What exactly IS poverty?

The critical attributes of poverty, of absolute poverty, is the lack of the bare necessities to carry on life (biological functions, and rudimentary psycho-social activity). These are usually defined as food, clothing and shelter. I was struck with the challenge of finding agreed upon criteria, for the preceding and a somewhat objective measuring stick. Then I found that the World Bank utilizes a threshold of less than $1 per person per day. This means about 1.1 billion people live in ‘extreme poverty’, whereas in the US it is around $10 per person per day. Wow…and that number must have changed it's trend DOWNWARD and started to increase due to our Global Economic Downturn. Given that objective measure, then the question is how much food, clothing and shelter is available to the individual at a total cost per day of less than $1? A reasonable assumption would be ‘not much’ if any, no saved resources, no ‘luxuries’. Ask our fearless leader's half-brother found in a shanty outside of Niarobi, Kenya. A life outside, no potable water, sanitation, healthcare is a joke, no self-determination as no resources exist to allow one any real choice…at least Gilligan seemed to have an unlimited supply of red shirts and white hats. Enjoy whatever you have, for if you read this, you are rich.