Poverty

Poverty is the state of being without the necessities of daily living, often associated with need, hardship and lack of resources across a wide range of circumstances. For some, poverty is a subjective and comparative term; for others, it is moral and evaluative; and for others, scientifically established. The principal uses of the term include:

Causes of poverty

Poverty has been attributed to:

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• individual, or "pathological" causes, which see poverty as the result of the behaviour, choices or abilities of the poor;
• familial causes, which attribute poverty to upbringing;
• subcultural causes, which attribute poverty to common patterns of life, learned or shared within a community;
• agency causes, which see poverty as the result of the actions of others, including war, government and the economy;
• structural causes, which argue that poverty is the result of the social structure.