povertypov‧er‧ty /ˈpɒvəti $ ˈpɑːvərti/ ●●○ W3 noun 
Millions of elderly people live in poverty. We need an effective strategy to fight poverty. continued efforts to alleviate poverty and raise living standards scenes of abject poverty the causes of urban poverty2the poverty line (also the poverty level American English) the income below which a person or a family is officially considered to be very poor and in need of help: 20% of the population now live below the poverty line.3the poverty trap a situation in which a poor person without a job cannot afford to take a low-paying job because they would lose the money they receive from the government4[singular, uncountable] formal a lack of a particular qualitypoverty of The novel shows a surprising poverty of imagination.COLLOCATIONSverbslive in poverty· Half the world is living in poverty.grow up in poverty· No child should grow up in poverty in America in the 21st century.die in poverty· His art was not appreciated and he died in poverty.be reduced to poverty (=become very poor)· By the end of the war, millions of people had been reduced to poverty.fight/combat poverty (=take action to get rid of poverty)· The money should be spent on fighting poverty.tackle poverty (=take action to reduce the amount of poverty)· Our priority is to tackle poverty and global inequality.reduce poverty (=reduce the amount of poverty)· More must be done to reduce child poverty.alleviate/relieve poverty formal (=make it less severe)· What has the West done to alleviate poverty in the world?ADJECTIVES/NOUN + povertyextreme/severe poverty· They live in conditions of extreme poverty.abject/grinding/dire poverty (=extremely severe)· He was shocked by the abject poverty that he saw.relative poverty (=when someone is poor compared with someone else)· the relative poverty of the southern statesworld poverty· They campaigned for an end to world poverty.urban/rural poverty· People come to the capital seeking to escape rural poverty.child poverty· There is increasing child poverty in our country.
WORD ORIGINpoverty
Origin:
1100-1200 Old French poverté, from Latin paupertas, from pauper; ➔ POOREXAMPLES FROM OTHER DICTIONARIES
- Poverty and unemployment are two of the biggest causes of crime
- Charles was shocked by the poverty he saw in India.
- In Louisiana, one person in four lives below the poverty level.
- Old people should not have to live in poverty.
- Seven out of every 10 Guatemalans live in dire poverty and half cannot read or write.
- But merely examining national poverty statistics is not sufficient to understand the depth of poverty in the United States.
- Chancey, who had never known his parents, was being raised by an old aunt in extreme poverty.
- Desirelessness, or Hindu renunciation, it has been argued, leads to personal indifference and passivity and national poverty and stagnation.
- Rowntree emphasized that such poverty was not due to idleness.
- Theoretically, eliminating poverty and underdevelopment in the region should pose no problem.
- They are made by all Ministers who are confronted with allegations of student poverty and hardship.
- They are not in transition, they are developing countries and are sinking into poverty.
Longman Language Activatorwhen people have very little money
· Charles was shocked by the poverty he saw in India.· Poverty and unemployment are two of the biggest causes of crimedire/abject/grinding etc poverty (=extreme poverty) · Seven out of every 10 Guatemalans live in dire poverty and half cannot read or write.live/grow up/be raised etc in poverty · Old people should not have to live in poverty.the poverty line/level (=the income below which a person or family is officially considered to be very poor and in need of help) · In Louisiana, one person in four lives below the poverty level.
a period when life is difficult because you have little money - use this when you are comparing this to other, better, times: · There were hard times during my childhood when my parents didn't have work, but generally we were happy.fall on hard times (=begin to experience hard times): · Many of the girls were from middle class families who had fallen on hard times.· After the war my father fell on hard times and sank deeply into debt.
COLLOCATIONS FROM THE ENTRYverbs a country devastated by civil war and grinding poverty Large numbers of families are living on or near the poverty line (=the point at which people are considered to be very poor). The people in this country just want to live in peace. People should not live in fear of crime. We live in hope that a cure will be found.
· Half the world is living in poverty.
· No child should grow up in poverty in America in the 21st century.
· His art was not appreciated and he died in poverty.
(=become very poor)· By the end of the war, millions of people had been reduced to poverty.
