貧窮動態係討論個人（或家庭）生命裡，在貧窮位置（地位）上的流動型態及地位轉變的原因。自1970年代中期開始，美國的貧窮研究者開始運用貫時性資料分析貧窮動態問題。此議題在1980年代晚期更延伸至歐洲與世界其它各國。但多數的貧窮動態研究，皆著重於經驗資料的統計分析，對於貧窮動態現象的解釋則未有完整討論。基於此，本文選擇近代貧窮動態研究最豐富的美國福利政策當做論述的主要背景，除描述貧窮動態論點演進的歷程外，並檢討既有貧窮動態解釋觀點的內涵、限制、關係，並提出若干待檢視的研究議題。本研究期待透過對不同時代貧窮動態論述的踏查，可供未來臺灣相關福利政策制度制定與貧窮動態研究發展的參考。

"Poverty dynamics" is the conception used to discuss how and why poverty status shifts during individual's (or family's) different life periods. Since the mid 1970's, American poverty researchers have already applied longitudinal data to analyze the problem of poverty dynamics. In the late 1980's, such new theme of poverty study began to attract the attentions of European and other countries' researchers. However, most of these researchers viewed such conception just as a special statistic method for data analysis. The topics about the perspectives of explaining poverty dynamics hadn't ever been explicated thoroughly. Thus, standing against the background of the development of American welfare policies, which have produced rich outcomes on poverty dynamics, my study attempted to define the historical periods of the development of the perspectives of explaining poverty dynamics, to examine the implications and limitations of existing perspectives, and relations among different ones, and to provide some suggestions for future studies. My study expected that such review of different discourses about poverty dynamics in the historical periods would be helpful for the establishment of the relevant welfare policies and the development of the studies on poverty dynamics in Taiwan.