Poverty: Causes and Effects Essay

I. Introduction Most of us today experience the feeling of being poor. It might be in material things or in monetary matters. We can even see the people around begging just to live. It can somehow be the picture of our corrupt government. Officials don’t see the thirst and hunger these people are experiencing. They just think of themselves. Thus, worsening the increase of those people in the poverty line. Isn’t bad to look after our country full of beggars? Asking for pennies and food to eat. We might not be effective in terms of monetary problems, but at least we can give them the feeling of love and care. The supply of basic needs can be restricted by constraints on government services such as corruption, debt and loan conditionalities and by the brain drain of health care and educational professionals. Strategies of increasing income to make basic needs more affordable typically include welfare, accommodating business regulations and providing financial services. Today, poverty reduction is a major goal and issue for many international organizations such as the United Nations and the World Bank. The English word â€Å"poverty† came from Latin pauper = â€Å"poor†, via Anglo-Norman povert. There are many definitions of poverty depending on the context of the situation and the views of the person giving the definition. Fundamentally, poverty is a denial of choices and opportunities, a violation of human dignity. It means lack of basic capacity to participate effectively in society. It means not having enough to feed and clothe a family, not having a school or clinic to go to, not having the land on which to grow one’s food or a job to earn one’s living, not having access to credit. It means insecurity, powerlessness and exclusion of individuals, households and communities. It means susceptibility to violence, and it often implies living in marginal or fragile environments, without access to clean water or sanitation. Poverty is pronounced deprivation in well-being, and comprises many dimensions. It includes low incomes and the inability to acquire the basic goods and services necessary for survival with dignity. Poverty also encompasses low levels of health and education, poor access to clean water and sanitation, inadequate physical security, lack of voice, and insufficient capacity and opportunity to better one’s life. II. Literature Review The individuals who are most at risk of developing problem drug use are those who are at the margins of society. They are individuals who are socially and economically marginalised and disaffected from school, family, work and standard forms of leisure. However the relationship between these factors and drug use is not linear. For example although the majority of problem drug users may have experienced a number of these problems the converse may not hold true; that is, individuals who are economically and politically/socially marginalised will not necessarily become problematic drug users. Neale suggests however that particular sub-groups of the population such as the homeless, those who have been in care and/or excluded from school and those in contact with the criminal justice system or mental health services are more susceptible to the various risk factors and that drug misuse is more prevalent among these particular groups (Neale 2002). According to Spooner (2005) the social environment is a powerful influence on health and social outcomes. In this context drug use and related problems result from the complex interplay of the individual and the environment whereby social institutions or structures can influence the environment in a manner that can influence drug use and related problems. Societal structures include government policies, taxation systems, 11 laws and service systems such as welfare, education, health and justice. As such increased attention to the ‘social’ determinants of drug use is required. People from all backgrounds and classes take drugs for many reasons: for pleasure, to treat physical or emotional pain, for stress or anxiety, or because their friends do. But the pattern of who develops a drug problem and encounters other problems shows a close link between drug misuse and social exclusion. The first signs of the link between problematic drug use and social exclusion became apparent in the US post-war period as some of the big cities encountered the first shocks of de-industrialisation. A series of studies by the Chicago School of Sociology showed clearly that poverty and decay in inner cities were the key causes of the heroin epidemics of the 1950s and 1960s in New York, Chicago and other US cities. In the 1980s those same factors helped to fuel the crack epidemics in the US. An influential study by Parker et al (1986) undertaken in the Wirral during the 1980s showed the average prevalence of heroin users across the peninsular was 18.2 per 1,000 among 16-24 year-olds. But the spread ranged in different districts from zero to 162 per 1,000. The variation in geographical prevalence was highly correlated with seven indicators of background deprivation levels in each area: unemployment rate, council tenancies, overcrowding, larger families, unskilled employment, single parent families and lack of access to a car. A study by Dr Laurence Gruer of some 3,715 drugrelated emergency hospital admissions in Greater Glasgow from 1991 to 1996 plotted them by postcode using a standard index of deprivation (cited ACMD 1998). The admission rate from the most deprived areas exceeded that from the least deprived areas by a factor of 30, so that if the admission rate for the least deprived area had applied across the city, the number of admissions would have been 92 per cent lower. It was noted that the relationship between deprivation and drug misuse is higher than any other health variable they had studied. III. Discussion Health One third of deaths – some 18 million people a year or 50,000 per day – are due to poverty-related causes: in total 270 million people, most of them women and children, have died as a result of poverty since 1990. Those living in poverty suffer disproportionately from hunger or even starvation and disease. Those living in poverty suffer lower life expectancy. According to the World Health Organization, hunger andmalnutrition are the single gravest threats to the world’s public health and malnutrition is by far the biggest contributor to child mortality, present in half of all case. Hunger Rises in the costs of living making poor people less able to afford items. Poor person spend agreater portion of their budgets on food than richer people. As a result, poor households and those near the poverty threshold can be particularly vulnerable to increases in food prices. For example, in late 2007 increases in the price of grains led to food riots in some countries. TheWorld Bank warned that 100 million people were at risk of sinking deeper into poverty. Threats to the supply of food may also be caused by drought and the water crisis. Intensive farmingoften leads to a vicious cycle of exhaustion of soil fertility and decline of agricultural yields. Approximately 40% of the world’s agricultural land is seriously degraded. In Africa, if current trends of soil degradation continue, the continent might be able to feed just 25% of its population by 2025, according to United Nations University’s Ghana-based Institute for Natural Resources in Africa. Every year nearly 11 million children living in poverty die before their fifth birthday. 