(=take action to get rid of poverty)· The money should be spent on fighting poverty.
(=take action to reduce the amount of poverty)· Our priority is to tackle poverty and global inequality.
(=reduce the amount of poverty)· More must be done to reduce child poverty.
formal (=make it less severe)· What has the West done to alleviate poverty in the world?
ADJECTIVES/NOUN + poverty· They live in conditions of extreme poverty.
(=extremely severe)· He was shocked by the abject poverty that he saw.
(=when someone is poor compared with someone else)· the relative poverty of the southern states
· They campaigned for an end to world poverty.
· People come to the capital seeking to escape rural poverty.
· There is increasing child poverty in our country.
COLLOCATIONS FROM OTHER ENTRIES· the cycle of violence between the two countries
a country devastated by civil war and grinding poverty Large numbers of families are living on or near the poverty line (=the point at which people are considered to be very poor). The people in this country just want to live in peace. People should not live in fear of crime. We live in hope that a cure will be found.· He believes education is the long-term key to tackling poverty.
· People close to him have finally broken their vow of silence.
COLLOCATIONS FROM THE CORPUSADJECTIVE· Many such families are living in abject poverty at home or as refugees abroad, cut off from family and friends.· The parasite has been nurtured by abject poverty, intermittent political chaos and, some charge, international indifference.· A fifth of the world still lives in abject poverty: what we can do.· Wealth was much more frequent than abject poverty.· In a continent where economic successes are rare, authoritarianism may seem a lesser evil than abject poverty.· The Sisters also try never to reject anyone in abject poverty, the hungry or starving.· However, many people are living in abject poverty because of the poll tax.· He was born in abject poverty with a family history of madness, yet grew up to take the world by storm.
· More than half of lone parents with two or more children had incomes below their absolute poverty level at £227 a week.· The rich get richer and the rural population is doomed to remain in absolute poverty.· As a whole group they are in relative or absolute poverty, in contrast to the general adult population of working age.· Glare was to be observed in greater strictness and in absolute poverty.· Health is the pivot around which an absolute concept of poverty revolves.· This means that at least another 6 million children are living in absolute poverty but are not receiving benefits.· Indeed, over the period in question, many tens of millions joined the hundreds of millions already suffering from absolute poverty.· Relative poverty, more markedly than absolute poverty, clearly rose rapidly throughout the 1970s.
· Grandmothers, on whose distressed faces the direst poverty was written, raised their arms in greeting.· The overwhelming impression left by the survey is one of dire poverty.· The youngsters are living in dire poverty in their home country.
· He moved there in 1920 and his first years were marked by extreme poverty.· Chancey, who had never known his parents, was being raised by an old aunt in extreme poverty.· For most, this was their first exposure to extreme poverty.· He points out that the working classes consisted mainly of peasants forced off the land through extreme poverty.
· Many of those boroughs also have the worst housing, longest waiting lists and highest poverty levels of the country.· Female-headed families also have an exceptionally high poverty rate in New York.· Drop-out rates in rural areas are high, due to poverty and war.· They also have among the highest poverty rates in the United States.· So both lack of employment and low pay for those who are employed have contributed to the higher poverty rates.· But the level of social welfare was so high that poverty was unthinkable.
· Or they can decide that the main problem is that relative poverty got no better during the prosperous 1980s.· You only attain new levels of relative poverty.· As a whole group they are in relative or absolute poverty, in contrast to the general adult population of working age.· What we do not yet know is how women's changing opportunities for paid work have affected their relative risk of poverty.· But they are aware of their relative poverty.· Nevertheless, a majority of Goyigamas, in common with the rest of the population, lived in relative poverty.· In the first few days, too, I was made to realize my relative poverty.
