Our paper aims to throw light on this issue by linking poverty and poverty reduction to relevant 'shared values that define social arrangements'. We start from the proposition that public perceptions of poverty and of the priority attached to poverty reduction are influenced as much by technical and policy perspectives as by shared values which define the social arrangements and institutions. By ethics of poverty we refer to the most basic arguments and processes used to justify how and why we assist people living in poverty. Given the extent to which poverty reflects injustice, we argue it is appropriate to consider poverty in the context of ethics.