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poverty

Poverty refers to poor living standards owing to deficient resources. It is measured in various ways, both directly - by examining what people have and how they live materially - and indirectly - by measuring their incomes (hence the common threshold of "below 60% median income"). Recent work has focused on doing both, in other words trying to establish whether, say, a family's income is so low that it cannot afford what society as a whole regards as necessities for modern life.