Poverty: The Differing Conceptual and Theoretical Perspectives

The most contested issue in the study of poverty is defining what constitutes poverty. Over time, poverty underwent a drastic conceptual transformation from mere nutritional poverty to multidimensional poverty encompassing all aspects of human life. The theoretical explanation of the factors that cause and perpetuate poverty ranges from individual deficiencies to cultural, structural, geographic, and economic influences. The present article goes through the conceptual and theoretical evolutions of ‘poverty’ as a matter of deprivation.