Poverty is the lack of basic human needs, such as clean water, nutrition, health care,education, clothing and shelter, because of the inability to afford them.[1][2] This is also referred to as absolute poverty or destitution. Relative poverty is the condition of having fewer resources or less income than others within a society or country, or compared to worldwide averages. About 1.7 billion people live in absolute poverty; before the industrial revolution, poverty had mostly been the norm.[3][4]
Poverty reduction has historically been a result of economic growth as increased levels of production, such as modern industrial technology, made more wealth available for those who were otherwise too poor to afford them.[4][5] Also, investments in modernizing agriculture and increasing yields is considered the core of the antipoverty effort, given three-quarters of theworld's poor are rural farmers.[6][7]
Today, continued economic development is constrained by the lack of economic freedoms[citation needed]. Economic liberalization includes extending property rights, especially to land, to the poor, and making financial services, notably savings, accessible.[8][9][10] Inefficient institutions, corruption and political instability can also discourage investment. Aid and government support in health, education and infrastructure helps growth by increasing human and physical capital.[4
Scarcity of basic needs
Before the industrial revolution, poverty had been mostly accepted as inevitable as economies produced little, making wealth scarce.[3] In Antwerp and Lyon, two of the largest cities in western Europe, by 1600 three-quarters of the total population were too poor to pay taxes.[11] In 18th century England, half the population was at least occasionally dependent on charity for subsistence.[12] In modern times, food shortages have been reduced dramatically in the developed world, thanks to agricultural technologies such as nitrogen fertilizers, pesticides and new irrigationmethods.[13][14] Also, mass production of goods in places such as China has made what were once considered luxuries, such as vehicles or computers, inexpensive and thus accessible to many who were otherwise too poor to afford them.[15][16]
Rises in the costs of living make poor people less able to afford items. Poor people 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[17] led to food riots in some countries[18][19][20]. The World Bank warned that 100 million people were at risk of sinking deeper into poverty.[21] Threats to the supply of food may also be caused by drought and the water crisis.[22][23][24]Intensive farming often leads to a vicious cycle of exhaustion of soil fertility and decline of agricultural yields.[25] Approximately 40% of the world's agricultural land is seriously degraded.[26][27] 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 UNU's Ghana-based Institute for Natural Resources in Africa.[28]
Health care can be widely unavailable to the poor. The loss of health care workers emigrating from impoverished countries has a damaging effect. For example, an estimated 100,000 Philippine nurses emigrated between 1994 and 2006.[29] There are more Ethiopian doctors inChicago than in Ethiopia.[30]
Overpopulation and lack of access to birth control methods drive poverty[31][32][33] The world's population is expected to reach nearly 9 billion in 2040.[34] However, the reverse is also true, that poverty causes overpopulation as it gives women little power to plan childhood, have educational attainment, or a career.[35]
[edit]Barriers to opportunities
The unwillingness of governments and feudal elites to give full-fledged property rights of land to their tenants is cited as the chief obstacle to development.[36] This lack of economic freedom inhibits entrepreneurship among the poor.[5] New enterprises and foreign investment can be driven away by the results of inefficient institutions, notably corruption, weak rule of law and excessive bureaucratic burdens.[4][5] Lack of financial services, as a result of restrictive regulations, such as the requirements forbanking licenses, makes it hard for even smaller microsavings programs to reach the poor.[37]
It takes two days, two bureaucratic procedures, and $280 to open a business in Canada while an entrepreneur in Bolivia must pay $2,696 in fees, wait 82 business days, and go through 20 procedures to do the same.[5] Such costly barriers favor big firms at the expense of small enterprises, where most jobs are created.[5] In India before economic reforms, businesses had to bribe government officials even for routine activities, which was a tax on business in effect.[4]
Corruption, for example, in Nigeria, led to an estimated $400 billion of the country's oil revenue to be stolen by Nigeria's leaders between 1960 and 1999.[38][39] Lack of opportunities can further be caused by the failure of governments to provide essential infrastructure.[40][41].
