Economic Definition of poverty. Defined.
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Term poverty Definition: A condition in which a person lacks many of the basic necessities of life and the income needed to buy them. If these seems like a fuzzy concept, it is. Poverty is often a subjective notion, because the notion of basic necessities is also subjective. While everyone needs food for life, will a handful of wild grain do the trick or do you need an evening of fine dining? While there are no once-and-for-all, clear-cut answers, our good friends with the government have developed a so-called poverty line used as an official measure of who's in poverty and who's not. Most importantly, this poverty line is used to determine who's eligible to receive welfare and other forms of public assistance.
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