Poverty
- This article uses content from the Wikipedia article on Poverty (edition) under the terms of the CC-by-SA 3.0 license.
Poverty is the state of one who lacks a certain relative amount of material possessions or money.[1] Poverty is relative to, and is the antonym of, wealth.
Extreme poverty is also called penury. Absolute poverty or destitution refers to the one who lacks basic human needs, which commonly includes clean and fresh water, nutrition, health care, education, clothing and shelter. About 1.7 billion people are estimated to live in absolute poverty today. Relative poverty refers to lacking a usual or socially acceptable level of resources or income as compared with others within a society or country.[1] For most of history poverty had been mostly accepted as inevitable as traditional modes of production were insufficient to give an entire population a comfortable standard of living.[1][2] After the industrial revolution, mass production in factories made wealth increasingly more inexpensive and accessible. Of more importance is the modernization of agriculture, such as fertilizers, in order to provide enough yield to feed the population.[3] People who practise asceticism intentionally live in economic poverty so as to attain spiritual wealth.
The supply of basic needs can be restricted by constraints on government services such as corruption, debt and loan conditionalities and by the brain drain of health care and educational professionals. Strategies of increasing income to make basic needs more affordable typically include welfare, economic freedom, and providing financial services. Today, poverty reduction is a major goal and issue for many international organizations such as the United Nations and the World Bank.
See also
Notes
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 "Poverty (sociology)". Poverty (sociology). britannica.com. http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/473136/poverty. Retrieved 2010-10-24.
- ↑ Krugman, Paul, and Robin Wells. Macroeconomics. 2. New York City: Worth Publishers, 2009. Print.
- ↑ "Obama enlists major powers to aid poor farmers with $15 billion". The New York Times. Retrieved 2011-05-27.
Links
- "The Poverty of Poverty Statistics" by Don Mathews, October 2003
- "Why Some People Are Poorer" by Henry Hazlitt, December 2009
- "How Prosperity Generates Poverty" by Paul B. Trescott, May 2006
- "A Retrospective on Johnson's Poverty War" by Adam Young, December 2002
- "Blog Action Day: Poverty" by Art Carden, October 2008
- "The Legacy of Johnson’s War on Poverty" by Samantha Mazzuca, October 2010
- "Obama and the Continuing War on the Poor" by Paul A. Cleveland, August 2009
- "Wars on Poverty and Terror" by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr., January 2003
- "How to Conquer Poverty" by John Chamberlain, November 2009
- "Can the State Reduce Poverty?" by Henry Hazlitt, (from The Conquest of Poverty)
- "Resource Prosperity & Reducing Poverty" by Justin Ptak, March 2011
- "State equals Death and Poverty" by Jeffrey Tucker, December 2008
- "Progress and Poverty: How This Book Came to Be Written" by Henry George Jr., April 2010
- "The Whole Poverty Thing" by Jeffrey Tucker, April 2005
- "The deficiencies of the poverty rate" by Mark Thornton, September 2003
- "Measuring Canada’s Poverty" by Tony Kondaks, January 2004
- "Reducing Poverty by Reducing Government" by George Reisman, October 2004
- "The Route to Poverty" by Jeffrey Tucker, July 2003
- "Can Trade Bring Poverty?" by Robert P. Murphy, December 2004
- "The Long, Slow Slide Into Poverty" by Jeffrey Tucker, October 2011
- "Principles of Bizarro Economics" by Art Carden, July 2010
- Other media
- "Poverty" by Robert LeFevre, March 2004