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Natural Sciences     Social Sciences     Humanities     Arts     Applied Arts and Sciences     Recreation An encyclopedia project—and more! Welcome to Citizendium, an endeavor to achieve the highest standards of writing, reliability, and comprehensiveness through a unique collaboration between Authors and Editors. We welcome people from all walks of life who want to share their knowledge and expertise freely by writing well-researched and authoritative articles. Please read through our easy registration procedures, then join us. We have 16,466 articles at different stages of development, of which 0 are expert-approved. Eduzendium students in higher education write here as part of their courses. We welcome everyone who has knowledge, broad or narrow, about any subject. Our community is collegial and congenial; everyone writes under his or her real name. Even this, our home page, can be edited by any Citizen. Sign up—we need both Authors and Editors. Get started: How to collaborate | CZ:Quick Start We have a Charter to provide a framework for governing Citizendium. See our own Citizendium article for our history Why Citizendium? | Myths and Facts | Why we contribute to CZ Follow us on our blog, on Friendfeed, Twitter (new drafts or general news) or Facebook Join us Join up here and start a new article or improve existing ones. See Recent Changes—an overview of articles we are writing now. Wikipedians are very welcome! Comment on articles nominated for approval. You can discuss any article on its Talk page. From HERE, you can get started, get technical help, see our policies, and explore our articles and organization. Our help system (still under development) We Need Support From Donations! Please help! We have a continuing need for funds to pay for hosting our servers. See our Financial Report for complete details. Please make your donations here. See also our sister project, WatchKnow, a free, non-profit, K-12 educational video website.

Some of our finest Approved Articles (0) Developed Articles (1,128) (16,466 total articles) I was brought up to believe that the only thing worth doing was to add to the sum of accurate information in the world. — Margaret Mead (1901 - 1978)        —add a quotation about knowledge or writing •Today in History | •Did You Know? Featured Article about The Mathare Valley slum near Nairobi, Kenya, in 2009. Poverty is deprivation based on lack of material resources. The concept is value-based and political. Hence its definition, causes and remedies (and the possibility of remedies) are highly contentious. The word poverty may also be used figuratively to indicate a lack, instead of material goods or money, of any kind of quality, as in a poverty of imagination. Definitions Primary and secondary poverty The use of the terms primary and secondary poverty dates back to Seebohm Rowntree, who conducted the second British survey to calculate the extent of poverty. This was carried out in York and was published in 1899. He defined primary poverty as having insufficient income to “obtain the minimum necessaries for the maintenance of merely physical efficiency”. In secondary poverty, the income “would be sufficient for the maintenance of merely physical efficiency were it not that some portion of it is absorbed by some other expenditure.” Even with these rigorous criteria he found that 9.9% of the population was in primary poverty and a further 17.9% in secondary. Absolute and comparative poverty More recent definitions tend to use the terms absolute and comparative poverty. Absolute is in line with Rowntree's primary poverty, but comparative poverty is usually expressed in terms of ability to play a part in the society in which a person lives. Comparative poverty will thus vary from one country to another. The difficulty of definition is illustrated by the fact that a recession can actually reduce "poverty". Causes of poverty The causes of poverty most often considered are: Character defects An established “culture of poverty”, with low expectations handed down from one generation to another Unemployment Irregular employment, and/or low pay Position in the life cycle (see below) and household size Disability Structural inequality, both within countries and between countries. (R H Tawney: “What thoughtful rich people call the problem of poverty, thoughtful poor people call with equal justice a problem of riches”) As noted above, most of these, or the extent to which they can be, or should be changed, are matters of heated controversy. Footnotes