Poverty Reference library
An Oxford Companion to the Romantic Age
... The history of poverty cannot be written simply by establishing a measure or threshold of deprivation and looking for all who fell beneath it, since it is also a history of shifting definitions and perspective. The terms ‘poverty’ and ‘poor’ were particularly dense and highly contested concepts in this period. They described a social and economic situation which sometimes required charity or statutory relief, but they were also terms of political analysis which conveyed specific values, attitudes, and explanations of how society in general was composed...
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A Dictionary of Epidemiology (6 ed.)
...Poverty A condition of absolute or relative deprivation of material and cultural resources. Absolute poverty refers to the condition in which the basic resources necessary to sustain life are lacking; relative poverty is the lack of resources in comparison with other members of a given society. 649 , 662 , 674 See also absolute poverty level ; relative poverty level . ...
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A Dictionary of Economics (5 ed.)
...lift everybody above the poverty line. If poverty is relative, then poverty will be very difficult to eliminate. See also poverty line ; poverty trap...
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William Brown
A Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics and International Relations (4 ed.)
... Poverty is the state of being poor; that is, lacking the basic needs of life such as food, health, education, and shelter. Most frequently, poverty is discussed in relation to household income, though this is contested. In fact, a number of different approaches to defining and measuring poverty can be identified. One distinction is between ‘absolute poverty’ and ‘relative poverty’. Absolute poverty is defined in terms of material deprivation defined in terms of income or other basic needs of life. Absolute poverty is usually measured using a ‘poverty...
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A Dictionary of Social Work and Social Care (2 ed.)
... A distinction is usually made between absolute and relative poverty. Absolute poverty is the state of an individual who does not have sufficient resources for subsistence, as in some parts of the world. Definitions of relative poverty are usually used in Western societies. These refer to an individual’s or group’s disadvantaged position when compared with other members of society. They vary in precisely how this is defined but are united in seeing poverty as relative to the standards regarded as those needed to live an adequate life in a particular...
Poverty Reference library
Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase & Fable (19 ed.)
... Poverty trap A situation arising when a person’s increase in income is offset by a resultant loss in state benefits, so that they are no better off. When poverty comes in at the door, love flies out at the window See under when...
Poverty Reference library
Oxford Companion to Australian Politics
...Henderson poverty line (from the earlier Melbourne study) and most attention focused on the poverty rate defined using that line. The Inquiry found that the poverty rate in 1973 was just over 10 per cent and that a quarter of a million children were living in poor families. Although an income definition of poverty can be widely understood, poverty defined in this way depends crucially on where the poverty line is set, and thus on how poverty is measured. This has generated an intense debate over the merits of alternative ways of measuring poverty‐most of...
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A Dictionary of Sociology (4 ed.)
...Since relative poverty is a matter of differences in levels of material resources—that is, of inequalities in their distribution across a society—measures of relative poverty are potentially no less objective than those of absolute poverty. They are not simply a matter of subjective feelings of poverty, though such feelings may be of importance when analysing the consequences of poverty. Subsistence definitions of poverty are of considerable value in examining Third World poverty, and international studies show that the overall level of poverty measured in...
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A Dictionary of Human Geography
...as a percentage of the poverty line. It shows the depth of poverty. The poverty severity index further quantifies the level of inequality among those below the poverty line. Welfare definitions of poverty are generally realized by more broad-based indices ( see Human Development Index ). The Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI) calculates a Multidimensional Poverty Index based on ten indicators including whether a household has electricity, a dirt floor, clean water within 30 minutes by foot, children at school, and so forth. A household...
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Dictionary of the Social Sciences
... A condition of absolute or relative deprivation of material and cultural resources. The term absolute poverty refers to the condition in which the basic resources necessary to sustain life are lacking; relative poverty is the lack of resources in comparison with other members of a given society. Poverty is conventionally measured by income, although a number of studies have called attention to the distinct importance of wealth—or its absence. The concept of the poverty line , first introduced by Charles Booth ( The Life and Labour of the People in...
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A Concise Companion to the Jewish Religion
... Jewish attitudes to poverty vary. Throughout Jewish history the poor are treated with respect, and alleviation of their sufferings is strongly advocated ( see CHARITY ). But this does not necessarily mean that poverty is seen as something of value. There is nothing in Judaism to correspond to the Christian monastic ideal of taking poverty vows. In the Bible possessions are usually seen as a blessing. Generally speaking, much depended on the economic conditions in which Jews found themselves. In Eastern Europe, for example, where the economic conditions...
Poverty Reference library
Encyclopedia of Social Work (20 ed.)
