All 3 Uses

scarcity
in
Flags of Our Fathers
(Auto-generated)

And, since money was scarce, helping out in their fathers' businesses and tobacco fields; lending a hand in the coal mine, at the mill.†
Chpt 2. *

scarce = in short supply OR barely or hardly (by a small margin)
Shoes became scarce, and paper, and silk.†
Chpt 3.
There was no TV; movies offered sanitized, heroic images of battle; radio was for entertainment; and even actual pictures of the world were scarce—the first photo magazine, Life, didn't hit the newsstands until 1935.†
Chpt 4.

Definitions:

(1) (scarcity)
shortage (having an amount that is less than desired)
(2) (meaning too rare to warrant focus)
More rarely (and typically in classic literature), scarce can be short for scarcely or hardly or barely or by a small margin -- such as in "She was scarce ten years old," or "I scarce know why."