Towards A Re-definition of Poverty

This paper is an attempt to examine a range of a definitions currently used to suggest poverty or as used in poverty studies. It is argued that the definitions suffer from serious and critical weaknesses. They are inadequate from a theoretical perspective and in giving useful policy options to direct resources for reducing poverty. It is then argued that perhaps an alternative poverty definition should use a methodology that rather departs from the way data are manipulated to arrive at a measure of poverty.