The cries of children are heard in the thick of the night as mothers try their best to breast feed the infants. Young brothers and sisters push each other and struggle for the last bit of food left in the plate. The elderly sit down in total weakness as they watch their strength drain away one day after another. People that are known to be strong and well ambled sit down in despair as they watch their loved ones perish in hunger and diseases. This is not just a thrilling story for entertainment, but is a reality in a number of the developing countries across the globe that languishes in absolute poverty.
The lack of basic needs is one of the major causes that devastate the lives of many people. Both the young and old are continually becoming vulnerable as the situation gets more complicated with the advent of contaminated diseases that make the situation harder to handle. Hence, finding a solution to this menace is not only a matter to be solved by the various governments serving these people, but has become social responsibility for responsibility for every person.
Introduction
Poverty is best known as a condition brought by the insufficiency of basic resources such as food, shelter, and clothing. It is often a troubling state that devours many families of their joy to live satisfactorily and happy. There are instances that can best be referred to extreme poverty. These are areas where the people do not have access to amenities such as health services, clean water, and other fundamental needs (Chen and Ravallion 2). Being deprived of such things in life is equal to submitting to suffering as end up in death.
As a state that contributes to low quality of life, poverty highlights that importance of improving life in these countries. In many cases, people have failed to raise the living standards and succumbed to the sufferings due to poverty. While some nations would take poverty as a root-cause of many problems that lower the quality of life, other developing nations fail to recognize the depth of this matter. Nonetheless, the effects of poverty continue to affect the lives of many people as this menace devours more people of their right to enjoy life. In developing countries in Africa, Europe, Latin America, and Asia citizens with no number are continually losing their loved ones as more are left begging for better living standards. In the 1950s, many people suffered under the oppression of colonialist who took away the freedom of the people leaving nation leaders defending their countries (Friedmann 148). Today, poverty has been marked as a remarkable ‘colonialist’ that must be watched out for devastating outcomes, which deter rights to living happily.
Why Poverty is a global problem
As an issue that has affected almost half of the world population, poverty continues to interfere with the lives of many people. More people strive to grow, and pullout of this hart aching lifestyle, more of these people end up in worse situations. For instance, young people move to nearby towns to seek for employment. However, they end up living in crowded areas the lead to worse situation with diseases and poor hygiene thus embrace more problems that the latter. This situation has spread from one country to another because young people keep migrating to neighboring countries to seek better opportunity, but land in deeper trouble in foreign countries (worsening the situation in the other country). As a global problem, more nations have been affected as the mobility rate grows day by day. Such aspects have heightened inequality and powerlessness as people fight on the limited resources.
Common understanding of poverty highlights that it may be an issue, which affects residents in the developing countries. It is true that a majority of people living in extreme conditions of poverty are in developing counties. However, more sad news is that some people in the developed countries experience similar challenges of extreme poverty even as they are expected to share resources with the rich. This is to say that, the causes of poverty in developing countries such as lack of enough resource for every person are the same affecting those in the high able societies. The difference is that in developed countries the poor remain poor while the rich continue to obtain more wealth. Hence, by the end of the day, this trouble looms around at the doors of the unfortunate inhabitants (Chen and Ravallion 14). Therefore, as a global problem, poverty is not respecter of riches.
With the advent of more sad news concerning the death of many people every day due to hunger and poverty, neighboring nations and those abroad have been forced to stretch forth their hand to rescue such people. Consequently, the international community has been forced to reckon and more so to respond to this issue as a matter of urgency. To illustrate the extent of the matter, Non-Governmental Organizations have merged effort together with different Governments to save people within their borders and beyond. This is the heart of world poverty.
Explanations given by the United Nations program note that poverty begun increasing way back in the 1950s. In those days, people migrated to seek for employment and better livelihood and ended up in worse situations. As a result, their living conditions became poorer are they had to abide to the new settings they found in the places they migrated to as a family. In such trends, job insecurities and ethnic differences begun affecting the lives of the people are they contributed to inequality. The poor were thus segregated from the affluent societies.
Various terms essential in understanding global poverty are
- Poverty: this refers to a situation of lack of basic needs, facilities that support the stability of day-to-day life.
- Destitute: this refers to a state of missing on basic facets
- Developed countries: these are the states that are still coming up with low economic agendas.
- Developing countries: these are the upcoming countries that has people and families, which are still developing themselves through various small businesses. Despite being in a position of dependence, developing countries have a majority of the people living below the poverty line and lack access to quality aspects of life.
- Relative poverty: affected people called relatively poor lack accessibility to important aspects of life such as social life, health, education, and poor environments.
