Poverty and Social Issues (Part 2): Advanced Vocabulary for IELTS

Nehasri Ravishenbagam

8 min read

Updated On Jul 22, 2025

Want to elevate your IELTS preparation for a band 8+? Dive into the advanced vocabulary for IELTS with the topic ‘Poverty and Social Issues (Part 2)’ and learn strategies to get familiar and attempt exercises on economic and community issues.

Poverty and Social Issues (Part 2): Advanced Vocabulary for IELTS

Strategies to Learn IELTS Advanced Vocabulary for Poverty and Social Issues (Part 2)
List of 10 Advanced Vocabulary for Poverty and Social Issues (Part 2): Economic Issues
List of 10 Advanced Vocabulary for Poverty and Social Issues (Part 2): Community Issues
Practice Exercises and Answer Key on Poverty and Social Skills (Part 2)

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Practising Poverty and Social Issues (Part 2) would help you get acquainted with the required vocabulary words to score higher in the IELTS exam.

By digging deeper into the issues surrounding poverty, inequality, and related social challenges, you would have a better understanding of using these words. These will help in building a better response to the questions in the IELTS Speaking and Writing modules. Therefore, have a strategic plan in mind so that these words can be comprehended easily while preparing to achieve a band 8+.

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Before learning the list of advanced vocabulary words on the IELTS topic, ‘Politics and Social Issues’, it is crucial to incorporate a few strategies so that you know how to use them. This is because memorizing the words might not help in recalling them during the exam time and could affect your IELTS Band Score. Therefore, use a strategic plan to learn these words so that they come naturally to you as you talk on this topic. Below are the tricks to learn the list of words related to the topic ‘Poverty and Social Issues’.

Contextual learning is an effective way to memorize words. Therefore, it is important to use them in practice essays and sample answers.
You can use a flashcard where the word can be written on one side and the meaning could be written on the other side. In this way, you would train your mind to remember the words easily.
For the IELTS Speaking section, challenge yourself to incorporate these words naturally into your responses. With these practice sessions, you will enhance your speaking skills and take a step towards success.
Group these words based on the topic cluster, such as poverty, inequality, solutions, etc. This will guide you to pick the right word based on the information which you want to express.
As you learn these words, try to attempt essay questions which are from similar topics so that you get a chance to use these words. In this way, you will build confidence to attempt essay questions in the IELTS Writing section.
Look for synonyms and collocations so that you can avoid using the same words multiple times. This would help to stop repetition and redundancy in your answers.
The practice exercises provide you with an opportunity to identify the areas of improvement so that you can work towards them.
It is suggested that you make sentences as you learn different words so that your knowledge of IELTS Grammar would be improved.

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As you learn the IELTS vocabulary words list for Band 8 or 9, the topic on poverty and social issues would have various words associated with it. The topic is quite common in both speaking and writing modules; therefore, you must be aware of the specific words to be used. Below is the table which showcases the vocabulary words on economic issues which you can utilize in your answers.

Vocabulary Word	Meaning	Example
Economic Disparity	A difference in wealth and income	There has always been an economic disparity between urban and rural areas.
Austerity	Government policies to reduce public spending	After the austerity measures were introduced, these have worsened the living standards of the poor.
Recession	A period of economic decline	Many people lost their jobs due to the recession.
Precarity	Lack of stability or security in jobs	There are certain individuals who believe that freelancing jobs are promoting job precarity.
Affluence	Wealthy with abundance of money and resources	Many economic policies favour affluence over the ones who actually need them.
Monopoly	Only one company controls the entire market	Nowadays, monopoly in the marketplace can negatively affect fair economic competition.
Resilience	The ability to recover quickly from any economic difficulties	The communities’ resilience would only help in times of financial crises.
Inefficacy	Lack of effectiveness in sorting out or dealing with certain issues	The inefficacy of certain policies are the reason for worsening economic conditions.
Stagnation	A long period of little to no economic growth	The number of unemployed individuals have increased due to economic stagnation.
Exploitation	Taking unfair advantage of people or resources	Many companies are against the exploitation of their employees and introducing policies to prevent that.

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The topic of community-driven issues is very common, but you need to be aware of the terms to be used to express them. As you try to improve your IELTS Vocabulary words, you must first identify which topic you are talking about and then use these words accordingly. The table below suggests a list of 10 advanced vocabulary words for community issues.

