Poverty — Poverty Line, Causes and its alleviation strategies

Two families live a floor apart in the same Mumbai chawl. One can just about afford school fees, medicine and three meals; the other cannot manage all three in the same month. Both may call themselves poor in ordinary conversation, but economics needs a sharper line — a poverty line — to say who falls below a minimum acceptable standard of living, and why, and what a government can actually do about it.

In two minutes

Poverty is the inability to secure a minimum acceptable standard of living, measured through a poverty line based on a minimum level of consumption expenditure or income, and it is tackled through a mix of direct anti-poverty programmes and broader growth and employment strategies.

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