By Paul Andrew Bourne

ABSTRACT


Poverty couples with ‘in-access’ to tertiary level education continues to be a pivotal challenge to national governments because of its influence on development, and the social chaos that will arise if the matter is felt unabated. This paper analyzes the social determinants of admittance to post-secondary level education of poor Jamaicans with data from the Jamaica Survey of Living Conditions, 2002 (i.e. JSLC). Poverty has a significant negative linear influence on admission to post-secondary level education, with persons residing in the Kingston Metropolitan Area having a high likeliness to gain tertiary level education than people who reside in the rural zones. In Jamaica, age, male, and the number of people living in a household have a negative impact on accessing post-secondary level education for poor. Finally, the use of association and regression analyses was used to establish the determinants of access to tertiary education of the poor.



SUMMARY


All modern societies are driven by a materialistic system through which prosperity and advancement, and power are measured, and these determine ones socio-cultural space within the general society. It is through this structure, that one is fed diets of individualism; to which, competitiveness, market mechanism and efficiency replace values, moral and human empathy; which then gives rise to poverty. This guides the process to which many people are cohered in the system with consensus. The structure is such that materialism is substantially germane to choices and regular decision-making. In all facet of people’s existence, despite the degree of non-materialistic resources that they bring to the social space, poverty and its influences is a reality for plethora of people.

It is clear from the functioning of the structure that poverty, over time, harms, hurts and destroys some people; but the perceived benefits of the structure is replacing a welfare type state. Poverty is not only a label but this brings with it social decay, deviance, social unrest, rebellion, human suffering, retard economic growth and development, and there is an economic cost associated with its continuity – For example, public expenditure on security in order to reduce or tackle possible civil unrest. It is materialism that drives the allocation and distribution of resources. The purpose of this study is to explore the social dialectic of those in poverty from the vantage point of access to tertiary level education with the intent of forwarding an understanding of phenomenon within a socio-environment context. The issues that will be explored are within the categorization of (1) state of poverty in Jamaica, (2) typologies of those in poverty who reside in Jamaica, and (3) access to tertiary level education.


POVERTY AND ACCESS TO POST-SECONDARY LEVEL EDUCATION IN JAMAICA

On the positive side, the role of tertiary education in the construction of knowledge economies and democratic societies is more influential than ever. Indeed, tertiary education is central to the creation of the intellectual capacity on which knowledge production and utilization depend and to the promotion of the lifelong-learning practices necessary to update individual knowledge and skills (The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, 2002, p.xvii)


Poverty is a social science construct that has seen many working definitions as economists. The issue has been in many discourses over the years, and it is yet to be adequately and finally resolved by academics. The Senate Community Affairs References Committee of the Australian parliamentary House in seeking to analyse poverty, writes that

Poverty is essentially the lack of means to live. At the heart of any consideration of poverty lies the issue of what is needed to live "a decent life" and, more fundamentally, what it is to be human (Senate Community Affairs References Committee, 2004, p.5).


The epistemological premise upon which the Senate Community Affairs Reference Committee of the Australian Parliament saw poverty is based on absoluteness. Poverty is categorized in two major heading: (1) absolute and (2) relative poverty (Sen, 1976). Absolute poverty denotes the lack of particular social necessities that is caused by ‘limited material resource’ in which to function – affordability of meeting basic needs, such as adequate nutrition, clothing and housing. Relative poverty, on the other hand, speaks to the individuals’ low financial resources (money or income) or other material resources relative to other people. The Senate says that "relative poverty is defined not in terms of a lack of sufficient resources to meet basic needs, but rather as lacking the resources required to participate in the lifestyle and consumption patterns enjoyed by others in the society" (p. 6).

Embedded within the monograph of the Senate Community Affairs References Committee’s (SCARC) is a theorizing forwarded by the World Bank (The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development) that speaks to access to tertiary education and its impetus in availing opportunities to its recipients. Those opportunities are the driven force behind the improvements in the transformation process of all those who access the intellectual offerings of post-secondary education. From the World Bank’s postulation, access and attainment of tertiary level education provide a vehicle through which the poor in particular can have access to multitudinous resources, which are likely to be the catalyst for a social transformation. Implied within the reasoning of SCARC is the material incapacitation of the poor within the construct of their educational attainment, which predominantly explains their socio-economic status. It is clear from the perspectives of the both institutions previously mentioned that the required competencies and knowledge in interpreting the social environment within which we live is not aided by primary and-or secondary level education.

Tertiary level education, therefore, provides the tools that are needed to create a conceptual framework of some of the abstract issues to which we encounter, and its graduands are many times more likely to possess highly degree of competence than a primary or secondary level graduands. Owing to the fact that tertiary graduands possess a high degree of mastery of particular limited skills, it is this that holds the key for their socio-economic advancement. As, if their skills of required, a higher salary package will be offered them as an induce for their engagement in work as against an individual who possesses a skills to which its supply is more than demand for the labour.

