From 1945 to the 1980s, Denmark was characterized by the absence of poverty or at least by the lack of any debate over poverty. However, by the mid‐1980s, the presence of new forms of poverty made it impossible for politicians and social scientists to neglect poverty as an issue. The re‐emergence of poverty did not clarify its extent, but it is widely agreed that poverty now is related to social exclusion and marginalization from the labour market. Empirical evidence is given that shows a poverty incidence of about 8%; the extent of marginalization is calculated to include 20‐25% of the population of working age. The existence of poverty can be seen as a critique of the Scandinavian welfare state project, which was developed explicitly to fight and eliminate poverty. The article concludes with a discussion of the latest welfare state development in Scandinavia and possible future trends, summarized as welfare pluralism. The further implementation of the concept of welfare pluralism holds both positive and negative prospects for the poor, since it opens up both a more differentiated yet possibly also more stratified distribution of w