Noun

Singular poverty

Plural poverties

poverty (plural poverties)

1. The quality or state of being poor or indigent; want or scarcity of means of subsistence; indigence; need.
2. Any deficiency of elements or resources that are needed or desired, or that constitute richness; as, poverty of soil; poverty of the blood; poverty of ideas.

Part or all of this page has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.

Poverty is the shortage of common things such as food, clothing, shelter and safe drinking water, all of which determine the quality of life. It may also include the lack of access to opportunities such as education and employment which aid the escape from poverty and/or allow one to enjoy the respect of fellow citizens. According to Mollie Orshansky who developed the poverty measurements used by the U.S. government, "to be poor is to be deprived of those goods and services and pleasures which others around us take for granted." Ongoing debates over causes, effects and best ways to measure poverty, directly influence the design and implementation of poverty-reduction programs and are therefore relevant to the fields of public administration and international development..

Poverty may affect individuals or groups, and is not confined to the developing nations. Poverty in developed countries is manifest in a set of social problems including homelessness and the persistence of "ghetto" housing clusters.

Measuring poverty

Poverty is a state in which an individual, group, or population lack essential elements of life within their societies. This usually has the connotation of a lack of basic survival items like food, clothing, shelter, and health care, or the financial means to obtain these, but can also mean having less tangible problems like social exclusion, dependency, and the ability to participate in society. Its exact meaning varies considerably with context and the social environments involved.

Contents

• 1 Sourced
  • 1.1 Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers
• 2 Unsourced
  • 2.1 Anonymous
• 3 External links

Sourced

• The poor ye have always with you.
  • Jesus, the Bible, Matthew 26:11, Mark 14:7, and John 12:8

• The greatest of evils and the worst of crimes is poverty.
  • Bernard Shaw, Major Barbara (1906), preface

• There's no scandal like rags, nor any crime so shameful as poverty.
  • George Farquhar, The Beaux' Stratagem, Act I, sc. i. (1707)

• Come away; poverty’s catching.
  • Aphra Behn (1640-1689), English dramatist, The Rover, Pt. 2. I. (1681)

• Poverty is no discrace to a man, but it is confoundedly inconvenient.
  • Reverand Samuel F. Smith (1808-1895), His Wit and Wisdom

From Wikiquote under the GNU Free Documentation License.
Tue Jul 7 02:23:37 2009