Synopsis Throughout history the poor have been considered to be some sort of groups on the fringes of the society and for which the society has had to care for. Poverty, and the poor, has been often sometimes by structural factors. Regardless of whether one relates poverty to individual or structural factors, it remains related to the fundamental problems of allocation and distribution that economic theory deals with. Many path-breaking works by economists since Adam smith have dealt with the attempted to analyse different aspects related to poverty. The present volume describes and critically examines how selected economists, representing different strands of economic theory, explain the causes of and the cures for poverty.