Reyna Delgado
Dr. Durham
WIC
11/10/17
With the rise of the morning sun, most of us awake to a day of
possibilities, but for those in extreme poverty daybreak brings only anxiety and despair as they try to survive on little to nothing. Over one billion people are currently living in extreme poverty, unable to fathom a future free from hunger, disease and oppression. Extreme poverty, defined as living on $1.25 a day or less, traps generations into an arduous existence with few opportunities to escape. Helping to eliminate extreme poverty means first understanding that it is possible to provide people with a pathway out and if it is possible, we therefore have the responsibility to do so. Millions die each year as a result of extreme poverty. While few would argue that we should avoid saving the lives of millions, many may argue that the situation is hopeless. Dispelling this myth is vital to making the public understand that we have the tools within our grasp to end extreme poverty within the next 30 years. According to the 2010 Millennium Development Goals Report, the percentage of people living in extreme poverty in Eastern Asia dropped from an 60% in 1990 to an astounding 16% in 2005. This represents a remarkable achievement for such a short time frame and should serve as evidence that with focused effort we are capable of eliminating extreme poverty. The path towards eliminating extreme poverty will not be easy, but through innovation, ingenuity and involvement we can achieve this goal.
In general, poverty is when a person cannot buy the most needed things: food, shelter, medication, clothes and always lives in uncertainty. There are a lot of causes of poverty. It is strange, but even in the best economically developed countries, there are very poor people.
The most common reasons for the poverty in countries can be:
Poor education, when there is a lack of institutions that can provide students with a high-quality education so that they could find a well-paid job in the future.
Unemployment. When the economy is so bad that the companies have to reduce the number of the workers, and leave the same part of the work to fewer employers, without any salary adjustments. Some people work so hard that become sick and some people are jobless at the same time.
Low salaries that are the results of previous two problems because the lack of the knowledge and vacancies make people work for chicken feed.
Single parenting. It is not a secret that the number of divorces has dramatically increased, and it is very difficult to provide for a family having one source of income.
Environmental problems like floods, droughts, water contamination and fires in forests (Shah, 2014).
There are also some deeper causes like history, wars and political instability, national debt, discrimination and social inequality, corruption, social inequality, and this is not a complete list.
There are a lot of negative effects that poverty has. In the poor districts, the crime rate is much higher, and the accidents of poisoning by water or food are more frequent in poor countries as well. People, who do not feel safe, are always anxious, nervous and intense. Trying to relieve these negative feelings, they start alcohol or other substances abusing. All these factors make a vicious cycle that is difficult to unlock. The state has to take drastic measures to help the people, who are already suffering and improve the state of the people, who are on the verge of it.
The first step to eliminating or, at least, reducing the poverty is to realize the existing problem. Unfortunately, the authorities always try to avoid noticing this in order not to make any actions. They have to find exact causes of the problem and assess the complexity of a current situation. Only after that, they can decide on the strategy of alleviating the poverty. Of course, the result will not come in a day, and the problem will not be fully resolved. But, by trial and error, they can make a lot of people happier and even save some people’s lives. Some of the countries cannot escape from poverty by themselves. Developing countries need some help from developed countries, especially, in terms of education and industrialization.
The poorest continent, nowadays, is Africa. Despite being rich in natural resources, they cannot take advantage of it due to the lack of funds to build special infrastructure to extract and exploit them (“World’s Poorest Countries”, 2013)
For example, Nigeria has already managed to find the sources for developing this business, and now is the largest nation that produces oil for the whole world (“History of the Nigerian Petroleum Industry”, 2015)
Of course, as it was stated above, this problem existed, exists and probably will exist forever. But the task of the governments and us is to make all the possible efforts to change the situation and help at least the nations that are most in need.