...determinants in order to better understand the existence of poverty. Third, strategies and solutions to poverty are briefly reviewed. causes of poverty; human capital; labor market; life course; poverty dynamics; poverty measures; poverty rates; residential segregation; social welfare state; solutions to poverty; structural vulnerability Context The subject of poverty has been of central importance to the profession of social work. In fact it could be argued that addressing poverty lies at the heart of what the profession stands for. As Simon notes, the original...
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The Oxford Companion to Australian History
...not abolished poverty. Poverty means different things at different times and in different societies. Modern students of poverty, following the classic British studies by Charles Booth and Seebohm Rowntree , defined poverty in terms of a ‘poverty line’, the divide between decent sufficiency and outright want. The poor were unable to afford fuel for heating and cooking, or nourishing food, or weather-proof shelter and housing, or clothing or shoes, or (for the first 100 years) elementary education and certainly not secondary schooling. But poverty was also a...
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Jesudas M. Athyal
The Oxford Encyclopaedia of South Asian Christianity
... South Asia is a region of paradoxes. Traditionally a poverty-stricken area, the region has undergone tremendous economic growth during the past few decades. In India alone, food production has trebled since 1950 . Industrial production went up by 6.9 times between 1951 and 1985 . Economic growth has, in fact, kept ahead of population growth. Such figures, however, tend to blur the reality of stark poverty still widely prevalent in the region, especially in several parts of India * and Bangladesh * . The paradox of affluence and poverty existing...
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Michael B. Katz
The Oxford Companion to United States History
...lift them out of poverty, chronic joblessness defined a large, new component of urban poverty. Throughout American history, poverty has displayed a rural as well as an urban face. In rural areas, low wages, soil exhaustion, the exploitation of sharecroppers and miners, declining prices of farm commodities, and natural disasters all promoted poverty. Rural poverty in southern Appalachia initially inspired the War on Poverty in the early 1960s and the redesign and vast expansion of the food-stamp program a few years later. Although rural poverty persisted, by...
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Michael B. Katz
The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Business, Labor, and Economic History
...disasters all promoted poverty. Rural poverty in southern Appalachia initially inspired the War on Poverty in the early 1960s and the redesign and vast expansion of the food-stamp program a few years later. However, the relation between rural and urban poverty reversed in the last part of the twentieth century. Between 1959 and 2009 , poverty outside metropolitan areas declined from 33.2 percent to 16.6 percent, while the principal city rate remained almost flat, 18.3 percent in 1959 and 18.7 percent in 2009 . Although rural poverty persisted, by the 1970s...
POVERTY Reference library
The Oxford Dictionary of the Jewish Religion (2 ed.)
...poverty was considered a grave affliction, too much wealth was regarded as a danger and a temptation (cf. Dt . 8.11–18, 32.15); it was most desirable to achieve a mean between poverty and wealth. Nevertheless, occasionally the rabbis even praise poverty as a positive virtue. On the verse “I test you in the furnace of affliction” ( Is . 48.10), the Talmud comments, “This teaches that the Holy One, blessed be he, went through all the virtues in order to bestow them upon Israel and found none more becoming than poverty” ( Ḥag . 9b). This view of poverty as a...
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Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern World
... [ This entry includes three subentries, an overview and a discussion of poverty in Africa and in Latin America .] Overview The definition of poverty has changed over time and across cultures. In parts of Africa, for example, to be poor once meant to be alone and without kin. Poverty thus concerned human relationships, not economic resources. Today, however, poverty invariably refers to economics, though even here scholars differ as to what exactly constitutes poverty. Generally poverty refers to deficits in the material standards of living, such as food,...
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Francisco L. Rivera-Batiz and Phillip Granberry
The Oxford Encyclopedia of Latinos and Latinas in Contemporary Politics, Law, and Social Movements
...in poverty rates among the Latina and Latino population. Table 2 decomposes poverty rates in the year 2010 by specific Latina and Latino subpopulations. Puerto Ricans had the highest poverty rates, with 26.7 percent living in poverty in 2010 . On the other hand, South Americans had the lowest poverty rates with 14 percent of South Americans in the United States living in poverty. What explains the sharply higher poverty rates suffered by Latinas and Latinos compared to non-Hispanic whites and Asians? And what accounts for the widely different poverty...
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A Dictionary of Geography (5 ed.)
...the majority of them girls, do not attend school.’ Poverty is not restricted to the developing world: in inner London in 2006 , 51% of children were living in poverty and US Census Bureau records show that the proportion of Americans living in poverty rose between 1974 and 2004 , from 11.2% to 12.7%. For the period 2000–2005 the Cuban infant mortality rate was 8/000; the same as for the USA ( World Mortality Report , 2005 ). ‘The only positive interpretation that can be given to this picture of poverty and inequality in the developed world is that many...
