Poverty

Poverty is a condition of persons not having particular amounts (or higher) of goods and money. According to Wikipedia, conditions of poverty cause immense problems for society.

One third of deaths – some 18 million people a year or 50,000 per day – are due to poverty-related causes: in total 270 million people, most of them women and children, have died as a result of poverty since 1990. Those living in poverty suffer disproportionately from hunger or even starvation and disease. Those living in poverty suffer lower life expectancy. According to the World Health Organization, hunger and malnutrition are the single gravest threats to the world's public health and malnutrition is by far the biggest contributor to child mortality, present in half of all cases. Almost 90% of maternal deaths during childbirth occur in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, compared to less than 1% in the developed world.
Those who live in poverty have also been shown to have a far greater likelihood of having or incurring a disability within their lifetime. Infectious diseases such as malaria and tuberculosis can perpetuate poverty by diverting health and economic resources from investment and productivity; malaria decreases GDP growth by up to 1.3% in some developing nations and AIDS decreases African growth by 0.3–1.5% annually.

Scientists are studying poverty, and here are links to some of their research.

Between 2011 and 2012, child poverty increased slightly in the Northeast and West, but declined slightly in the Midwest. There was no significant change in the South, the region with the highest child poverty in 2012 (25.0 percent). Nearly 30 percent (29.7 percent) of children in central cities and 26.2 percent of children in rural places lived in poverty in 2012, significantly higher than the 17.2 percent in suburban areas.