Poverty has been a recurring issue for humans all throughout history and continues to be a problem today. Extreme or absolute poverty can be defined as an individual’s inability to supply the basic human needs for life. Currently, twenty-one percent of the developing world lives on less than two US dollars and fifty cents a day (The World Bank), however, the world poverty line is set at one US dollar and twenty-five cents. There is not one specific thing causing poverty to continuously push and shape the actions and lives of people from the beginning of history all the way up until now. Poverty develops because of a great number and mixture of factors including overpopulation, lack of education, environmental problems, and political problems, among other things. Cases of poverty can be found everywhere in the world, but most substantially in developing nations in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. Countries that undergo extreme incidences of poverty will likely experience mass emigration, greater risk of war, and great dependency on richer nations which results in high debt. The people living in these countries with much poverty will experience famine and malnutrition, no proper healthcare, difficulty in ability to afford suitable shelter, and higher mortality rates. The world has seen a decrease in amounts of poverty in the last decade, but there is still much improvement to be done. There are things that people can do in everyday life to continue this trend, however, major changes need to be made in the way distribution and use of materials and finances is made.
It is assumed that living in poverty simply means having no money. Absolute poverty is defined as an individual’s inability to supply or have access to the basic human needs for life – that is, food, safe drinking water, sanitation facilities, healthcare, shelter, education, and information. Income as well as access to services is measures of poverty. The world poverty line is set at one US dollar and twenty-five cents a day according to The World Bank; however that number varies between each country. In 1964, in a joint committee economic, President’s report in the United States Republicans said, “No objective definition of poverty exists… The definition varies from place to place and time to time. In America as our standard of living rises, so does our idea of what is substandard.” So for example, the poverty line set in the United States would differ greatly from the poverty line set in Ethiopia. Looking at this world poverty line set by The World Bank, in 2005 4.09 billion people in developing countries lived above this line, and 1.4 billion were below the line. One in every two children in the world live in poverty (about one billion), six hundred forty million live without adequate shelter, four hundred million have no access to safe water, and two hundred seventy million have no access to health services (Shah). Places in the world with the most extreme cases of poverty are mainly found in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, (Poverty.hci) but it exists everywhere in the world. Some of the poorest countries in the world consist of Afghanistan, Burkina Faso, Cambodia, The Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Haiti, Mali, Solomon Islands, and Zambia (Seabrook), but that is just a small example of countries experiencing extreme poverty.
A great number and mixture of factors all contribute to the never faltering existence of poverty, so determining the exact root cause of why poverty exists is near impossible. A major cause of poverty is illiteracy and lack of education. The governments of developing countries cannot afford to provide good public schools, especially in rural areas. Poverty.hci said that only sixty percent of children in sub-Saharan Africa attend primary school, and the majority of those will eventually drop out after a short number of years, likely to work and help support their family. In the No Nonsense Guide to World Poverty, Jeremy Seabrook stated that of all the least developed countries, forty-five percent of children do not attend school at all. This creates a cycle – families are poor and must keep kids home to work to help generate an income, preventing them from getting an education which allows for better paying careers. Today, in the developing world, there are one billion non-literate adults (Seabrook). Seabrook has made a comparison between a country’s literacy rate and its per-capita income. A literacy rate less than fifty-five percent yields a per-capita income of six hundred dollars, while a literacy rate above ninety-six percent will see a per-capita income of twelve thousand six hundred dollars. This trend cannot be overlooked. Overpopulation and environmental degradation go hand-in-hand with poverty. Overpopulation is a large number of people in one area without enough resources and/or space to support them (poverty.hci). Countries without advanced farming technologies will tend to have high rates of poverty because the amount of agriculture activity does not provide sufficient enough product. High birth rates are common in impoverished countries because of cultural norms, lack of education, or their government provides little or no support for family planning (poverty.hci). Environmental degradation only makes problems of an overpopulated area worse. Environmental problems can lead to shortages of food, clean water, materials, and other essential things. An overpopulated, impoverished country will be rendered even worse off as items will become even more scarce, and technologies to improve the conditions are just not available (Poverty.hci). In some cases, it is exactly who should be helping their country who is actually hurting it – government leaders. Certain governments of countries will favor a certain race or people, for example South Africa’s apartheid (poverty.hci). Skin colour may define educational, social, and welfare benefits or job opportunities. In rare cases, country leaders might also take government money for themselves which would have been used for development projects (Poverty.hci). All of these things together contribute to the never ending cycle of poverty.
