Using radically different definitions, two major groups of advocates have claimed variously (a) that the United States has eliminated poverty over the last century; or (b) that it has such a severe crisis of poverty that it ought to devote significantly more resources to the problem.

Much of the debate about poverty focuses on statistical measures of poverty and the clash between advocates and opponents of welfare programs and government regulation of the free market. Measures of poverty can be either absolute or relative.

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