The definitional complexities of poverty in Britain and the United States

Poverty is a difficult question from both a methodological and a theoretical point of view. Furthermore, it is a very ambiguous political issue. Many difficulties derive from the irreducible distance between the abstract concept and the findings from research. The concept is based on the idea that, for various reasons and for variable periods of time, a part of the population lacks access to sufficient resources to enable it to survive at a historically or geographically determined minimum standard of life and that this leads to serious consequences in terms of behaviour and social relations.