Poverty is the condition in which a person or community is deprived of or lacks the essentials for a minimum standard of well-being and life.

     Since poverty is understood in many senses, these essentials may be material resources such as food, safe drinking water, and shelter, or they may be social resources such as access to information, education, health care, social status, political power, or even the opportunity to develop meaningful connections with other people in society.  This is also referred to as absolute poverty or destitution.

          Relative poverty views poverty as socially defined and dependent on social context, hence relative poverty is a measure of income inequality. There are several other different income inequality metrics, for example the Gini coefficient or the Theil Index.

         As such these relative poverty statistics measure inequality rather than material deprivation or hardship.

         The measurements are usually based on a person's yearly income and frequently take no account of total wealth. The main poverty line used in the OECD and the European Union is based on "economic distance", a level of income set at 60% of the median household income.