ABSTRACT
This chapter gives the general remarks on the concept of poverty and its definition in the literature, and gives an overview of the empirical analyses collected in this book. Empirical poverty studies vary, among other things, according to their basic methodological orientation. Several attempts have been made to use human capital as well as wealth as indirect poverty indicators. The one-sided fixation of poverty research on the measurement of incomes is broken up, and the general living situation of the persons affected by poverty stands in the center of the analysis. In the social science literature one finds a large number of publications discussing how to define poverty. Individuals with less formal education have a much higher probability of entering poverty several times during their lives. This higher risk of recurrent poverty goes hand in hand with the traditional family cycle dominating in this group.
