Kritik am Konzept relativer Armut – berechtigt oder irreführend?

In this article widespread objections to the concept of relative poverty are addressed and discussed against the background of historical-geographical contexts of statistical measures. A fundamental criticism refers to the abstraction of the level of prosperity. It does not, however, focus on methodological aspects but rather on poverty in the sense of exclusion and is therefore based on normative reasoning: understanding and analysing poverty as social exclusion is not accepted. Rather the focus is on some kind of absolute poverty which remains vague while the concept of relative income poverty refers to standards but also requirements in developed societies. Further criticism is aimed directly at the indicators and their inaccuracies, which mainly result from one dimensional measurement. However, as that lack of precision has effects in two directions with compensating tendencies, the one sided argumentation is misleading. On the other hand, some objections to transforming the concept of relative income poverty to indicators should be discussed and investigated.