One of the most prominent outcomes of the financial crises is the emerging new class of poverty, the people who represented the “wellbeing dream of development” are now poor, and they are mainly Young, Educated and Unemployed! Though it is without any doubt their right to have their basic human rights attained, they remain framed in a new category of poverty that makes them as they themselves have described it to be “Invisible”.

1. The New Poor: Welcome To Poverty!
By: Bayan Shadaideh
WPHR
Harvard
Spring 2010
“The world is yet to see the extent to the problem that we have ourselves created. But
the measures to tackle the problems shouldn’t lead to more trouble. It is in our hands
to change things in a way that don’t ever get into the kind of mess we have got
ourselves into now”
Amartya Sen
speaking at a conference organized to commemorate his 75th birthday
One of the most prominent outcomes of the financial
crises is the emerging new class of poverty, the people
who represented the “wellbeing dream of
development” are now poor, and they are mainly
Young, Educated and Unemployed!
Though it is without any doubt their right to have
their basic human rights attained, they remain framed
in a new category of poverty that makes them as they
themselves have described it to be “Invisible”.
In this article I will focus on unveiling this new
category of poverty, and begin unfolding the impact of
that on development in its broader sense.

2. Though the “New Poor” is a world-wide phenomenon, for the purpose of brevity this article
will focus mainly on the USA.
A Snapshot of the New Poor
Though the world has been watching the percentage of unemployment with anticipation
and anxiety, there has been a hopeful sigh of relief as the media focused on having these
percentages dropping and stabilizing in January 2010.
The fact is however that 26
million people in the USA are
jobless today!
They are educated and
experienced, they have been
struggling to get that
promotion for having an even
better life and then suddenly
they became poor.
This is definitely changing the
paradigm of the Human Rights
for Development, for this segment is what we have been developing others to be.
According to Sen’s Capability theory, these people are capable but they definitely now are
not able to practice their skills and expertise, for the best choice that they have is to strive
to find much lower paying jobs which are basically non-existent, or to try to raise their case
as unemployed and fight to get unemployment benefits to feed their children as they do so.
Obviously they are losing their freedoms one by one, for according to the five types of
freedom defined by Sen in “Freedom as End of Development”, first their protective security
is gone, then their transparency guarantees, followed by social opportunities and economic
facilities and now they are losing their political freedom only as a result of the
aforementioned.
But above all of that, they lost what the “very poor” will never lose, hope! The dream of a
better tomorrow in which if you work hard you will live well.

3. However, as agents for development
we pause here and reflect by asking
ourselves what will this do to the
dream of development we have been
promoting to those who we
identified as underdeveloped, will
there be “trust” in what we are
advocating while everyone sees the
impact of this vehicle on those who
are now “newly poor”?
How will “Public Reasoning” be
transformed after this intense
change took place?
The New Poor have the right to be
heard and visible.
The world needs to understand their survival needs most compassionately and with
extreme delicacy and respect while addressing this to be only the tip of the iceberg.
Here are only a few examples of how the new poor are going through,
Can’t afford having divorce!
“With a divorce costing as much as $188,000 and many couples owing more on their homes
than the properties are now worth, some are turning to marriage counseling. One Illinois
therapist has seen a 25% jump, bucking the trend of rising divorces during recession. Says a
New York therapist: "I had a woman say to me: ‘My God, I can’t stand my husband. Every day I
just want to leave him, but I can’t afford it.'"
Are Violence, Aggression and Suicide the answers for the “New Poor”?
The body count is still rising. For months on end, marked by bankruptcies, foreclosures,
evictions, and layoffs, the economic meltdown has taken a heavy toll on Americans. In
response, a range of extreme acts including suicide, self-inflicted injury, murder, and arson
have hit the local news.

4. The American Dream is now a foreclosure notice!
“Foreclosures are about the home. The importance of the home to Americans can hardly
be overstated. The home is the center of American life. It is where we live, where we raise our
families, where we gather with friends, and, in many cases, where we work. It is the physical
and emotional nexus of many households as well as the centerpiece of many Americans’
finances. The home is the single largest asset of many Americans”
This home, the symbol of
good living has now turned
to be the void bubble that
either already vanished or
is on the way for that.
Over half a million homes
were actually sold in
foreclosure or otherwise
surrendered to
lenders in 2007 and over
700,000 were sold in
foreclosure in the first
three quarters of 2008
alone. This means that
nearly one out of every
twenty residential
borrowers entered the
foreclosure process in the
past two years. At the end of the third quarter of 2008, one in ten homeowners was either
past due or in foreclosure, the highest levels on record.
Most of these people live now in “Tent Cities” in which they struggle to survive while the
rest know for sure that their turn will come.
Did it stop? NO!
Employers took 1,570 mass layoff actions in February that resulted in the separation of
155,718 workers reported the Bureau of Labor Statistics, United States Department of
Labor.
And many more layoffs are taking place as we speak.

5. As the “New Poor” begin having a clearer
definition new consequences are inevitable to
arise, such as the coming wave of education
debts just as those that happened with real
estate, and definitely many people become
homeless, helpless, and suicidal.
This is a call for identifying the “New Poor”
and the impact of losing the paradigm that
once stood to be iconic of the development
dream of “wellbeing”
References,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEDDTxRrtK4
http://www.linkedin.com/answers/government-
non-profit/government-policy/GOV_GPO/646666-
12753693?browseIdx=0&sik=1269938507589&goba
ck=%2Eamq
http://www.iyfnet.org/uploads/IYF%20Spotlight.pdf
Foreclosure Crisis: Working Toward a Solution.
March Oversight Report. March 6, 2009
Effects of Poverty, Hunger, and Homelessness
on Children and Youth American Psychiatry
Association
http://www.apa.org/pi/families/poverty.asp
x
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/mmls.nr0.htm

6. http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/aug2009/hmls-
a10.shtml
http://www.mint.com/blog/finance-core/a-visual-
guide-to-the-financial-crisis-unemployment-rates/
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eye.com/blog/2008/11/financial-crisis-recession-
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private-school-367219a
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va
&aid=18203
http://topnews.us/content/23373-unemployment-
rate-highest-16-years-598000-layoffs-announced-
january
http://www.oprah.com/money/Layoff-Survival-Guide