Eight costs of povertytap a wedge, or pick one below
What poverty actually costsExtreme poverty is measured with a line — but it is lived as a set of daily tasks that richer households never have to perform. Each wedge is one of those tasks. Pick one to begin.
Through the three paradigms
Don’t confuse the two poverties. Absolute poverty is a fixed survival threshold, the same everywhere (the World Bank’s international line). Relative poverty is measured against the normal standard of one’s own society — Peter Townsend’s relative deprivation. A wealthy country can have almost no absolute poverty and a great deal of relative poverty at the same time.