Sociologists have several different ways of defining poverty. Transitional poverty is a temporary state that occurs when someone loses a job for a short time. Marginal poverty occurs when a person lacks stable employment (for example, if your job is lifeguarding at a pool during the summer season, you might experience marginal poverty when the season ends). The next, more serious level, residual poverty, is chronic and multigenerational. A person who experiences absolute poverty is so poor that he or she doesn't have resources to survive. Relative poverty is a state that occurs when we compare ourselves to those around us. What is the topic sentence