Poverty And Measuring Poverty What is Poverty? Coming from multiple language such as poverte` (French); pauper (Latin) and poverty (Anglo-Norman), the word poverty itself means the state of being poor. Being a multifaceted concept, we could summarize Poverty as a scarcity of basic necessities in an individual existence. These basic needs can range from food, shelter, clothing to monetary tools needed in order to acquire them. Poverty taken as a national level can be defined as the ratio of individual living in the country who are still bereft of the basic needs to those who are capable of purchasing them. Thus, we can also say that poverty of a nation depends a lot on the purchasing power of its citizens. On a very basic level, Poverty is the failure of having options and openings, an infringement of human poise. It implies absence of fundamental ability to take an interest viably in the public arena. It implies not having enough to sustain and dress a family, ...