[pov-er-tee] 
| 1. | the state or condition of having little or no money, goods, or means of support; condition of being poor; indigence. |
| 2. | deficiency of necessary or desirable ingredients, qualities, etc.: poverty of the soil. |
| 3. | scantiness; insufficiency: Their efforts to stamp out disease were hampered by a poverty of medical supplies. |
| pov·er·ty (pŏv'ər-tē) n.
[Middle English poverte, from Old French, from Latin paupertās, from pauper, poor; see pau-1 in Indo-European roots.] |
"Seeing so much poverty everywhere makes me think that God is not rich. He gives the appearance of it, but I suspect some financial difficulties." [Victor Hugo, "Les Misérables," 1862]
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.
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