Amartya Sen, one of the most famous researchers on the topic, has given an appropriate definition of poverty that completes Adam Smith’s approach.
For him, poverty is the lack of what one needs to live within a society.
In the broadest sense, it means survival but also contribution and participation to social daily activities.
(...) The United Nation’s Human Development Index is a good example since it's calculated with three values: income, life expectancy and literacy. Such answer to what is poverty helps us think about relative poverty, in opposition to absolute poverty , i.e. the total absence of the most basic needs (food, health care, shelter…) (...)
