Concept
Poverty
Overview
Poverty is a state or condition in which an individual lacks the financial resources and essentials for a basic standard of living. It can have diverse environmental, legal, social, economic, and political causes and effects. When evaluating poverty in statistics or economics there are two main measures: absolute poverty which compares income against the amount needed to meet basic personal needs, such as food, clothing, and shelter; secondly, relative poverty measures when a person cannot meet a minimum level of living standards, compared to others in the same time and place. The definition of relative poverty varies from one country to another, or from one society to another.
Statistically, as of 2019, most of the world's population live in poverty: in PPP dollars, 85% of people live on less than $30 per day, two-thirds live on less than $10 per day, and 10% live on less than $1.90 per day. According to the World Bank Group in 2020, more than 40% of the poor live in conflict-affected countries. Even when countries experience economic development, the poorest citizens of middle-income countries frequently do not gain an adequate share of their countries' increased wealth to leave poverty. Governments and non-governmental organizations have experimented with a number of different policies and programs for poverty alleviation, such as electrification in rural areas or housing first policies in urban areas. The international policy frameworks for poverty alleviation, established by the United Nations in 2015, are summarized in Sustainable Development Goal 1: "No Poverty".
Social forces, such as gender, disability, race and ethnicity, can exacerbate issues of poverty—with women, children and minorities frequently bearing unequal burdens of poverty. Moreover, impoverished individuals are more vulnerable to the effects of other social issues, such as the environmental effects of industry or the impacts of climate change or other natural disasters or extreme weather events. Poverty can also make other social problems worse; economic pressures on impoverished communities frequently play a part in deforestation, biodiversity loss and ethnic conflict. For this reason, the UN's Sustainable Development Goals and other international policy programs, such as the international recovery from COVID-19, emphasize the connection of poverty alleviation with other societal goals.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
In the original texts
Passages from public-domain books where Poverty is discussed.
Poverty indeed _is_ the strenuous life,—without brass bands or uniforms or hysteric popular applause or lies or circumlocutions; and when one sees the way in which wealth‐getting enters as an ideal into the very bone and marrow of our generation, one wonders whether a revival of the belief that poverty is a worthy religious vocation may not be “the transformation of military courage,” and the spiritual reform which…
William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience
names the idea; states what it is; opens on it
The cause of this poverty lies in the existing social conditions, especially in competition here found in the form of the subdivision of the soil. Much effort has been spent in finding other causes. It has been asserted that the relation of the tenant to the landlord who lets his estate in large lots to tenants, who again have their sub-tenants, and sub-sub-tenants, in turn, so that often ten middlemen come…
Friedrich Engels, The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 with a Preface written in 1892
names the idea; author linked in the graph; opens on it
But the fundamental political end was attained. The powerful class of rich peasantry, if it was not finally annihilated, proved to be shaken to its foundations, with its self-reliance undermined. The middle peasantry, remaining politically shapeless, just as it is economically shapeless, began to learn to find its representative in the foremost worker, as before it found it in the noisy village speculator. Once this…
Leon Trotsky, Dictatorship vs. Democracy
names the idea; opens on it
Certainly this last is the best course; for should you not convince him with regard to poverty, you must allow him to grieve; but if you remove grief by particular arguments, such as I used yesterday, the evil of poverty is in some manner removed.
Marcus Tullius Cicero, The Academic Questions, Treatise De Finibus, and Tusculan Disputations, of M.T. Cicero, With a Sketch of the Greek Philosophers Mentioned by
states what it is; names the idea
But it is more necessary than even to regulate property, to take care that the increase of the people should not exceed a certain number; and in determining that, to take into consideration those children who will die, and also those women who will be barren; and to neglect this, as is done in several cities, is to bring certain poverty on the citizens; and poverty is the cause of sedition and evil. Now Phidon the…
Aristotle, Politics
states what it is; names the idea
Philosophers who discussed Poverty
Related ideas
- BBC News
- Friedrich Hayek
- Princeton University Press
- Gross domestic product
- Great Britain
- Hinduism
- Human rights
- Herbert A. Simon
- Industrial Revolution
- Cato Institute
- Jainism
- Karl Marx
- World Economic Forum
- The Wall Street Journal
- Beijing
- Environmental justice
- Ethiopia
- Law
- Malawi
- The Guardian
- Max Weber
- East Asia
- Milton Friedman
- University of Chicago Press
Opposing perspectives
Place in the tradition
Part of Communism.