1.02 billion people go to bed hungry every night. According to the Global Hunger Index, South Asia has the highest child malnutrition rate of the world’s regions. Nearly half of all Indianchildren are undernourished, one of the highest rates in the world and nearly double the rate of Sub-Saharan Africa. Every year, more than half a million women die in pregnancy or childbirth. Almost 90% of maternal deaths occur in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, compared to less than 1% in the developed world. Women who have born children into poverty may not be able to nourish the children efficiently and provide adequate care in infancy. The children may also suffer from disease that has been passed down to the child through birth. Asthma and rickets are common problems children acquire when born into poverty. Education Research has found that there is a high risk of educational underachievement for children who are from low-income housing circumstances. This often is a process that begins in primary school for some less fortunate children. Instruction in the US educational system, as well as in most other countries, tends to be geared towards those students who come from more advantaged backgrounds. As a result, these children are at a higher risk than other children for retention in their grade, special placements during the school’s hours and even not completing their high school education. There are indeed many explanations for why students tend to drop out of school. For children with low resources, the risk factors are similar to others such as juvenile delinquency rates, higher levels of teenage pregnancy, and the economic dependency upon their low income parent or parents. Families and society who submit low levels of investment in the education and development of less fortunate child ren end up with less favorable results for the children who see a life of parental employment reduction and low wages. Higher rates of early childbearing with all the connected risks to family, health and well-being are majorly important issues to address since education from preschool to high school are both identifiably meaningful in a life. Poverty often drastically affects children’s success in school. A child’s â€Å"home activities, preferences, mannerisms† must align with the world and in the cases that they do not these students are at a disadvantage in the school and most importantly the classroom. Therefore, it is safe to state that children who live at or below the poverty level will have far less success educationally than children who live above the poverty line. Poor children have a great deal less healthcare and this ultimately results in many absences from the academic year. Additionally, poor children are much more likely to suffer from hunger, fatigue, irritability, headaches, ear infections, flu, and colds. These illnesses could potentially restrict a child or student’s focus and concentration. Housing Poverty increases the risk of homelessness. Slum-dwellers, who make up a third of the world’s urban population, live in a poverty no better, if not worse, than rural people, who are the traditional focus of the poverty in the developing world, according to a report by the United Nations. There are over 100 million street children worldwide. Most of the children living in institutions around the world have a surviving parent or close relative, and they most commonly entered orphanages because of poverty. Experts and child advocates maintain that orphanages are expensive and often harm children’s development by separating them from their families. It is speculated that, flush with money, orphanages are increasing and push for children to join even though demographic data show that even the poorest extended families usually take in children whose parents have died. Violence According to experts, many women become victims of trafficking, the most common form of which is prostitution, as a means of survival and economic desperation.] Deterioration of living conditions can often compel children to abandon school in order to contribute to the family income, putting them at risk of being exploited, according to ECPAT International, an NGO designed to end the commercial sexual exploitation of children. For example, in Zimbabwe, a number of girls are turning to prostitution for foodto survive because of the increasing poverty. In one survey, 67% of children from disadvantaged inner cities said they had witnessed a serious assault, and 33% reported witnessing a homicide. 51% of fifth graders from New Orleans (median income for a household: $27,133) have been found to be victims of violence, compared to 3212% in Washington, DC(mean income for a household: $40,127) IV. Conclusion The main problem in our country nowadays is poverty. Many experts made a research on how to solve it. Most in the community of the Philippines are graving. But sad to say that until now it is still in the stage of calamity. Poverty happens everywhere. They think citiesmay offer them a better-off living. They think they’ll be much better off living in the cities than in their own villages, which only offer them natural resources. Being rich and having a great sum of money instantly are often the cause of massive exodus. What happens later is beyond their expectations; they become jobless, homeless, and the worse impact is that they are unable to return to their villages for they don’t even have money to return. Most poor people who battle hunger deal with chronic undernourishment and vitamin or mineral deficiencies, which result in stunted growth, weakness and heightened susceptibility to illness. Poor children are the most prone to this and are often the victims to malnutrition, deficiencies, diseases and ultimately deaths caused by hunger. The persons who are in the position must have enough knowledge about the solutions on the problem. They should make a step by step process to ensure the proper on the global major problem.