What does poverty really mean?
When we hear the word poverty, I think many of us imagine extreme situations, like homelessness, starvation, or people living in very poor conditions. But poverty is far more complex, and far more widespread, than we often realise.
According to the United Nations, more than 700 million people (around 10 percent of the worldโs population) still live in extreme poverty. These people are surviving on less than two dollars a day. And despite decades of progress, this number is rising again.
But poverty is not only about income. Itโs also about access to healthcare, education, decent work, social protection, and the power to make choices about your own life.
Poverty is also deeply connected to human rights. Issues like child labour, forced labour, and human trafficking are often direct consequences of poverty and economic insecurity.
This is why poverty remains one of the most important global issues today, and why โNo Povertyโ is the number one goal in the United Nationsโ Sustainable Development Goals.
In this Thinking in English episode, weโll explore what poverty really is, how itโs measured, why people fall into poverty and struggle to escape it, whether itโs actually possible to reduce or even end poverty, and finally, how the language we use to talk about poverty changes the way we understand it.
Listen Here!
Apple Podcasts
Spotify
YouTubeInteractive Transcript!
You Can Now Read and Listen at the Same Time With an Interactive Transcript!
Vocabulary
- Poverty (noun): The condition of lacking enough money, resources, or opportunities to meet basic needs and live with dignity.
- Poverty is connected to income, access to education and healthcare.
- Absolute (adjective): Complete and not influenced by comparison
- Absolute poverty refers to a situation where people cannot meet basic survival needs.
- Relative (adjective): Measured in comparison to others or to a specific context rather than by a fixed standard.
- Relative poverty depends on the cost of living in a particular society.
- Access (noun): The ability or opportunity to use, reach, or obtain something important.
- Many people lack access to affordable healthcare and education.
- Insecurity (noun): A state of uncertainty or lack of safety, stability, or protection
- Job insecurity makes it difficult for people to plan for the future.
- Opportunity (noun): A chance or possibility to improve oneโs situation.
- Education can create opportunities for people to escape poverty.
- Median (adjective / noun): The middle value in a set of numbers, where half are higher and half are lower.
- Relative poverty is often defined as earning less than half of the median income.
Types of Poverty
What do we actually mean when we talk about poverty?
I think the simplest definition of poverty is not having enough resources, money, or food or shelter, to live with dignity. But this is only the starting point. Poverty is also about health, education, opportunity, safety, and power.
The United Nations is very clear on this. Poverty is multidimensional. A person can have an income and still be poor. Someone can be working and still unable to afford healthcare or housing or education. Poverty is often about lack of access.
To understand this better, it helps to look at different types of poverty.
Absolute Poverty
Absolute poverty is the most extreme and visible form of poverty, and [00:05:00] the type most people think of when they hear the word “poverty”. It refers to a situation where people lack the basic necessities for survival. When people don’t have enough food, clean water, clothing, or healthcare.
Absolute poverty is usually measured using an international poverty line, which is currently set around $3 a day I think. If you earn less money than this, you are in “absolute poverty”.
According to global estimates, around 700 to 760 million people worldwide still live in absolute poverty.
Relative Poverty
Relative poverty looks very different. Relative poverty looks at whether a person has enough resources to live well and survive in the society they live in.
Relative poverty is measured in comparison to others in the same community as you. [00:06:00] Experts often define this type of poverty as living on less than half of the median income in a country or region.
This type of poverty is common in wealthy nations. If you have a job in the UK or the US or Canada or Japan, you are most likely, almost definitely, above the absolute poverty line. But this does not mean you have enough money to live well in your society.
Take the US as an example. The federal, meaning national, poverty line in the US in 2018 was $12,140 for an individual. But in San Francisco, a city with an incredibly high cost of living, an individual earning $82,000 a year in 2018 was considered low income by government standards.
While [00:07:00] $82,000 a year sounds like an amazing salary in most of the world, and most of the USA, in San Francisco, the median rent for a one bedroom apartment is around $3,500. After taxes and high costs for food, a person might still struggle to meet their basic needs, even on a great salary.
In fact, in many developed countries around one in six people might live in relative poverty. And this shows that poverty exists everywhere.
Multidimensional Poverty
This brings us to multidimensional poverty, which is a concept strongly supported and talked about by the UN.
Multidimensional poverty recognizes that income alone does not explain people’s lives. Poverty also includes limited access to education or poor healthcare. It could also include unsafe housing or no [00:08:00] housing, a lack of security or limited opportunities.
