Between 300 and 420 million people are trapped in chronic poverty. They experience deprivation over many years, often over their entire lives, and commonly pass poverty on to their children. Many chronically poor people die prematurely from health problems that are easily preventable. For them poverty is not simply about having a low income: it is about multidimensional deprivation – hunger, undernutrition, dirty drinking water, illiteracy, having no access to health services, social isolation and exploitation. Such deprivation and suffering exists in a world that has the knowledge and resources to eradicate it. This paper covers a multitude of issues regarding chronic poverty like such as poverty dynamics, who the chronically poor are, where they live, why they suffer chronic poverty and what should be done to combat it.