Poverty is a condition that affects too many people around the globe. Those who live in poverty are often disenfranchised and unable to obtain the opportunities to remove themselves from this unfortunate condition. In a world of abundance, where the rich are outrageously wealthy, it makes no sense to see so many go without basic necessities. A common saying, “knowledge is power” is something that still holds true in the world today. Those who understand the world tend to do better in maneuvering around the challenges that exist in the world by seizing and creating opportunities for themselves. One of the fundamental solutions to ending poverty exists in the pursuit of education. An aspiration to obtain an education is the best approach to escape poverty.
Facts about Poverty
It is helpful to establish what is considered poverty, and the conditions that exist for those who live in poverty. The shocking truth is that nearly half the population of the world, 3 billion people, live in poverty on less than $2.50 per day (Shah, 2014). Of these people, 1 billion are children who do not have access to proper housing, food, clean water, or health services (Shah, 2014). Many of these children die before their fifth year of life (Shah, 2014). It is truly a shame that when billionaires live in extravagance, there are children dying in such horrible conditions.
When access to basic life necessities is unavailable, the focus of daily survival takes away from access to education as well. Most of the poor do not have access to adequate education. According to the UN Millennium Project (n.d.), “Around the world, a total of 114 million children do not get even a basic education and 584 million women are illiterate.” The perpetual cycle of survival is something that continues for generation after generation. Hopelessness is evident for those who are born into a family history of poverty.
As natural resources continue to be depleted and the big corporation hold all the power, conditions only decline for the poverty stricken citizens of the world. Globalization has only made things worse as poor nations fight to establish the cheapest possible labor to lure the corporations to their country (Shah, 2014). Meanwhile, this further aggravates the conditions of the poor to have less and less as incomes decline.
Even in one of the richest countries in the world, the United States, there is a troubling number of childhood poverty rates that are difficult to imagine for a wealthy developed nation. Some surprising statistics about children in the U.S. is presented in an article from the CBS News Website. For example, “22 percent of all children live in families that are below the federal poverty level” (Picchi, 2015). The federal poverty level in the United States in 2015 for a family of four people was under $24,000 per year (Picchi, 2015). The results of growing up in poverty are a long-term problem because poor children are less likely to reach important milestones that would help them towards a successful future, such as graduating high school and pursuing a college education (Picchi, 2015).
It is important to work on a reduction in the poverty rates around the world. For the sake of the current paper, the focus will primarily remain on citizens of the United States. Tackling the issues of poverty in the richest nation in the world seems to be a reasonable step in the goal to eradicate global poverty. Next, there will be a look inside the correlation of education and poverty.
How Does Education Play a Role in Poverty?
After reviewing some basic facts about poverty, it is valuable to bring awareness to the correlation of a lack of education being linked to higher rates of poverty. Obviously, the jobs that are available to those without an education pay much lower than those that require a college degree. In addition to this reality, the fast paced globalized world has increased the competition in the job market that is no longer what it was in the earlier part of American history. Prior to the 1980’s it was still possible to secure a job that would help support one’s family without a need for a college degree. Blue collar jobs were still available when factories remained in America that were producing goods, which provided job opportunities with just a high school education. Those jobs are no longer abundantly available in the U.S. as many companies have moved to other nations to reduce their production cost as they are able to pay much lower wages in poorer nations.
The current circumstances in America have made education a necessity rather than an option. If there is any hope of securing a job with an income that is going to keep one out of poverty, a college degree is the bare minimum to obtain. Many individuals are even finding themselves in need of a Master’s degree to improve their odds of finding a good job. The competition for jobs is much more difficult as more people are educating themselves in hopes to live a comfortable life.
In addition to the improved chances of securing a stable job with an income that will allow an individual to help keep his or her family out of poverty, there are other benefits worth mentioning. Those who are educated tend to fair much better in every aspect of life aside from job opportunity. An education helps elevate one’s knowledge about life and the world, which increases their perspective on how to live and raise a family. Often times, poor uneducated individuals are unaware of basic things like nutrition or positive parenting techniques that people learn as a result of their education. For example, if an individual is illiterate, then he or she is missing out on so much information about the world as they are only limited to the hands on experiences in their life, versus the ability to learn through exposure to new information.
Education empowers the individual through expanding their knowledge about what is possible in life and what is happening around the world. For those who miss out on the chance to become educated, the context that they live in is very limited, which keeps them struggling in a life of poverty. When looking at the two groups of people, the educated versus the uneducated, one will always find that the uneducated tend to live in poverty, while those who have an education tend to live at least a middle-class life style.
When parents have gone to college, the tendency for the children to follow suit is a higher likelihood. Same goes for those individuals who work minimum wage jobs. Parents who work minimum wage jobs are not able to provide a life where an appreciation for education is established. Many of the poor neighborhoods have public schools with limited funding that reduces the quality of education received by the student. There are other lifestyle factors that interfere with any chance of climbing the socio-economic ladder when many children are delinquent from school, as neither they nor their parents have a true appreciation for what is possible through a good education. Many of the children living in these conditions tend to drop out of high school early and find jobs or get involved in criminal activity to make ends meet. Overall, it is easy to see that a future without an education is one that is quite bleak.
Education: A Human Right
As early as 1948, the General Assembly adopted the following decree with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR)-
a common standard of achievement for all peoples and nations, to the end that every individual and every organ of society, keeping this Declaration constantly in mind, shall strive by teaching and education to promote respect of these rights and by progressive measures, national and international, to secure their universal and effective recognition and observance, both among the peoples of Member States themselves and among peoples of territories under their jurisdiction (Dhillon, 2011, p.249).
