From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishpovertypov‧er‧ty /ˈpɒvəti $ ˈpɑːvərti/ ●●○ W3 noun 1 [uncountable]POOR 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 poverty2 → the poverty line3 → the poverty trap4 [singular, uncountable] formalNOT HAVE a lack of a particular qualitypoverty of The novel shows a surprising poverty of imagination.COLLOCATIONSverbslive in povertyHalf the world is living in poverty.grow up in povertyNo child should grow up in poverty in America in the 21st century.die in povertyHis 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 + povertyextreme/severe povertyThey 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 statesworld povertyThey campaigned for an end to world poverty.urban/rural povertyPeople come to the capital seeking to escape rural poverty.child povertyThere is increasing child poverty in our country.
Examples from the Corpus
poverty• Poverty and unemployment are two of the biggest causes of crime• Seven out of every 10 Guatemalans live in dire poverty and half cannot read or write.• Theoretically, eliminating poverty and underdevelopment in the region should pose no problem.• Chancey, who had never known his parents, was being raised by an old aunt in extreme poverty.• Old people should not have to live in poverty.• They are not in transition, they are developing countries and are sinking into poverty.• Desirelessness, or Hindu renunciation, it has been argued, leads to personal indifference and passivity and national poverty and stagnation.• But merely examining national poverty statistics is not sufficient to understand the depth of poverty in the United States.• They are made by all Ministers who are confronted with allegations of student poverty and hardship.• Rowntree emphasized that such poverty was not due to idleness.• In Louisiana, one person in four lives below the poverty level.• Charles was shocked by the poverty he saw in India.urban poverty• These policies were inpart based on assumptions about the causes of rural and urban poverty and low growth.• Can the problems of urban poverty be blamed on individual pathology?• The core issue is that of urban poverty.• It may be that urban poverty then was no worse than poverty in the country.poverty of• The novel shows a surprising poverty of imagination.From Longman Business Dictionarypovertypov‧er‧ty /ˈpɒvətiˈpɑːvərti/ noun [uncountable]1the situation or experience of being poor86% of the population lives in poverty.a major anti-poverty initiative2the poverty line the income below which people are officially considered to be very poor and needing helpfamilies living above the poverty lineThe number of Americans below the poverty line has increased by two million.3the 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 governmentOrigin poverty (1100-1200) Old French poverté, from Latin paupertas, from pauper; → POOR 