· Most of the loss is attributed to population growth and rural poverty, leading to land clearance for agriculture.· Scattered about, a few large, forlorn sunflowers make a game attempt to brighten a scene of dismal rural poverty.· Dole overcame both rural poverty and, even more remarkably, war wounds that might have killed a lesser person.· There, governors were aggressively courting companies like Rohr to help offset high unemployment and rural poverty.· These problems include those associated with rural poverty, malnutrition, population changes and environmental degradation in developing nations.· For forty years villagers have streamed into its fetid blocks, seeking to escape rural poverty.· Little public attention was paid to rural poverty before Rowntree undertook a survey in 1912.· Rowntree attempted no detailed quantification of rural poverty, in view of the wide scope of his inquiry.
· Infant mortality is frequently assumed to be an especially sensitive indicator of severe poverty.· Polgar resolved to do the same, although for years it resulted in severe poverty.· Walkerburn families had experienced severe poverty when the factory closed, yet the welfare state had failed to come to their rescue.· We have seen that the proportion in severe poverty was considerably higher.· The latter was everywhere a cause of severe poverty.
· It may be that urban poverty then was no worse than poverty in the country.· Can the problems of urban poverty be blamed on individual pathology?· These policies were inpart based on assumptions about the causes of rural and urban poverty and low growth.· The core issue is that of urban poverty.
NOUN· At the other end of the spectrum, the impact of child poverty on failing schools has never properly been addressed.· Liberals want more comprehensive child care, more programs to relieve child poverty.· Treasury sources said that the Chancellor, Gordon Brown, believes child poverty is one of the most serious problems affecting Britain.· There is increasing child poverty in our country.· In 1993, the child poverty rate was higher than in any year since 1964.· It wants child poverty abolished in 20 years; it aims to cancel third world debt.· He then rattled off gains in employment and home ownership and declines in inflation and child poverty.
· More than half of lone parents with two or more children had incomes below their absolute poverty level at £227 a week.· I was tired of eking out an existence near poverty level on my meager assistantship.· Another 170,000 children will be lifted above poverty levels.· She intends to put the Council on record as wanting to reduce the poverty level by 10 percent.· Many of those boroughs also have the worst housing, longest waiting lists and highest poverty levels of the country.· As many as 57 percent of New Yorkers live at or below the poverty level.· However, poverty levels among land reform beneficiaries remain high, as do the levels of dissatisfaction that they express.
· The average shortfall of income beneath the poverty line for poor children has also fallen by 31.7 per cent.· The panel further suggested adjusting the official poverty line for geographical differences in the cost of housing.· Rowntree's stringent poverty line produced remarkably similar results to those of Booth.· Hard work does not assure living above the poverty line.· New statistics hurled at us: 70 percent of our fellow citizens live below the poverty line.· We already cover children up to 150 percent of the poverty line.· When millions around the world are being killed in war, dying from starvation or living below the poverty line?· The gap between their needs and resources is likely to be even wider than the social security-based poverty line suggests.
· So both lack of employment and low pay for those who are employed have contributed to the higher poverty rates.· The poverty rate of children demonstrates this disturbing phenomenon even more dramatically.· Since 1975, the infant and toddler poverty rate has grown by 33 percent.· The poverty rate today stands at almost exactly the same level as in 1965.· The poverty rate has risen by 35 percent for children under age 3 living with married parents.· They are a fundamental part of the social safety net and have kept the poverty rate among the elderly relatively low.· For families with children under age 5, the poverty rate quadrupled during the 1980s.· In 1990, Tucson had a poverty rate 40 percent higher than Phoenix and almost double the rate of Las Vegas.
· The battle ahead is about what should be in the poverty reduction plans.· The message of the White Paper is that countries need effective states and efficient markets to maximise the conditions for poverty reduction.· It also calls for a stronger focus in all the multinational institutions on systemic poverty reductions.· Improved nutrition, poverty reduction, maternal education and better medical services have combined to halve infant mortality.· Anti-debt campaigners in the South are urging their counterparts in the North to challenge the official notion of poverty reduction.· They have a shot at economic growth, poverty reduction and gains in health and education.· This is a serious loss; the movement has raised the profile of debt relief and poverty reduction.· In return, the two countries should make immediate peace and commit themselves to use the money for poverty reduction.
