privation

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

• noun Lack of the basic necessities or comforts of life.
• noun An act, condition, or result of deprivation or loss.
• noun The condition of being without a specified quality or attribute.

from The Century Dictionary.

• noun The state of being deprived; particularly, deprivation or absence of what is necessary for comfort; destitution; want.
• noun The act of removing something possessed; the removal or destruction of any thing or any property; deprivation.
• noun In logic, a particular kind of negation consisting in the absence from a subject of a habit which ought to be, might be, or generally is in that subject or others like it.
• noun The act of degrading from rank or office.
• noun Technically, in the Roman Catholic Church, the suspension of an ecclesiastic from his office, stipend, ecclesiastical functions, or jurisdiction.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

• noun The act of depriving, or taking away; hence, the depriving of rank or office; degradation in rank; deprivation.
• noun The state of being deprived or destitute of something, especially of something required or desired; destitution; need.
• noun The condition of being absent; absence; negation.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

• noun philosophy The state of being deprived of or lacking an attribute formerly or properly possessed; the loss or absence of such an attribute.
• noun The state of being very poor, and lacking the basic necessities of life.
• noun The act of depriving someone of such basic necessities; deprivation.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

• noun act of depriving someone of food or money or rights
• noun a state of extreme poverty