Poverty is socially defined as a condition where a community or person lacks financial resources and the necessary resources needed to maintain a minimum standard of living. However, experts in the Sociology field define poverty in their own way based on their research. 
According to Townsend (Townsend, 1979), poverty is defined in interrelation with the current standards of a society in regards with the society being able to determine the needs of its people, and which food is available. The population in a society can be seen to be in poverty when they lack the essential resources needed to acquire different diets, take part in particular activities, and achieve the living conditions and amenities that are conventional in the particular society they reside in. 
Peter Townsend has 60 specific types of deprivation listed, some of which include that a family can be seen to be in relative poverty when they have not had a week’s holiday away from home in the last 12 months; children have not had a friend to play with in the last 4 weeks; they have not had a cooked breakfast most days of the week; household does not have a refrigerator, etc. 
Townsend’s definition of poverty has been thoroughly critiqued and some of his items in his deprivation index were questioned, as the event could have been due to personal choice or cultural differences.