From the writings of the World Bank and the SCARC, it is post-secondary education that opens a plethora of choices through which required skills, knowledge and socio-physical transformation of a society is possible. Social transformation is attainable by material resources to which the poor are not able to garner in the pursuit of human development. The poor is subjected to a life of low social development and a super ordinate incapacitation of economic resources that will transform their existence. Owing to the materialistic economies to which the poor reside, not being able to access financial and other materialistic resources constrict social mobility. Neither the World Bank nor the SCARC is arguing that primary and-or secondary level education is useless but that the resources available to an individual who has access tertiary education is higher. This situation can be summed from a World Bank postulation: "central to the creation of the intellectual capacity on which knowledge production and utilization depend and to the promotion of the lifelong-learning practices necessary to update individual knowledge and skills" (World Bank, 2002, p.xvii).
"Poverty is not just an economic condition: the lack of daily necessities-of adequate food, water, shelter, or clothing. It is the absence of the capabilities and opportunities to change those conditions" (Inter-American Development Bank, 8). Embedded within this perspective of poverty is the human condition – the quality of life of a group of people with the least amount materialistic resources who are unable to transform their state of the incapacitation. From the Inter-American Development Bank’s monograph, the economic cost of poverty does not lie in the individual’s inaffordability of certain items but we are unable to scientifically quantify the human state of those in poverty. Poverty, therefore, is not measured in the denomination of money but the psychosocial costs of those who are experiencing the incapacitation. Fields (1980) concurs with the Inter-American Development Bank that degree of poverty and ‘inequality’ throughout the world is ‘staggering’. From the works of authors so far, poverty constrict access to particular material resources which includes education, and this is even more so for post-secondary education. One of the reasons for difficulty in access of tertiary level education for the poor is because of the high cost associated with this product. The costing of post-secondary level education include tuition, stationary and books, travelling, entertainment, lodging, transportation, foods and other miscellaneous expenses. Within this reality, the poor finds it extremely difficult to afford such commodities despite the willing of funding institutions like the Students’ Loan Bureau (SLB) in providing financing for tertiary level education. One of the difficulties of the poor lies in the situation that even when SLB offers a loan to a student with the additional amount for sundries, this is still a small fraction of the cost of post-secondary education.

Fields (1980) in Poverty, Inequality, and Development states that there is dialectic in poverty reduction and income disparity. He cites that "…absolute incomes were growing and absolute poverty was being alleviated, relative income disparities were widening" (p.212). An aspect to Fields’ monograph is inequality to which this paper will not be privy to analysis. This study will focus on poor and their ability to access tertiary level education. In some countries, despite the widening of the gap between the rich and the poor (Fields, 1980, p.239), an empirical analysis of the poor concerning access to tertiary education is timely and this will aid the researcher in understanding educational attainment of the poor. Majid (2003) summarizes the poverty and inequality discourse by saying that "…the acceptance of the idea of growth reducing poverty does not mean that better access by the poor to the growth process …" (p.11).

Measuring poverty

The discourse of poverty is not only centered around human sufferings but primary on its measurement. The Senate Community Affairs Reference Committee (SCARC) ascribes Professor Ronald Henderson the developer of the ‘poverty line’. "…he developed his ‘poverty line’ which was originally set equal to the minimum wage plus child endowment in Melbourne in 1966" (p.13). Based on the forwarded argument, poverty is measured in terms of (i) absolute or (ii) relative poverty. One writer cites that poverty must be quantified in order to understand its tenets. The quantification of poverty, according to the SCARC, may be listed under the following headings:
 The development of income-based poverty lines to measure income poverty;
 The development of budget standards – determining the income level necessary to afford a clearly defined ‘basket of goods’ which are required to maintain a minimum acceptable lifestyle;
 Consensual approach – determining what members of the community think is a maintain necessary income and to draw a poverty line at this point;
 Living standards studies – attempts to directly measure the living standards of low income people and compare them to those in the wider community (SCARC, 2004, p.12).
Within the construct of the quantification of poverty(Sen, 1976; Foster, 1998), there are number drawbacks to its measurement. The most fundamental limitation in the measurement of poverty is the marker, the ‘poverty line’. This valuation is usually set where the ‘social security recipients are clustered’. This benchmark, according to the SCARC, "…remains a continuing debate as to whether such an approach should be based on the mean or median income level" (p. 13).
In the discourse on the quantification of poverty, in an attempt to measure the construct in an objective manner and to overcome the limitations which were previously stated, the poverty gap is sometimes used. Instead of using the headcount approach in the quantification of poverty, the poverty gap takes into account the individual’s position in respect to the poverty line, and the depth of his/her poverty status. Within this measurement approach, poverty becomes a relative phenomenon instead of an absolutism technique. The SCARC (2004) says that, "the aggregate money value of the poverty gap indicates the minimum financial cost of raising all poor families to the poverty line" (p.15). Based on the monograph of SCARC, the poverty gap technique addresses the shortcomings of the headcount approach to the calculation of poverty by its very nature of changing whenever income changes of the family. This approach "…makes poverty estimates less sensitive to small changes in the incomes of those close to the poverty line" says the SCARC (2004, p. 15).

