Before you posted this comment :)<p>In all seriousness, I&#x27;m interpreting poverty as lacking the basic capacity to participate in society. In that sense, the average score of something like the human development index is not relevant to whether or not systemic exclusion of classes of people in society is prevalent. The organization of resource-controlling groups in industry and government are generally what determines the social and economic mobility of a population. Before some point in civilized history, these constructs did not exist to create such vast disparity in human dignity and wealth. In other words, neither the cause nor the existence of poverty is measurable by the average standard of living.