immiseration

From im- +‎ miser(y) +‎ -ation.

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ɪmɪzəˈɹeɪʃ(ə)n/

immiseration (plural immiserations)

1. The process of making miserable, especially of a population as a whole; impoverishment.
   • 2011, Jacqueline Stevens, States Without Nations: Citizenship for Mortals, p. 23:

     Even Thomas More, the most populist of the sixteenth-century humanists striving to overcome the immiserations of serfdom, did not question slavery but endorsed it, as did, of course, the U.S. government as late as 1861.

   • 2011, Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature, Penguin 2012, p. 627:

     Unimaginable amounts of suffering have been caused by tyrants who callously presided over the immiseration of their peoples or launched destructive wars of conquest.