Poverty, Coverage of

Heather E. Gilbert

As poverty became a clearly recognized problem during the twentieth century, journalists sought to describe and cover the problem, shedding light on its causes as well as those groups working to alleviate its impact. Coverage of poverty involves politics and economics but also sociology and crime, among other topics. One of the biggest challenges to the coverage of poverty issues is the lack of consensus about defining what poverty is at any given time or place. Typically, poverty is related to economics and low income levels. Many countries have a government-set “poverty line,” a baseline amount of total family income, and any family or household making less than this income is considered to be living “below the poverty line.” However, there is agreement that poverty is also defined by cultural perceptions and, as Nobel Prize–winning economist Amartya Sen suggests, includes deprivation of political, economic, and social rights resulting in and ...

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