Definition of Poor People - Europe

I just came across an article in Economic Times of 9 February 2008.

The article was written by Yuri Medvedev. It presents some highlights from a report by Alexel Shevyakov, director of the Social and Economic Population Studies Institute to the Presidium of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

The article mentions that in Europe the powerty indicator is a relative one based on average per capita income of the country.

The poor include people whose incomes are less than 60% of the average per capita income in the country.

Such a definition forces the government and social organizations to think of distribution also along with growth.

Some more information of relative definition of poverty

Research into present-day poverty adopts countless different approaches, many of which fail to do justice to its complexity. Such is the case, for example, with the "basic necessities" approach used to define poverty in the US, where households are considered poor if their income does not cover the minimum expenditure required to satisfy a number of basic needs. Some other income-based approaches are relativistic: the dividing line is drawn somewhere between 50% and 60% of the average income for a given country. In addition, there are definitions used by politicians, subjectivist approaches reflecting public opinion, and approaches based on investigating how people manage to survive without basic goods and services.

http://mondediplo.com/1999/09/06poverty