For example, someone might earn slightly above the international poverty line, but live in unsafe housing with no healthcare and have no schooling. On paper, they are not absolutely poor, but in reality, their options are extremely limited.
Situational and Generational Poverty
Poverty can also be understood in terms of time.
Situational poverty is caused by sudden events. You may find yourself in poverty or below the poverty line after losing your job. Maybe becoming seriously ill, or experiencing a natural disaster like a hurricane or an earthquake, or living through a conflict.
This type of poverty is often temporary, but without support it can become long term.
Generational poverty, on the other hand, is passed down from one generation to the next. Children [00:09:00] born into poverty often lack good education, safe housing, and stable jobs. So as adults, they are far more likely to remain poor themselves.
This creates a cycle that is extremely difficult to break.
How Poverty Is Measured
Now we know a little about the different types of poverty, let’s take a few minutes to think about measuring poverty.
The most common way to measure poverty is through “poverty lines“. I’ve mentioned these already in the episode.
At the global level, organizations like the World Bank and UN use an international poverty line, which is currently set around $3 a day. This line is designed to measure extreme and absolute poverty.
However, this figure is not meant to describe what a decent life looks like everywhere. It is a minimum across the world. It is not a comfortable standard of living.
That’s why [00:10:00] countries also use their own national poverty lines. These are set based on local costs and living standards.
Some cities and regions also have their own, like how in San Francisco the poverty line or low income line for an individual is over $80,000 a year.
What counts as poverty in one country may be very different in another. The poverty line in a high income country is much higher than in a low income one, because housing and food and transport are all more expensive.
Traditionally, poverty has been measured using income. Measuring how much money people earn or spend. But income doesn’t tell us how people actually live.
Two people with the same income may have very different lives depending on where they live or their education. Even in the same city, one person may have access to [00:11:00] affordable housing, while another person has to pay two or three times more for their apartment.
Because of this, many organizations also look at living standards, which measures more than just income.
Limits of Poverty Lines
But measuring poverty has serious limitations. A dollar goes much further in some countries or regions than others.
Even within the same country, living costs can vary hugely between cities and rural areas. For example, my income is good for where I live in Japan. It would be okay for the suburbs of Tokyo, but I would be poor in some areas of Central Tokyo and probably really poor in a place like New York.
Another problem is informal work. Hundreds of millions of people earn money through informal or undocumented jobs. Their income is unstable, unpredictable, and [00:12:00] often invisible in official statistics.
And there is also hidden poverty. Some people earn just above the poverty line, but still struggle to afford housing or food or healthcare.
Measuring poverty is obviously necessary, but it will never be exact. It will always be an approximation.
Why Poverty Exists
Why does poverty exist in the first place?
Well, I don’t think there is one single cause of poverty. Instead, poverty is usually the result of multiple different factors.
One of the most direct causes is economic insecurity. Many people are poor because their work is unstable or badly paid. Unemployment, informal jobs, underemployment, and low wages all make it difficult to plan for the future. Even in wealthy countries, millions of people have jobs but still can’t afford housing or basic services.
Education also [00:13:00] plays a long-term role in poverty. Limited access to education or poor quality education reduces your opportunities. If you are unable to read, write, or do basic mathematics, you are obviously going to have fewer job opportunities and a lower average earning potential.
This creates a cycle.
Children born into poor families are more likely to attend underfunded schools or leave education early, which increases their risk of poverty as adults.
Health and poverty are also deeply connected. Illness can push people into poverty by reducing their ability to work or forcing them to spend large amounts of money on their health.
In countries without strong or universal healthcare, like the USA, medical costs are one of the leading causes of financial hardship.
At the same time, poverty increases health [00:14:00] risks. Poor health leads to poverty, and poverty leads to poor health.
Social and political systems also affect who experiences poverty. Discrimination, for example, can limit people’s access to education or jobs.
Conflict and war are among the most extreme causes of poverty. Violence destroys infrastructure. It disrupts education. It displaces people and it collapses economies.
And poverty is of course influenced by global forces. Climate change, for example, is already increasing poverty by destroying crops and homes and livelihoods, especially in countries that depend on agriculture. And natural disasters hit poorer communities hardest because they have fewer resources to recover.
Finally, global inequality also matters. Things like trade systems and debt and unequal access to [00:15:00] technology mean that some countries will struggle to develop even when their populations are working hard.
The Poverty Trap Cycle
You may have heard the term poverty trap before. The basic idea is that poverty traps people. Once they are in poverty, it’s difficult to escape.
