Begging (also known in North America as panhandling) is the practice of imploring others to grant a favor, often a gift of money, with little or no expectation of reciprocation. A person doing such is called a beggar or panhandler. Beggars may operate in public places such as transport routes, urban parks, and markets. Besides money, they may also ask for food, drink, cigarettes or other small items.

Internet begging is the modern practice of asking people to give money to others via the Internet, rather than in person. Internet begging may encompass requests for help meeting basic needs such as medical care and shelter, as well as requests for people to pay for vacations, school trips, and other things that the beggar wants but cannot ostensibly afford.

Beggars differ from religious mendicants in that some mendicants do not ask for money. Their subsistence is reciprocated by providing society with various forms of religious service, moral education, and preservation of culture.

Passersby often prefer to give beggars food or water rather than cash.

Beggars have existed in human society since the dawn of recorded history. Street begging has happened in most societies around the world, though its prevalence and exact form vary.

Ancient Greeks distinguished between the pénēs (Greek: πένης, "active poor") and the ptōchós (Greek: πτωχός, "passive poor"). The pénēs was somebody with a job, only not enough to make a living, while the ptōchós depended on others entirely. The working poor were accorded a higher social status. The New Testament contains several references to Jesus' status as the savior of the ptochos, usually translated as "the poor", considered the most wretched portion of society. In the rich man and Lazarus parable, Lazarus is called 'ptochos' and presented as living in extreme poverty. Agyrtae (ἀγύρται) were wandering beggars or alms collectors in ancient Greece, often linked to religious practices and fortune-telling. They were generally seen as disreputable figures, sometimes offering to perform harmful acts for payment or to obtain forgiveness from the gods whom they served for any sins. Their presence extended to Italy with the spread of the cult of Isis, Cybele and other such deities, but Roman law tightly regulated their activities, Romans called them aeruscatores.

A Caveat or Warning for Common Cursitors, vulgarly called vagabonds, was first published in 1566 by Thomas Harman. From early modern England, another example is Robert Greene in his coney-catching pamphlets, the titles of which included "The Defence of Conny-catching," in which he argued there were worse crimes to be found among "reputable" people. The Beggar's Opera is a ballad opera in three acts written in 1728 by John Gay. The Life and Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew was first published in 1745. There are similar writers for many European countries in the early modern period.^{[citation needed]}

According to Jackson J. Spielvogel, "Poverty was a highly visible problem in the eighteenth century, both in cities and in the countryside... Beggars in Bologna were estimated at 25 percent of the population; in Mainz, figures indicate that 30 percent of the people were beggars or prostitutes... In France and Britain by the end of the century, an estimated 10 percent of the people depended on charity or begging for their food."