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1. The state of being poor; lack of the means of providing material needs or comforts.
2. Deficiency in amount; scantiness: “the poverty of feeling that reduced her soul” (Scott Turow).
3. Unproductiveness; infertility: the poverty of the soil.
4. Renunciation made by a member of a religious order of the right to own property.
I wonder if the structural basis of poverty is acceptable as an answer to your question…then here is a try at answering your question…According to the educational source of my opinion: Social Problems a Critical Approach written by the Kenneth J. Neubeck and Mary Alice Neubeck… Why are there poor? We must first look over the personality characteristics, assessments and hereditary makeup of the poor. In shorter down to the neighbor wording of this expression…it is not the personality of the individual or should we consider the education level of the individual or the color of the skin in determining rather those having these characteristics are economically weak or most likely to be in poverty. For poverty is considered the fault of the group…We are living in a system that has blamed the victim for the lack of economic success. Example the mother of the President of the United States Mrs. Barbara Bush…stated the poor that were stranded at a football stadium were living better there - than at their homes …the population homes were destroyed during a natural disaster (I am paraphrasing the words here). People are in poverty because they are not able to sell their labor or their incomes are too low.
“…the organization of the economy and its machinations; the profit oriented decisions made by top executives in business and industry; government policy; discrimination on the basis of age, sex, ace and ethnicity-all bear on the poor and tend to be outside their immediate control. The propensity to blame the victims of poverty for the economic deprivation under which they labor, while consistent with dominant values and beliefs regarding inequality, ignores all too many realities. Under the existing structure of our society, any of us could be poor if deprived of adequate means of subsistence by virtue of forces and decisions originating outside our control.
Just as our economic system perpetuates the privilege of the ownership class, so does it perpetuate the life situation of the poor. Many members of the ownership class earn more in one year than poor persons can reasonably expect to accumulate in a lifetime-a stark reflection of the extremes of economic inequality in the United States…”
The foundation of poverty is not the victim… but, is instead the natural history of the political economic system and the way the system handles it’s population.
There are many articles available that speak to the actual experiences of the some one or group of people who are experiencing poverty. One source is the collection of articles from the University of Chicago Press, article: “Lives on the Edge: Single Mothers and their Children in the Other America”… [1993]
There are different degrees of poverty just as there are different levels of prosperity.
In the USA you have a very large middle class with a small lower class and a smaller upper class of which the very rich compose a very small segment. In short, most of the USA population is living well and would be considered rich by third world standards. In fact, even those considered poor here in the USA would be considered wealthy in many third-world countries. So a definition of poverty is of necessity a culturally determined subjective evaluation.
Extreme poverty, however, is one in which, as you said, the person is barely able to provide for adequate sustenance, and shelter. That is applicable to all countries regardless of culture and is based on our common humanity.
BTW
It is illogical to expect people to sit and die quietly without making an effort to survive in one way or another.
This is an interesting question. When I lived in Korea in early 1970s, we often didn't have food and had to borrow it from a neighbor or a small mom & pop grocery store nearby. We went hungry often but didn't consider ourselves poor because others around our neighborhood had it worse.
In 1976, our family immigrated to a poor section of LA and lived a poor life by US standard. However, we never went hungry because food was relatively cheep in US. It never occurred to us that we were poor.
So, while I lived most of my childhood being "poor," I never realized I did until years later.
1. Not making any effort to over come the existence
2. Due to poor economy in the country.
3 Number of mouth living under the same roof.
4 Lack of knowledge on self sufficiency.
5 Or any kind of Un rest in the country could drag the population to poverty.
Each of us may have experience in differently. But overall non of the experts in the world were unable to bring substantial method and control on either preventing or considerable reduction on poverty in the world.
Why we unable define what is “ Poverty” .
Poverty differ from one to another, one country to another, one nation to another
It is not only the food
It is not only water
It is not only cloth and shelter
It is not only money
It is not only poor economy
It is the all above to archive within the time period of your life for comfortable
Livelihood.
I would define poverty as the inverse to 'freedom of mobility'. The less mobility, the greater the poverty!!
Hence, the group with the greatest degree of poverty are criminals in jail. Makes sense to me.
I like this answer and Rkim's post eludes to it too. I like to draw attention to the big difference between being broke (not poverty) and being poor (essentially poverty). The former has hope of changing those circumstances, the other does not. Over my lifetime, I have experienced being broke, even profoundly so (couldn't afford to eat and had to seek assistance from charity organizations) but I have never been poor. However having been stuck in other ways that are equally as basic, I can relate to it.
The definition of poverty depends on who is doing the defining and WHY. Being poor refers to a condition where one cannot provide the minimum necessary to sustain a certain standard of living. But that standard can vary depending on where you live and who is applying the standard.
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