ABSTRACT
Poverty is a relative notion, based on comparisons between various levels of the same society at a given time, and not an absolute measure based on some universally established standards. In the United States there are some 29 million people classified as living below the poverty level, or over 12.5 percent of the total population of the country. This figure includes an underclass of about half a million people living at the very lowest level. Open discussions about poverty in the USSR have begun to appear in the pages of the Soviet press only since the introduction of Gorbachev's glasnost policy. According to Academician Tatiana Zaslavskaia, a leading Soviet sociologist and an ardent proponent of Gorbachev's reforms, the bottom groups on the Soviet social ladder are the 8.8 percent of the population who fail to manage from paycheck to paycheck, and the 24.2 percent of the population comprising the second lowest group, who are barely able to cover basic expenses.