Poverty is a cycle. Once someone falls into poverty, a series of linked problems can keep them there, even if they work hard or make responsible choices. Each problem reinforces the next, making escape from the poverty trap difficult.
One common poverty trap looks like this.
Low income leads to poor nutrition and limited access to healthcare. This makes the person ill. The person’s poor health then reduces their ability to work consistently or productively. This leads to even lower income… and the cycle continues.
Another trap involves financial [00:16:00] insecurity.
People living in poverty often have no savings. This means that an unexpected cost, like a medical bill or your refrigerator breaking or a family emergency, must be paid for with debt. Debt usually comes with high interest rates, especially for people with no access to banking or poor credit. Over time, repayments take up more and more income, making it even harder to save or invest for the future.
Poverty becomes self-reinforcing. Opportunities that could help people escape poverty, like moving or education, require money and time… which are the things that people in poverty often lack.
Can We Reduce Poverty
So can poverty actually be ended? Or can it only be reduced?
First, it’s useful to make a distinction.
Reducing poverty means lowering the number of people living in poverty and improving living [00:17:00] standards. Ending poverty suggests eliminating it completely.
Most experts agree that ending poverty everywhere, especially relative poverty, may be extremely difficult, but reducing poverty significantly is clearly possible.
Over the past few decades, the world has made real progress. Hundreds of millions of people have moved out of extreme poverty, especially in parts of East Asia.
Governments play a very important role in this. Things like social safety nets are important. These are systems that support people when they are unemployed, sick, elderly, or caring for others. These include unemployment benefits or child support or pensions.
Policies like minimum wages and labor protections can also help ensure that people are not trapped in low paid insecure jobs.
Education is one of the most powerful tools for reducing poverty. Education for [00:18:00] women and girls is particularly effective. Studies consistently show that when women are educated, families tend to be healthier, incomes rise and communities are more stable.
Poverty is a global issue and many responses are international. Non-governmental organizations, development agencies and international institutions provide aid, build infrastructure, and support education in lower income countries. The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals are aiming to keep governments accountable.
Language and Poverty
So to end this episode, I’d like to think a little bit about how we talk about poverty.
Language matters. It influences how we think, feel, and act.
Consider the difference between these two phrases:
- “the poor”
- “people living in poverty”
The first turns a complex group of individuals into a [00:19:00] single label, “the poor“. The second reminds us that poverty is a condition. It’s something people are facing, not their identity. People living in poverty, they’re still people.
This may sound like a small difference, but it does affect how much empathy we feel and whether we see something as changeable. Whether we see poverty as changeable.
Language carries hidden judgments and bias. Words like “lazy”, “dependent” and “undeserving” are sometimes used, directly or indirectly, to describe people in poverty. These stereotypes suggest that poverty is the result of bad choices or weak character.
But as we’ve seen throughout this episode, poverty is often caused by other factors like low wages or poor health, or lack of education, discrimination, natural disasters, or conflict.
The media and politicians play a powerful role in how poverty [00:20:00] is discussed. Newspaper headlines may focus on individual stories taken out of context, rather than the long-term trends or causes of poverty.
And political language often frames poverty as a cost to society rather than a sign of deeper problems. Poverty is a sign that your country, your society, has economic and social problems. It’s not a sign that these people are causing damage to your country. It is a sign that your country is already damaged.
If poverty is something that people do to themselves, the solution is these people need to be punished or controlled. But if we see poverty as a shared social challenge, a consequence of our society, well then solutions tend to appear in opportunity or support or prevention.โ
Final Thought
Poverty is not simple. It is multi-dimensional and influenced by income, health, education, work, powers, and opportunity. It’s influenced by personal circumstances and also by economic systems, policies and structures.
There’s no single cause of poverty and no single solution.
Ending poverty completely is probably unrealistic, at least in the short term, but reducing poverty, reducing suffering, and reducing inequality are clearly achievable.
But what do you think? What is the poverty line in your country? How does your society talk about poverty or people in poverty?
Extended Vocabulary List
Become a Patreon Subscriber to Access the Extended Vocabulary List!
Vocabulary Games and Activities!
Learn and practice vocabulary from this Thinking in English episode.
Practice using 5 different study games and activities – including writing, listening, and memorisation techniques!
Flashcards
Matching Game
Learning Game
Test Yourself
Listening and Spelling
Do you want to Think in English?
I’m so excited that you found my blog and podcast!! If you donโt want to miss an article or an episode, you can subscribe to my page!
