The term refers to the lack of basic resources for life, such as food, water and electricity, as well as housing and clothing. However, the shortage is not simply of basic and necessary resources, it also includes second-necessity products, for example “shortage of electronic equipment” .
It can appear on any occasion, caused by different reasons, a waste of products or their low production. The import and export emerged as a solution to avoid the lack of products, because a nation is, mostly, able to meet alone the entire population that inhabits it.
The shortage is classified into 4 sections according to their origin: a shortage of inequality or accumulation, ie, a part of the population suffering has in abundance what causes the other can not purchase products that are scarce; promotion of scarcity by economic power, where public power makes products inaccessible, and creates unemployment to reduce wage costs; shortage due to demand and supply, in this two factors are observed, the increase in the demand for products by another institution and the impoverishment of the resources of the producing entity; artificial shortage, created from the reduction of production of certain products.
However, this type of problem can not only occur in the economy, but also in biology, due to the few specimens that may exist of a certain rare species, although they are mostly protected by national or international laws, or the scarcity subjective, which describes a situation where the products are not few, but they do not cover the needs of the entire population in need.