Opportunities in richer countries drives talent away, leading to brain drains. This is mainly caused by richer countries' restrictions on Freedom of Movement of the poor, uneducated class. Entry visas are granted with much higher probability to the rich and educated of developing countries. Brain drain has cost the African continent over $4 billion in the employment of 150,000 expatriate professionals annually.[42] Indian students going abroad for their higher studies costs India a foreign exchange outflow of $10 billion annually.[43]
Poor health and education severely affects productivity. Inadequate nutrition in childhood undermines the ability of individuals to develop their full capabilities. Lack of essential minerals such as iodine and iron can impair brain development. 2 billion people (one-third of the total global population) are affected by iodine deficiency. In developing countries, it is estimated that 40% of children aged 4 and younger suffer from anemia because of insufficient iron in their diets. See alsoHealth and intelligence.[44]
Similarly substance abuse, including for example alcoholism and drug abuse can consign people to vicious poverty cycles.[citation needed]Infectious diseases such as Malaria and tuberculosis can perpetuate poverty by diverting health and economic resources from investment and productivity; malaria decreases GDP growth by up to 1.3% in some developing nations and AIDS decreases African growth by 0.3-1.5% annually.[45][46][47]
War, political instability and crime, including violent gangs and drug cartels, also discourage investment. Civil wars and conflicts in Africa cost the continent some $300 billion between 1990 and 2005.[48] Eritrea and Ethiopia spent hundreds of millions of dollars on the war that resulted in minor border changes.[49] Shocks in the business cycle affect poverty rates, increasing in recessions and declining in booms. Cultural factors, such as discrimination of various kinds, can negatively affect productivity such as age discrimination, stereotyping,[50] gender discrimination, racial discrimination, and caste discrimination.[51]
Max Weber and the modernization theory suggest that cultural values could affect economic success.[52][53] However, researchers[who?] have gathered evidence that suggest that values are not as deeply ingrained and that changing economic opportunities explain most of the movement into and out of poverty, as opposed to shifts in values.[54]
[edit]Effects of poverty
See also: Malnutrition
The effects of poverty may also be causes, as listed above, thus creating a "poverty cycle" operating across multiple levels, individual, local, national and global.
[edit]Health
Main article: Diseases of poverty
Hunger, disease, and less education describe a person in poverty. 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.[55] Those living in poverty suffer disproportionately from hunger or even starvation and disease.[56] Those living in poverty suffer lower life expectancy. According to the World Health Organization, hungerand malnutrition 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 cases.[57]
Every year nearly 11 million children living in poverty die before their fifth birthday. 1.02 billion people go to bed hungry every night.[58] Poverty increases the risk of homelessness.[59] There are over 100 million street children worldwide.[60] Increased risk of drug abuse may also be associated with poverty.[61]
According to the Global Hunger Index, South Asia has the highest child malnutrition rate of the world's regions.[62] Nearly half of all Indianchildren are undernourished,[63] one of the highest rates in the world and nearly double the rate of Sub-Saharan Africa.[64] Every year, more than half a million women die in pregnancy or childbirth.[65] Almost 90% of maternal deaths occur in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, compared to less than 1% in the developed world.[66]
Women who have children born in poverty cannot nourish the children efficiently with the right prenatal care. They may also suffer from disease that may be passed down to the child through birth. Asthma is a common problem children acquire when born into poverty.
[edit]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. In the US educational system, 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.[67] 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 excuses such as juvenile delinquency rates, higher levels of teenage pregnancy, and the economic dependency upon their low income parent or parents.[67]
Families and society who submit low levels of investment in the education and development of less fortunate children 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.[67]
Poverty often drastically affects children’s success in school. A child’s “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.[68] 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.[68] These illnesses could potentially restrict a child or student’s focus and concentration.
[edit]Housing
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.[69]
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.[70] Experts and child advocates maintain that orphanages are expensive and often harm children’s development by separating them from their families.[70] 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.[70]
[edit]Violence
According to a UN report on modern slavery, the most common form of human trafficking is for prostitution, which is largely fueled by poverty.[71][72] In Zimbabwe, a number of girls are turning to prostitution for food to survive because of the increasing poverty.[73] In one survey, 67% of children from disadvantaged inner cities said they had witnessed a serious assault, and 33% reported witnessing a homicide.[74] 51% of fifth graders from New Orleans (median income for a household: $27,133) have been found to be victims of violence, compared to 32% inWashington, DC (mean income for a household: $40,127).[75]
[edit]Drug abuse
Further information: Drug abuse
Unemployment and distance from rural areas are where most drug abuse occurs. Drug abuse can result in a community shouldering the impact of many nefarious acts such as stealing, killing, theft, sexual assault, and prostitution. Drug abuse is synonymous with poor performance in school & work, and a general malaise of intra-personal intelligence[citation needed]. People who have abused drugs and have spent all of their money buying substances—i.e. heroin, alcohol, methamphetamines etc.—become addicts. This induces a downward spiral in the functionality of most addicts, as the drugs and poverty can be cyclical. When an addict has no other way to support their addiction they result to illegal measures to obtain income. This is where a community becomes affected by drug abuse. The urge—or “Jonesin”—for many different substances begins to take over an addict’s life.
[edit]Poverty reduction
Main article: Poverty reduction
Historically, poverty reduction has been largely a result of economic growth.[4][5] The industrial revolution led to high economic growth and eliminated mass poverty in what is now considered the developed world.[3][5] In 1820, 75% of humanity lived on less than a dollar a day, while in 2001, only about 20% do.[5][dubious ] As three quarters of the world's poor live in the country side, the World Bank cites helping small farmers as the heart of the fight against poverty.[7] Economic growth in agriculture is, on average, at least twice as effective in benefiting the poorest half of a country’s population as growth generated in non-agricultural sectors.[76] However, aid is essential in providing better lives for those who are already poor and in sponsoring medical and scientific efforts such as the green revolution and the eradication ofsmallpox.[36][77]
from wikipedia