Poverty is lack of shelter. Poverty is being sick and not being able to see a doctor. Poverty is not being able to go to school and not knowing how to read. Poverty is not having a job, is fear for the future, living one day at a time. Poverty is losing a child to illness brought about by unclean water.
Poverty is powerlessness, lack of representation and freedom.
Most often, poverty is a situation people want to escape. So far, much more work has been done using consumption or income-based measures of poverty. But some work has been done on non-income dimensions of poverty, most notably in the Human Development Report prepared annually by the United Nations Development Programme, and new work is underway in preparation for the World Development Report on Poverty and Development. See New Directions in Measuring Poverty below.