What is meant by poverty is a shortage of money amongst people to have a good level of health, services, food, housing, clothes and education to survive in today's society. There are two types of poverty:
Relative Poverty and Abject Poverty.
What is meant by Relative Poverty is when a person's income is well under the average for its class. What is meant by Abject Poverty is you don't have enough food to be healthy, which also means money is scarce. This is the type of poverty that is rampant in the Third world, therefore you shouldn't measure poverty by income only, people without education and health services are just as poor, even when they have enough food.
Reasons
Not allowed to earn more than the average income for whatever reason. There is a good chance they will be poor. According to History, people who are in this group are old people with disabilities, single mothers and members of minority groups in the western world in today's society. This is one third of the total poor.
Not only do women who work outside the home earn less than their male counterparts in general, single mothers have trouble trying to raise their children, do housekeeping and have a livable wage for a good standard of living.
Other groups that are means tested unfairly under the average income are people with disabilities and their families, big families, people that earn a low income or unemployed.
The effects
There are tens of thousands of poor people around the world dying of hunger and malnutrition every year. The Infant mortality rate and life mortality rate higher in these places.