Social Construction of Poverty: Analysis of Nepal Living Standard Survey Data 2010/11

Abstract: Poverty is understood as undesirable and intolerable state of affairs in both academic and development fields, which is understood as a social, economic, political and psychological problem. The well-being of many populations has been endangered by it. Moreover, what one understands by ‘poverty’ varies considerably from one locality to another and from one period of time to another. However, this paper will talk only “what factors are more responsible to shape and reshape the Poverty of Nepal?” rather its definitions. Because of ambiguous and wide coverage of the issues, to make the paper more scientific, reliable and valid, data set of NLSS-2010/11 prepared by CBS has been used for this paper. My finding here is ‘poverty of Nepal is shaped by multiple factors such as household size, educational & health status and non-entrepreneurship or Job seeking (jagire mentality) culture rather than being self-employed, which are social reproduction rather than economic and political. Therefore, my thesis here is “poverty is a socially constructed phenomenon”.