Vocabulary Word	Meaning	Example
Run amok	To behave uncontrollably	The crowd may run amok during the protest if the security is not tight enough.
Down-and-out	Homeless	After losing his job, he was down-and-out.
On the margins	Living outside the mainstream	People who are on the margins of society struggle to get healthcare and education.
Chequered	A past involving both successes and failures	He managed to rebuild his life after his chequered past.
Kerb	The act of driving slowly	There are strict laws against kerb crawling, especially in red-light districts.
Deprivation	The lack of basic necessities	Severe deprivation occurs in war zones, especially for children.
Apathy	Lack of interest, enthusiasm, or concern.	Voter apathy can harm the effectiveness of a democratic country.
Soup kitchen	Facility where free food is distributed to the needy.	There is a soup kitchen in the next lane which provides food two times a day.
Black market	An area (physical or digital) where unlawful economic activities happen.	Many illicit substances are brought to the black market.
Emotional scars	Psychological trauma due to past abuse.	She has stage fear due to her past emotional scars.

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Now that you are aware of the few terms based on economic and community issues, it is time for you to attempt the exercises. It is important that you try attempting these questions yourself and then look at the answers which will help you to analyze yours as well critically.

EXERCISE A: Now use the phrases in Column A of (B) above to fill the gaps in the following sentences. You may need to change the form, tense, word order or phrase structure slightly.

Those _____________ have few if any friends and lack the means, faculties or desire to make a meaningful contribution to the community; they are utterly alone and despondent.
Few of us however well-intentioned would be prepared to welcome someone off the streets and into our home for fear they would _____________ if we let our guard down and took our eyes off them for even a moment.
He was pulled in by the police for _____________, but the reality is that he was simply and innocently passing the time watching the passers-by go about their daily business.
She was _____________ and her once glamorous life was in pieces; she held little hope of finding a way back to her glory days.
She was forced to go _____________ to earn enough money to support her abusive husband’s drug addiction.

EXERCISE B: Match the word in Column A with its strongest collocate from Column B.

Column A	Answer	Column B
(a) domestic		(i) history
(b) chequered		(ii) scars
(c) kerb		(iii) violence
(d) illicit		(iv) guidance
(e) soup		(v) market
(f) black		(vi) kitchens
(g) sleeping		(vii) trafficking
(h) people		(viii) abuse
(i) substance		(ix) drugs
(j) parental		(x) rough
(k) emotional		(xi) crawling

EXERCISE C: Now use the answers from (B) above to fill the gaps in the following sentences. Use each collocation once only.

He has a history of ___________ and I would regard him as a loose cannon with the potential to explode again at any given point in time without warning. It is tragic that he has been thrown out onto the streets but his ___________ as both a parent and a father moderate the level of sympathy I have for him somewhat.
She has severe ___________ from her time under the guardianship of her foster parents, who, it later turned out, were serious dealers in ___________ and psychologically unstable themselves. This girl was let down badly by the system.
She is lacking ___________ and the absence of a role model and authority figure in her life has made her especially susceptible to suggestion; it is hardly surprising that she had been led astray by the group of troubled youths she fell in with while ___________ .
___________ is rife amongst the homeless; you only have to look at the huge queues of people lining up outside the methadone clinic each day to tell you that. You’d seldom observe as big a queue outside the ___________, ironically.
Those who engage in ___________ must realise that they are endangering the women they pick up and that their money simply lines the pockets of pimps involved in a seedy network of ___________ which stretches across the whole of Europe not to mention shady dealings in the ___________.

EXERCISE D: Rewrite the following sentences using the given vocabulary words.

The economic gap between the rich and poor is growing every year. (economic disparity)
Many people are living in unstable financial conditions due to a reduced number of permanent jobs. (precarity)
The lack of proper policy implementation is the reason for failing to improve the economy. (inefficacy)
Wealthy families often receive more benefits than the poor ones. (affluence)
When there is only one company controlling everything, it reduces competition in the market. (monopoly)

Answer Key on Poverty and Social Skills (Part 2)

EXERCISE A

1. on the margins (of society)

2. run amok

3. loitering with intent

4. down-and-out

5. on the game

EXERCISE B

a. iii	b. i	c. xi	d. ix	e. vi	f. v
g. x	h. vii	i. viii	j. iv	k. ii

EXERCISE C

1. domestic violence/ chequered history

2. emotional scars/illicit drugs

3. parental guidance/sleeping rough

4. Substance abuse/soup kitchen

5. kerb crawling/people trafficking/black market

EXERCISE D

The economic disparity between the rich and the poor is growing every year.
Many people are living in unstable financial conditions due to job precarity.
The inefficacy of policy implementation is the reason for failing to improve the economy.
Affluence families often receive more benefits than the poor ones.
A monopoly in the market reduces competition in the market.

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Don’t just stop here! You can also check out the other parts to learn the advanced vocabulary words for the topic ‘Poverty and Social Issues’. Below are some of the links which you can incorporate.

With the advanced vocabulary word list on the topic ‘Poverty and Social Issues (Part 2)’, you are one step closer to achieving your desired band score of 8+. Remember to incorporate the strategies so that you learn these words effectively and use them in your speaking and writing sections.