Definitions of poverty can be specific and absolute or very relative and broad (Rank, 2023). A more absolute or narrow definition of poverty might mean an individual or family does not meet a pre-determined income threshold. In contrast, the United Nations' definition is a more relative definition of poverty that includes not only a "lack of income" but "long-term employment, lower life expectancy, and overall rates of illiteracy" (Rank, 2023). These broader definitions of poverty can extend to limited individual freedoms and social agency (Sen,1992 as cited by Rank, 2023). "What is meant by the term poverty can vary depending on the specific context in which it is used. However, most would agree that poverty is a lack of necessities to maintain a minimally adequate life (Rank, 2023, p. 32). How one defines poverty will shape policy development and measure its impact.
References
Rank, M. R. (2023). The poverty paradox : Understanding economic hardship amid American prosperity (1st Ed.). Oxford University Press.
https://Doi.Org/10.1093/Oso/9780190212636.001.0001
Sen, A. (1992). Inequality reexamined. Russell Sage Foundation.
Nickel and Dimed (20th Anniversary Edition) by
The New York Times bestselling work of undercover reportage from our sharpest and most original social critic, with a new foreword by Matthew Desmond, author of Evicted Millions of Americans work full time, year round, for poverty-level wages. In 1998, Barbara Ehrenreich decided to join them. She was inspired in part by the rhetoric surrounding welfare reform, which promised that a job--any job--can be the ticket to a better life. But how does anyone survive, let alone prosper, on $6 an hour? To find out, Ehrenreich left her home, took the cheapest lodgings she could find, and accepted whatever jobs she was offered. Moving from Florida to Maine to Minnesota, she worked as a waitress, a hotel maid, a cleaning woman, a nursing-home aide, and a Wal-Mart sales clerk. She lived in trailer parks and crumbling residential motels. Very quickly, she discovered that no job is truly "unskilled," that even the lowliest occupations require exhausting mental and muscular effort. She also learned that one job is not enough; you need at least two if you intend to live indoors. Nickel and Dimed reveals low-rent America in all its tenacity, anxiety, and surprising generosity--a land of Big Boxes, fast food, and a thousand desperate stratagems for survival. Read it for the smoldering clarity of Ehrenreich's perspective and for a rare view of how "prosperity" looks from the bottom. And now, in a new foreword, Matthew Desmond, author of Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, explains why, twenty years on in America, Nickel and Dimed is more relevant than ever.
Poverty by
This second edition of this highly-successful glossary provides an exhaustive and authoritative guide to over 200 technical terms used in contemporary scholarly research on poverty. It seeks to make researchers, students and policy makers aware of the multi-dimensional and complex nature of this social condition. This revised edition includes a range of new entries to keep pace with an expanding field of discourse, an extended set of references, and further perspectives from developing countries. A particular effort has been made to incorporate non-Western approaches and concepts.
The Poverty Paradox by 
The Undeserving Poor by
First published in 1989, The Undeserving Poor was a critically acclaimed and enormously influential account of America's enduring debate about poverty. Taking stock of the last quarter century, Michael B. Katz's new edition of this classic is virtually a new book. As the first did, it will force all concerned Americans to reconsider the foundations of our policies toward the poor, especially in the wake of the Great Recession that began in 2008.Katz highlights how throughout American history, the poor have been regarded as undeserving: people who do not deserve sympathy because they brought their poverty on themselves, either through laziness and immorality, or because they are culturally or mentally deficient. This long-dominant view sees poverty as a personal failure, serving to justify America's mean-spirited treatment of the poor. Katz reminds us, however, that there are other explanations of poverty besides personal failure. Poverty has been written about as a problem of place, of resources, of political economy, of power, and of market failure. Katz looks at each idea in turn, showing how they suggest more effective approaches to our struggle against poverty. The Second Edition includes important new material. It now sheds light on the revival of the idea of culture in poverty research; the rehabilitation of Daniel Patrick Moynihan; the resurgent role of biology in discussions of the causes of poverty, such as in The Bell Curve; and the human rights movement's intensified focus on alleviating world poverty. It emphasizes the successes of the War on Poverty and Great Society, especially at the grassroots level. It is also the first book to chart the rise and fall of the "underclass" as a concept driving public policy.A major revision of a landmark study, The Undeserving Poor helps readers to see poverty-and our efforts to combat it--in a new light.
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