poverty

poverty
pov‧er‧ty W3 /ˈpɒvəti $ ˈpɑːvərti/ noun1. [uncountable] the situation or experience of being poor ⇨ poor, impoverished:
    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 poverty
2. the 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.
3. the 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 government
4. [singular, uncountable] formal a lack of a particular quality
    poverty of
    The novel shows a surprising poverty of imagination.
     

COLLOCATIONS

■ verbs
   ▪ live 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 + poverty
   ▪ extreme/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 states
   ▪ world 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.