Food and shelter are the two main necessities needed to survive. Unfortunately, around the world, one person dies every three and a half seconds due to hunger (Povery.hci). People living in extreme poverty experience malnutrition, which affects the development of a child’s mental health and causes weakness and sickness (Poverty.hci), all adding up to make the poor and hungry even more poor and hungry. People living in poverty do not tend to have access to proper healthcare, either because it is not accessible, or it is there but not affordable. This results in people dying and suffering from easily curable or treatable diseases and sicknesses simply because the care needed is not available. Inadequate housing and sanitation facilities increase the chances of becoming ill, and those are main struggles that one may face if dealing with poverty – 2.8 billion people in the world do not have a satisfactory waste-disposal system (Seabrook). This mixture of factors makes for a much lower life expectancy and higher mortality rates than those living in richer nations. In 1995, the life expectancy for developed countries was seventy-seven years, while the life expectancy for the least developed countries was only fifty-two years, and one in every five people are not expected to live past the age of forty (Seabrook). As well, twenty percent of children born in poor countries will not live to the age of five, while less than one percent of children in the richest countries will die before age five (Seabrook). Among the effects of poverty are the challenges faced by countries as a whole, rather than on a personal level. A country with great poverty will have in increase in the risk of war, as it must obtain new markets and materials. War in an impoverished country is highly unproductive because it uses up money that should be spent in improvements within the country. Poverty will also result in mass emigration – when large amounts of people move to a different area. People living in an area with great amounts of poverty might move to another location within the country or into a new country or even continent in seek of better trade, jobs, and lower living costs (Poverty.hci). Mass emigration will make a country’s ability to recover from the effects of poverty much harder.
Poverty has existed since the beginning of humanity, so how is it that no one has been able to put an end to it yet? There are many things that need to be done in order for poverty to come to an end however, sadly, it is not likely that it will ever be able to be completely abolished. Major action needs to be taken in providing skills and education in order to create more full-time careers rather than low productivity farming and low paying factory jobs. Therefore, schooling must be made accessible for each and every child in the world. A Chinese proverb says “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” It should not be that any child must look forward to a life of poverty and despair just because they were born into a poor life. As well, the way that poverty reduction is viewed must be changed. Attempts are made all the time to help the needy, in the means of charity donations. That does help in the short run of things but only serves as temporary relief of a deeply rooted problem. Seabrook said “What needs to be done for everyone on earth, not to grow rich, but to acquire a dignified sufficiency?” meaning that the aims of the poor is not necessarily to live like those of the developed world, but to be able to be healthy and without pain, hunger, and suffering, and have the skills to get a job and provide for their own families. For this to happen, impoverished countries must help the people, and better encourage economic growth rather than relying on the assistance of richer countries (which only ends up in debt).
Poverty has been a recurring issue for humans all throughout history and continues to be a problem today, however the last decade has seen a decrease in amounts of poverty, so hopefully it will continue to decrease until the idea of mass poverty is a thing of the past. There are many causes of poverty, such as overpopulation, distribution of resources, lack of education, and environmental and political problems among many other things. Extreme poverty will causes a greater risk for war, mass emigration and high debt, but on personal level causes malnutrition, difficulty in affording basic needs, and higher mortality rates. Poverty can be reduced by providing education and skills required for full-time careers and promoting economic growth rather than relying on the aid of others.
A quote from Nelson Mandela said, “Overcoming poverty is not a task of charity, it is an act of justice. Like Slavery and Apartheid, poverty is not natural. It is man-made and it can be overcome and eradicated by the actions of human beings. Sometimes it falls on a generation to be great. YOU can be that great generation. Let your greatness blossom.”