· This is the phenomenon generally known as the poverty trap.· Before 1988 the implicit tax rates associated with the poverty trap were also, in some cases, greater than 100%.· This is likely to be particularly serious if either the poverty trap or the unemployment trap is encountered.· It claimed 1.25 million people could be caught in the poverty trap.· Caught in the poverty trap, they are unable to make the savings necessary for business ventures.· There is no single point in the income scale where the poverty trap begins to operate.· Many of them are capable of organising their lives with dignity but others fall into football's in-built poverty trap.
· Similarly, it is indefensible to be inactive in the face of third world poverty and famine.· The charity used the occasion to call for fresh action to tackle the root causes of world poverty.· The claim that aid is the answer to Third World poverty is then highly debatable.· She has been involved with assisting at church services which were relevant to issues of world poverty.
VERB· What has the West done to alleviate poverty in the world, apart from its leaders making pious speeches?· Money is being transferred from social programmes designed to alleviate poverty to penal programmes designed to control the poor.· Critics claimed that economic success had done little to alleviate fundamental problems of poverty and the grossly unequal distribution of income.· May we play our small part in helping to alleviate the poverty and suffering of the world.· Yet the latest wheeze among policymakers in developed countries is to alleviate poverty in developing countries with computers and mobile phones.· Although opposition to state action to alleviate poverty remained strong to the end of the century, countervailing pressures were growing.
· The anti-globalisation movement will accuse the Bretton Woods twins, whose goal is to end poverty, of causing it.
· If the street protesters want to fight poverty, they should be celebrating globalization, not attacking it.· All very nice but not helpful to fighting poverty.· Analysts worry that poor infrastructure, especially in rural areas, will derail attempts to fight poverty.
· Consequently, wage employment is the primary means by which they can be lifted out of grinding poverty.· For generations the Sandovals, like millions of their fellow countrymen, had suffered from grinding poverty and deprivation.· Until recently her life had been an endless cycle of grinding poverty and growing hopelessness.
· Critics of popular capitalism argue that it is a programme for increasing inequality and poverty.· War, repression and increasing poverty have driven ethnic groups in upon themselves.· Rapid population growth is a problem, because it increases poverty and ill-health in societies where it occurs.· The report notes that a combination of soil degradation and poor rainfall have increased food shortages and poverty.· There is increasing child poverty in our country.· Working-class women live in increasing poverty and are more vulnerable than middle-class women to state interference and control.
· Through the development of community services and a decentralised, non-bureaucratic welfare state, we can lift people out of poverty and deprivation.· Another 170,000 children will be lifted above poverty levels.· Consequently, wage employment is the primary means by which they can be lifted out of grinding poverty.· And the past two decades have delivered an extraordinary rate of growth that has lifted millions out of poverty.· Figures will show 1.2 million children have been lifted out of poverty since Labour came to office.· The Government's emphasis has been on lifting people out of poverty by getting them back to work.
· Thus more than twice as many older women as older men live in poverty or on its margins.· Women are more likely than men to live in poverty and to face violence in our own homes.· The villagers here are no exception to 70 per cent of the country's population who live below the poverty line.· Between 1987 and 1992, the number of preschool children living in poverty increased from 5 to 6 million.· In Louisiana, one person in four lives below the poverty level.· More than one Washingtonian out of every four officially lives in poverty.· The valley is beautiful, the solitude is bracing, but who wants to live in this poverty?· Will these peoples continue to live in poverty and disease, or will they be brought up to modern standards of living?
· Fifty years of bilateral aid programmes does not seem to have done much to reduce global poverty.· She intends to put the Council on record as wanting to reduce the poverty level by 10 percent.· By 1852 James Lowe was reduced to poverty and Bermondsey had become a slum.· So now is the time to start talking -- and doing -- something about reducing poverty in Tucson.· He won great victories yet he reduced Prussia to poverty and starvation.· In oil, they have an incredibly valuable resource that can be used to accelerate their economic development and reduce poverty.· The most effective way to reduce poverty quickly is to increase child benefit and pensions and take low-paid people out of taxation.
· But such a strategy would serve primarily to relieve some symptoms of poverty rather than its cause.· Liberals want more comprehensive child care, more programs to relieve child poverty.
