please write them in the comments column, OK? Thanks for reading and see you in the next article!
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