Abstract

The poor are a very heterogeneous group and only in a minority of cases poverty lasts for long periods of time: in most cases it represents a short-time condition. Typically poverty tends to change over time: it has a beginning, a variable "duration" and pattern and quite often an end. Poverty is no longer an issue concerning only a defined portion of the population living in typically disadvantaged circumstances, socially isolated groups of people, but is increasingly affecting other social classes that would normally benefit from adequate living conditions, as members of the impoverished middle class, low income families, people with unstable jobs and inadequate family and social support.