Poverty, the state of one who lacks a usual or socially acceptable

amount of money or material possessions. Poverty is said to exist

when people lack the means to satisfy their basic needs. In
this context, the identification of poor people first requires a
determination of what constitutes basic needs. These may be
defined as narrowly as “those necessary for survival” or as broadly
as “those reflecting the prevailing standard of living in the
community.” The first criterion would cover only those people near
the borderline of starvation or death from exposure; the second
would extend to people whose nutrition, housing, and clothing,
though adequate to preserve life, do not measure up to those of the
population as a whole. The problem of definition is
further compounded by the noneconomic connotations that the
word poverty has acquired. Poverty has been associated, for
example, with poor health, low levels of education or skills, an
inability or an unwillingness to work, high rates of disruptive or
disorderly behaviour, and improvidence. While these attributes
have often been found to exist with poverty, their inclusion in a
definition of poverty would tend to obscure the relation between
them and the inability to provide for one’s basic needs. Whatever
definition one uses, authorities and laypersons alike commonly
assume that the effects of poverty are harmful to both individuals
and society.
Although poverty is a phenomenon as old as human history, its significance has
changed over time. Under traditional (i.e., nonindustrialized) modes of economic
production, widespread poverty had been accepted as inevitable. The total output of
goods and services, even if equally distributed, would still have been insufficient to
give the entire population a comfortable standard of living by prevailing standards.
With the economic productivity that resulted from industrialization, however, this
ceased to be the case—especially in the world’s most industrialized countries, where
national outputs were sufficient to raise the entire population to a comfortable level if
the necessary redistribution could be arranged without adversely affecting output.

Several types of poverty may be distinguished depending on such factors as time or

duration (long- or short-term or cyclical) and distribution (widespread,
concentrated, individual).

Cyclical Poverty
Cyclical poverty refers to poverty that may be widespread throughout a population,
but the occurrence itself is of limited duration. In nonindustrial societies (present
and past), this sort of inability to provide for one’s basic needs rests mainly upon
temporary food shortages caused by natural phenomena or poor agricultural
planning. Prices would rise because of scarcities of food, which brought
widespread, albeit temporary, misery.

In industrialized societies the chief cyclical cause of poverty is

fluctuations in the business cycle, with mass unemployment during
periods of depression or serious recession. Throughout the 19th and
early 20th centuries, the industrialized nations of the world
experienced business panics and recessions that temporarily
enlarged the numbers of the poor. The United States’ experience in
the Great Depression of the 1930s, though unique in some of its
features, exemplifies this kind of poverty. And until the Great
Depression, poverty resulting from business fluctuations was
accepted as an inevitable consequence of a natural process of
market regulation. Relief was granted to the unemployed to tide
them over until the business cycle again entered an upswing. The
experiences of the Great Depression inspired a generation of
economists such as John Maynard Keynes, who sought solutions to
the problems caused by extreme swings in the business cycle. Since
the Great Depression, governments in nearly all advanced industrial
societies have adopted economic policies that attempt to limit the ill
effects of economic fluctuation. In this sense, governments play an
active role in poverty alleviation by increasing spending as a means
of stimulating the economy. Part of this spending comes in the form
of direct assistance to the unemployed, either
through unemployment compensation, welfare, and other subsidies
or by employment on public-works projects. Although business
depressions affect all segments of society, the impact is most severe
on people of the lowest socioeconomic strata because they have
fewer marginal resources than those of a higher strata.
In contrast to cyclical poverty, which is temporary, widespread or “collective” poverty
involves a relatively permanent insufficiency of means to secure basic needs—a
condition that may be so general as to describe the average level of life in a society or
that may be concentrated in relatively large groups in an otherwise prosperous
society. Both generalized and concentrated collective poverty may be transmitted
from generation to generation, parents passing their poverty on to their children.
Collective poverty is relatively general and lasting in parts of Asia, the Middle East,
most of Africa, and parts of South America and Central America. Life for the bulk of
the population in these regions is at a minimal level. Nutritional deficiencies
cause disease seldom seen by doctors in the highly developed countries. Low life
expectancy, high levels of infant mortality, and poor health characterize life in these
societies.

Collective poverty is usually related to economic underdevelopment. The total

resources of many developing nations in Africa, Asia, and South and Central America
would be insufficient to support the population adequately even if they were equally
divided among all of the citizens. Proposed remedies are twofold: (1) expansion of
the gross national product (GNP) through improved agriculture or industrialization,
or both, and (2) population limitation. Thus far, both population control and induced
economic development in many countries have proved difficult, controversial, and at
times inconclusive or disappointing in their results.

An increase of the GNP does not necessarily lead to an improved standard of living
for the population at large, for a number of reasons. The most important reason is
that, in many developing countries, the population grows even faster than the
economy does, with no net reduction in poverty as a result. This increased
population growth stems primarily from lowered infant mortality rates made
possible by improved sanitary and disease-control measures. Unless such lowered
rates eventually result in women bearing fewer children, the result is a sharp
acceleration in population growth. To reduce birth rates, some developing countries
have undertaken nationally administered family-planning programs, with varying
results. Many developing nations are also characterized by a long-standing system of
unequal distribution of wealth—a system likely to continue despite marked increases
in the GNP. Some authorities have observed the tendency for a large portion of any
increase to be siphoned off by persons who are already wealthy, while others claim
that increases in GNP will always trickle down to the part of the population living at
the subsistence level.

Concentrated Collective Poverty

In many industrialized, relatively affluent countries, particular demographic groups
are vulnerable to long-term poverty. In city ghettos, in regions bypassed or
abandoned by industry, and in areas where agriculture or industry is inefficient and
cannot compete profitably, there are found victims of concentrated collective
poverty. These people, like those afflicted with generalized poverty, have higher
mortality rates, poor health, low educational levels, and so forth when compared with
the more affluent segments of society. Their chief economic traits are unemployment
and underemployment, unskilled occupations, and job instability. Efforts at
amelioration focus on ways to bring the deprived groups into the mainstream of
economic life by attracting new industry, promoting small business, introducing
improved agricultural methods, and raising the level of skills of the employable
members of the society.
Case Poverty
Similar to collective poverty in relative permanence but different from it in terms of
distribution, case poverty refers to the inability of an individual or family to secure
basic needs even in social surroundings of general prosperity. This inability is
generally related to the lack of some basic attribute that would permit the individual
to maintain himself or herself. Such persons may, for example, be blind, physically or
emotionally disabled, or chronically ill. Physical and mental handicaps are usually
regarded sympathetically, as being beyond the control of the people who suffer from
them. Efforts to ameliorate poverty due to physical causes focus on education,
sheltered employment, and, if needed, economic maintenance.