Poverty in Medellin, Colombia. Luis Pérez/Wikimedia Commons. Some rights reserved.
Inequality is the worst kind of poverty, because inequality is precisely what causes it. Measuring poverty and allocating budget lines in the absence of public policies against inequality is like applying a tourniquet below the wound. According to the OECD, $ 134 billion in official aid were spent in 2013 to fight poverty. The number of poor people in the world, however, is not diminishing.
Poverty for an individual is the lack of what he or she needs to live. Inequality in a society is the structural lack that generates poverty, which is due to five causes:
