The causes of poverty are as follows: 

• Population explosion: Due to the increase in population, poverty is growing rapidly. 
• Slow economic growth: There is slow industrial and agricultural growth due to which the economy is growing slowly. 
• Unemployment and underemployment: Unemployment is the major factor of increased poverty. 
• Economic inequalities: There are inequalities in the distribution of income, assets, consumption expenditure, which in fact have increased poverty.
• Inaccessibility to infrastructural facility: Due to lack of sufficient income, purchasing power is less. This leads to the inaccessibility of infrastructure such as energy, transport, communication, etc. 
• Inflation: Inflation is the major cause of poverty where prices are increased on basic food and commodity.
• Regional imbalance: Economic development of some of the states in India is happening at a lower growth rate thus creating poverty. 
• The vicious circle of poverty: Vicious circle of poverty can be explained, where all the factors are interrelated with each other like low national income, low per capita income, low saving, low capital formation, low production, less employment resulting in poverty. 
• Other factors: Gender discrimination, corruption, natural disasters, caste, religion are some of the other factors which lead to poverty.