Poverty
by
Poverty is popularly understood as a state or condition of material and financial “lack” or insufficiency that negatively affects the ability of a person or group (very broadly defined) to “satisfy their basic needs” consistent with a healthy existence such as food, shelter, clothing, and health (K. Thompson 2011) and/or an inability to meet “the minimum level of living standards expected for the place where one lives” (Crossman 2019). Poverty is often stigmatized, blamed on insufficiencies in the character of the impoverished, but it is in fact evidence of the failure of governance at all levels, and it is the cause of one-third of all human deaths. In Medieval times, poverty might be a choice: a sign of Christian virtue, for example. Alternatively, it could be cast as evidence of unworthiness and justification for exploitation. Representations of poverty codified in early nineteenth century Britain viewed it as a “moral problem” resulting from the failure of the poor to exercise restraint—as in reduction of their fecundity or refusal to pursue initiative. Stigmatized for presumed irrational engagement in profligate consumption rather than adherence to an asceticism that supported investment for success, the impoverished were a “threat” to society. They were seen as...
This essay may be found on page 165 of the printed volume.