Poverty

Poverty generally refers to not having enough resources to meet daily needs for oneself or family. In America, the official poverty line is calculated by multiplying the costs of food for a household of a certain size by a factor of three. Household surveys conducted in the 1950s and 1960s by the U.S. Department of Agriculture showed that a typical family spends about one third of their budget on food. Throughout the economically underdeveloped world, the World Bank defines poverty as living on less than US$1.90 per day. There are three fundamental reasons why poverty is of interest to life-course developmental researchers. First, poverty early in life has been linked throughout the life course to a host of adverse developmental outcomes including health and related ...