For this reason, no one is socially poor until he has been assisted. And this has a general validity: sociologically speaking, poverty does not come first and then assistance—this is rather fate in its personal form—but a person is called poor who receives assistance or should receive it given his sociological situation, although perchance he may not receive it.

DEFINE: Simmel offers a sociological definition of poverty as a status conferred by the welfare system, rather than a pre-existing material condition. QUESTION: This inverts the commonsense causal order — does this suggest welfare programs create the very category of 'the poor' they aim to serve?

DEFINE: Simmel redefines poverty sociologically: poverty exists only once society responds to it with assistance, inverting the intuitive order of lack-then-help.

Georg Simmel, on individuality and social…, loc. 444