· Indeed, over the period in question, many tens of millions joined the hundreds of millions already suffering from absolute poverty.· Whatever they had been at home, now they suffered from the poverty and dislocation that came with their sudden upheaval.· Joseph Lewis, an ivory turner, suffered excruciating poverty.· For generations the Sandovals, like millions of their fellow countrymen, had suffered from grinding poverty and deprivation.· As a result they suffer from poverty, physical hardship, neglect, sickness and disability, loneliness, humiliation and fear.· She has always suffered from poverty.· And that thought provides some of the reasons why this region suffers not only from poverty, but also from political powerlessness.
PHRASES FROM THE ENTRYPHRASES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
1[uncountable] the situation or experience of being poor: - All three groups at that level earned incomes that were just at or below the poverty line for a family of four.
- It would cover families with incomes of up to 300 percent of the poverty line.
- New statistics hurled at us: 70 percent of our fellow citizens live below the poverty line.
- Ten percent of the population of York lived in families with earnings below the poverty line.
- The average shortfall of income beneath the poverty line for poor children has also fallen by 31.7 per cent.
- They were not far removed at any time from the poverty line, and more frequently below it than above it.
- We already cover children up to 150 percent of the poverty line.
- When millions around the world are being killed in war, dying from starvation or living below the poverty line?
- Before 1988 the implicit tax rates associated with the poverty trap were also, in some cases, greater than 100%.
- But they are caught in the poverty trap: they can not afford dams and irrigation systems.
- Caught in the poverty trap, they are unable to make the savings necessary for business ventures.
- It claimed 1.25 million people could be caught in the poverty trap.
- There is no single point in the income scale where the poverty trap begins to operate.
- This is likely to be particularly serious if either the poverty trap or the unemployment trap is encountered.
- This is the phenomenon generally known as the poverty trap.
- A central reason cited for the cutback was the abject failure of highly touted sports movies.
- But for some, who didn't get the grades they hoped for, there's abject misery.
- For the first three years he endured abject misery.
- Its strategy was an abject failure on its own terms, for the Gaullists romped home in the June elections.
- The parasite has been nurtured by abject poverty, intermittent political chaos and, some charge, international indifference.
- The Sisters also try never to reject anyone in abject poverty, the hungry or starving.
- Wealth was much more frequent than abject poverty.
- What these hopefuls achieved for their pleasure and pain was a violent lifestyle of abject poverty.
Millions of elderly people live in poverty. We need an effective strategy to fight poverty. continued efforts to alleviate poverty and raise living standards scenes of abject poverty the causes of urban poverty2the poverty line (also the poverty level American English) the income below which a person or a family is officially considered to be very poor and in need of help: 20% of the population now live below the poverty line.3the poverty trap a situation in which a poor person without a job cannot afford to take a low-paying job because they would lose the money they receive from the government4[singular, uncountable] formal a lack of a particular qualitypoverty of The novel shows a surprising poverty of imagination.COLLOCATIONSverbslive in poverty· Half the world is living in poverty.grow up in poverty· No child should grow up in poverty in America in the 21st century.die in poverty· His art was not appreciated and he died in poverty.be reduced to poverty (=become very poor)· By the end of the war, millions of people had been reduced to poverty.fight/combat poverty (=take action to get rid of poverty)· The money should be spent on fighting poverty.tackle poverty (=take action to reduce the amount of poverty)· Our priority is to tackle poverty and global inequality.reduce poverty (=reduce the amount of poverty)· More must be done to reduce child poverty.alleviate/relieve poverty formal (=make it less severe)· What has the West done to alleviate poverty in the world?ADJECTIVES/NOUN + povertyextreme/severe poverty· They live in conditions of extreme poverty.abject/grinding/dire poverty (=extremely severe)· He was shocked by the abject poverty that he saw.relative poverty (=when someone is poor compared with someone else)· the relative poverty of the southern statesworld poverty· They campaigned for an end to world poverty.urban/rural poverty· People come to the capital seeking to escape rural poverty.child poverty· There is increasing child poverty in our country.