Poverty measurement modifications

Poverty is not stationary over ones lifetime, and so any valuation of this construct must change with income and price changes. Once the ‘poverty line’ has been established within a particular time for a particular geo-political space, it must be updated in order to reflect changes in cost of living and standard of living within that time space. According to the SCARC, "updating by movements in prices adjusts the poverty line for changes in the cost of living whereas updating for movement in incomes adjusts for changes in the standard of living" (2004, p.30). Studies have used different approaches in the updating of the poverty lines. These are (1) consumer price index (CPI), (2) average weekly earnings, (3) household disposable income per capita, (4) median equivalent disposable income (SCARC, 2004, p.30).
In the world, where do the poor reside, and what are distributions of poverty in those zones? (See Figure 1.1; Table 1.a)
Figure 1.1: Categorization of Regions in Poverty


Table 1.a: Regional Share of poverty in developing countries.
19701 19801 19901 19702 19802 19902
Asia 82.78 71.43 41.47 85.89 80.26 67.06
Africa 14.63 27.08 55.43 10.49 16.11 27.53
Latin America 2.59 1.49 3.1 3.63 3.63 5.4
All 100 100 100 100 100 100
Source: Majid (2003)
Note: 1 Less than US $ 1 per day
2 Less than US$2 per day

Significance of Study
Statistics have shown that global poverty and in particular those in Latin America and Caribbean have been falling over the past decade; but, the reality is, people continue to receive substandard education, sub-human conditions and experience social exclusion (Inter-American Development Bank, 1998). Poverty is not limited to the incapacitation of financial resource of the people but the inability to transform their very lives to which tertiary education is that vehicle. Sociologists like Haralombos and Holborn (2002), and Macionis and Plummer (1998) express the belief that education is a vehicle of social transformation, and this is even more crucial for the poor. The issue seems rather simplistic but by not accessing tertiary education the poor becomes even more vulnerable and gullible to a life of deprivation and social misery. In order to comprehend the importance of tertiary education in the social transformation process of a society, a study carried out by the Ghanaian government summarizes this adequately. In a study on Ghana’s ‘education system’ publication cites that "The major objective of the Tertiary Education Reforms was to expand access, improve quality teaching and learning and provide the much-needed infrastructural base for accelerated technical manpower delivery for sustainable economic development" (Ghana,UN).

The Planning Institute of Jamaica and the Statistical Institute of Jamaica have provided the poverty estimates for Jamaica ever since the World Bank allocated monies for its inception. In Jamaica, based on the incidence of poverty rate, poverty captures in excess of 400,000 lives. This translates into socio-economic misery for both that group and other nationals. With the focus of the Millennium Development Goal of halving poverty by 2015, the issue must understand in order that we are able to adequately address such a concern. This study seeks to grapple with the issue in order to make available recommendations which are practical in an attempt of reducing misery for people within the context of the role of tertiary education in eradicating this human condition. In order to appreciate the role of post-secondary education in scheme of things, Barr writing for the International Monetary Fund (IMF) summarizes this adequate, when he writes that "tertiary education is an important element in national economic performance and a major determinant of a person´s life chances" (Barr, 2005).

This study of access to post-secondary education for the poor in Jamaica is twofold. First, the main objective is to provide general information on the poor which are influencing an opportunity to access tertiary level education. The second objective is to construct a model that relates to access of post-secondary education for the poor in Jamaica. The main hypothesis that is guiding this research is that there is a negative correlation between access to tertiary level education and poverty controlled for sex, age, area of residence, household size, and educational level of parents.

The specific hypotheses are that:

i. a reduction in poverty results in greater access to tertiary level education;

ii. if one is poor, gender influences access to tertiary level education;

iii. poor people who reside in urban zones have greater access to tertiary level education than those in rural zones;

iv. there is a negative association between age of poor respondents and access to tertiary level education;

v. there is a positive association between typologies of relationship with head of household and access to tertiary level education;

vi. there is an indirect relationship between increasing household size and access to tertiary level education;

Structure of the report

Chapter 1 summarizes the context of the study, providing contextual and theoretical underpinning of the discourse on poverty and education, and the explanation of the definitional measurement of particular concepts. The chapter provides studies and materials on the general discourse from an international, regional and national zone. The section provides the framework upon which analyses will be done, and how these will aid the study.

The second chapter gives the conceptualization and data transformation of the key variables along with the particular method of data analysis. This begins with a brief overview of the choice of paradigm, and the survey design, followed by the method of analysis and explanatory model.

Chapter four provides the findings and the analyses of the data against the background the methodology. The focus of this section is the provision of information in hypothesis testing.

Chapter 5, on the other hand, concludes with the summary, conclusion and recommendation of the access to post-secondary education of the poor.