Ultimately, poverty is a major cause of social tensions and threatens to divide a nation because of income inequality. This occurs when the wealth of a country is poorly distributed among its citizens—when a tiny minority has a majority of the money.

When did poverty become a social problem?

We often date our national focus on poverty as a salient public policy issue to the 1960s, but there is, of course, a much longer history. The “poverty as a public issue” story is not unimodal, rising once to national prominence and then fading. It is cyclical, rather, rising and falling several times.

Is poverty an economic or social problem?

Poverty is the state of not having enough material possessions or income for a person's basic needs. Poverty can have diverse social, economic, and political causes and effects. ... Thus relative poverty is defined varies from one country to another, or from one society to another.