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Definition of poverty:
1. The state of being poor; lack of the means of providing material needs or comforts.
2. Deficiency in amount; scantiness: "the poverty of feeling that reduced her soul"
3. Unproductiveness; infertility: the poverty of the soil.
4. Renunciation made by a member of a religious order of the right to own property.

With a quarter of Britain's population living below the national poverty line, and three million households in debt to door-to-door money lenders, life is bleak for many in this apparently affluent country. Poverty rose sharply during the last two decades, particularly in the 1980s.

While the face of poverty in the UK is different from the face of poverty in developing countries, the underlying causes, and the impact that poverty has on people, can be very similar.

Being poor isn't just about a lack of money or possessions - the effects run much deeper. There are many studies to show that the education, health, life-expectancy, and employment prospects of the children of families with low incomes are much worse than they are for children born to better-off parents.

Poverty also means being powerless - having no say in the decisions that affect your life. And it can also mean being treated as a second-class citizen by the rest of society. This is the same for most poor people, whether they live in a housing estate in Wales, or a village in Ghana.