Several parts combine into one character.

貧 is a compound ideograph: 分 (to divide / split) on top + 貝 (cowrie shell / money) on the bottom. The composite reads as "money divided up and scattered" = poverty, want, the absence of accumulated wealth. 貧 forms the perfect semantic mirror to 富 (wealth — a household full of vessels). Where 富 shows abundance gathered under a roof, 貧 shows resources fragmented and dispersed. Mainland simplified to 贫.

Korean reading "bin." 貧困 (binkkon, poverty — formal term used in academic and policy discourse), 貧富 (binbu, "poor and rich" = wealth gap), 貧血 (binhyeol, "poor blood" = anemia — medical term), 貧乏 (binpip, destitution), 淸貧 (cheongbin, "pure poverty" = honorable simplicity / voluntary poverty — a Confucian-Buddhist ideal of the principled scholar who refuses corruption even at the cost of comfortable living). (cheongbinhan seonbi) is a Korean cultural archetype of the morally pure intellectual.

Mandarin pín, 2nd tone (simplified 贫). 贫困 (pínkùn, poverty), 贫穷 (pínqióng, poor — basic adjective), 贫血 (pínxuè, anemia), and the politically loaded 脱贫 (tuōpín, "to escape poverty") — a major Chinese political slogan of the Xi Jinping era, with the 脱贫攻坚 ("battle to eliminate poverty") campaign declared successful in 2020 with the announcement that absolute rural poverty had been eliminated.

Japanese on-reading ヒン (hin) — 貧困 (hinkon, poverty), 貧富 (hinpu, wealth gap), 貧血 (hinketsu, anemia). Alternative on-reading ビン (bin) — 貧乏 (binbō, poverty — colloquial). Kun-reading まずしい (mazushii, "poor") — 貧しい (mazushii), 貧しさ (mazushisa, poverty — noun). And the wonderfully observed Japanese idiom: 貧乏ゆすり (binbō yusuri, "poor man's shake") — the unconscious habit of jiggling one's leg up and down while sitting. The Japanese folk explanation: poor people fidget because they are anxious about money, or because they cannot sit still trying to think of how to make ends meet. The expression has stuck even though the leg-bouncing habit is universal across socioeconomic classes.

Memory aid: money (貝) divided up and split apart (分) — fragmented wealth = poverty. Pair with 富 (full vessel under a roof = rich).