Clearly the importance of the right to be educated was established decades ago, yet the problem still exists and in many ways has gotten worse. The right to an education is a human right because there is recognition of the freedom that an education allots the individual. If freedom is a human right, than a right to an education is as well (Dhillon, 2011). One should not have to come from a wealthy family to have access to quality education. To rob an individual of knowledge is a disgrace to humanity.
Unfortunately, a serious violation of human rights is running rampant across the globe as poverty rates continue to exist in outrageous numbers. Often times, an assumption that the comforts of the Western world negate any lack of human rights, however that is not necessarily true. In a booklet by the National Center for Human Rights Education, the following point is made-
Because many Americans enjoy a variety of human rights every day, we tend to associate the human rights movement with the unrealized rights of political prisoners or ethnic minorities abroad. Instead, the UDHR prompts us to recognize that injustices occur within our borders. When a family is homeless, when a school provides inadequate education, when people with disabilities are denied universal access to buildings, when a woman is beaten or raped, or when a hate crime is committed, these are all human rights violations (Dhillon, 2011, p.251).
An area to consider where poverty runs rampant is among the African American and Hispanic people across America. These groups make up nearly half the population of the poor in America (Gradin, 2012). These groups share “similar socioeconomic and demographic patterns of deprivation” with less education, less health care, higher rates of unemployment, lower paying jobs, larger percentage of imprisonment rates, more children per family, and higher numbers of single mother led households (Gradin, 2012).
These groups are among the most disenfranchised and least likely to come out of poverty. As single parent homes tend to require the parent to work full time, and at times more than one job, the physical presence and moral support to the children is missing. Without a parent or guardian to guide the children, the likelihood of delinquency rises. This means, the children are not taking their education seriously and often ending up making bad decisions on the streets as their parent is away at work. Sadly, the single parent has no options to intervene in many of these situations because they have no choice but to keep working in order to keep a roof over their head and food on the table.
Life with an Education
Although a lot more can be said about the conditions that exist among the poor, including the list of obstacles that are consistently in the way of seeing an end in sight, the next portion of the paper will examine what is possible for those who are able to pursue an education. The white people in America, and often across the world, tend to be the most privileged. However, there are other minority groups that tend to live a higher quality of life despite their race and ethnicity. What is different about this group versus Blacks and Hispanics?
The answer to that question is education. In many Asian households, the focus of education is the number one priority for families. Generally both parents are college graduates who are working in jobs that provide ample income for the family to live in good neighborhoods with good schools. This sets their children up for access to quality education, in addition to their own awareness in valuing the pursuit of higher education to be a natural progression for their kids immediately following high school.
Even the public schools in middle and higher middle class neighborhoods are better funded to incorporate numerous opportunity and exposure to the children attending these schools. Field trips, art classes, music lesson, science fairs, and other additional benefits make school more interesting and motivating for the students. All of these additional activities help keep the children busy, but are also known to help with intellectual development.
Those living in these communities have better jobs through educational pursuit that allows them to afford the homes they live in and afford the lifestyle they live. Parents with stable jobs are also likely to have access to health care, and savings that help encourage the child to go to college without an insurmountable debt. The difference in the individual and families that are educated compared to the uneducated portion of the population is tantamount.
Rebuttal
There are those who would argue that education is not the only way out of poverty. There are many who are motivated to work hard and make a life for themselves by being entrepreneurs, inventors, or other means of producing income to live well. There have been many successful individuals who are self-made millionaires who have never attended college. Consider for example sports athletes who play professionally. Those individuals did not find success only through pursuing a higher education. What about people in the entertainment industry, many of those people also skipped college and often were high school drop outs.
Skeptics would claim that using education as the only means out of poverty is a limited way to think. There are those who are internally motivated to create opportunity without a degree. Many people have talents that they can fall back on to create success for themselves. It is really just a matter of motivation and drive that differentiates those who can create opportunity out of nothing.
Conclusion
After looking at the facts about the importance of education as the solution to poverty, one would hope that the urgency in prioritizing education as a human right is more evident than ever. Education should not be a privilege; it is the obligation of the government to ensure that they are providing all the tools necessary to give people an equal opportunity as every other person. One’s socio-economic class should not be a determinant in whether or not a higher education is possible. If anything, if the issue of poverty is to be addressed and a permanent solution provided, then it is critical to provide quality education to all.
The argument that talent and motivation are enough to pull an individual out of poverty is something that is not guaranteed. The likelihood of establishing a good life by striking it rich through fame or the occasional genius idea in business is not a secure guaranteed option. Therefore, the higher likelihood to ensure that the individual is not constrained to poverty is only possible through education. In conclusion, education is the only realistic and feasible method of abolishing a life of poverty.
Reference
Dhillon, P. (2011). The Role of Education in Freedom from Poverty as a Human Right.
Educational Philosophy & Theory, 43(3), 249-259. doi:10.1111/j.1469-
5812.2009.00595.x
Gradín, C. (2012). Poverty among minorities in the United States: explaining the racial
poverty gap for Blacks and Latinos. Applied Economics, 44(29), 3793-3804.
doi:10.1080/00036846.2011.581219
Picchi, A. (2015, September 11). The shocking reach of U.S. child poverty. CBS News.
Retrieved from http://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-shocking-reach-of-us-child-
poverty/
Shah, A. (2014). Global Issues: Causes of Poverty. Retrieved from http://www.globalissues.org/issue/2/causes-of-poverty
UN Millennium Project. (n.d.). Fast Facts: The Faces of Poverty. Retrieved from
http://www.unmillenniumproject.org/documents/3-MP-PovertyFacts-E.pdf