- Absolute poverty: this refers to the state of being very poor with complete lack of accessibility to basic needs. This is situation found in developing countries.
Statistics of poverty across the globe
There are striking statistics that illustrate the high levels of poverty across the globe. Many people from different nations are continually being affected by the high spread of poverty as it changes from relative to extreme poverty. For instance, there are about 80% people across the world who are struggling to balance every day expenses with an earning of less than $1 per day at least “1.2 billion people are below the poverty line” (Besley and Burgess 5-6). These account for at least 40% of the world population. This figure refers to people living in developing countries. Focusing on the high demand for food with the increase in population per day, many families are bound to share this income amongst them. On the other hand, the growing population does not grow together with the daily income. Hence, families of 5 sharing the $10 per day last year are likely to be sharing the same amount by next year despite the family adding one person to a family of 6. With this picture, it is only clear that poverty is yet to heighten and affect adjacent communities thus becoming global poverty. In countries such as China where the population growth is significantly high, poverty rates have been known to be remarkably disturbing as plans to control population growth were reinforced.
Children is part of the population that has been most affected with the alarming statistics of poverty. As noted by Pogge (59), about 250 million children are exposed to extreme condition of poverty. They have to engage in low wage job at the age of 5-14. Every day these children do not make it to see another day as they lose the battle in either causes related to poverty e.g. hunger, disease, lack of water etc. Lacking essential contents of diet especially for people living in worse poverty stricken areas succumb to death every hour. In other statistics, further evidence points to a notable number of children living in poor health status. About 27-28% of the children living in the developing countries are thought to the underweight, emaciated, or having stunted growth.
The high rate of the spread of communicable and infectious diseases has contributed extremely to this danger of global poverty. Many lives have been swept away especially through communicable and transmitted diseases. For instance, in developing countries about 350-400 million people are prone to Malaria attacks with Africa leading in Malaria death especially for the vulnerable population, children. For analysis point out to diseases such as HIV/AIDS that cause about 3 million death annually. All these are deaths closely related to and directly linked to the elevated standards of poverty in the pitiable societies. In addition, about half of the world population lack adequate supply and access to clean water.
Causes of poverty world wide
With at least 50, 000 people dying due to poverty around the globe, it is important to understand the facts and determine factors that lead to extreme poverty especially in the developing countries (Besley and Burgess .
- Poor health:
This is an aspect that many people living in relative and extreme poverty have failed to evade. It can be said that poverty goes hand in hand with poor health due to poor nutrition and lack of proper medication. In developing countries for instance in the sub-Saharan Africa, many people have succumb to death due to poor health. It is unfortunate that on top of lack food (1.02 billion people) and water, such people have to walk long distances to access public health services. In the end, a person emaciated due to lack of sufficient food die prematurely.
Apart from children who are immediately affected because of lack of food, women come second amongst the vulnerable population. Women that bear children in these poverty stricken places can hardly manage to feed the children (Pogge 63). Additionally, they are also forced to catch up immediately after giving birth to find foods and water, which contributes to deteriorating their health and later die in the same desperation.
- Violence
This is a resulting factor of poverty. Often people that undergo extreme poverty are prone to violent behaviors. Often they are closely associated with violent practice of obtaining livelihood, food, shelter, and clothing. The consequences of such behavior are always devastating, as many have lost their lives in such endeavors. In other desperate cases, women have engaged in prostitution and drug trafficking (Notten and De Neubourg 250). These two aspects lead to contracting of deadly diseases thus increasing the risks of death. There are other illegal activities that relate closely with poverty such as human trafficking and child abuse.
All these are activities that people engage in with the hope of finding a solution to eradicate poverty and live an average life. However, in the effort to solve a problem, other worse situations arise and the whole society is affected.
- Lack of shelter and housing facilities
Many images of slums reveal the shocking lifestyle of people living in poverty. These are areas where congested people live in temporary structures. Statistics demonstrate that about 1 million people across the globe live in slum areas. Unfortunately, this figure is likely to rise higher in due time due to the rising population. On the other hand, poverty is yet to go higher because given the reasons stated above, young children may lose their parents and be left orphans.
High numbers of children without parents and guardians influence each other to adapting any means to survive. In so doing, these adapt to risky ways that render them more vulnerable to death.
- Under development
As a contributing factor, developing countries are all subject to areas with serious under development. This is an issue influenced by
- Scarcity of basic needs, which is subject to factors such as the high population density especially in slum areas. In this places, there are many people crowded together and share few natural resources. Therefore, every person scrambles for water, shelter, foods, cleanliness, etc. consequently, such a picture has been marked as a clear indication of severe poverty.
- World debt is an issue that many developing countries have failed to escape. Due to the rise in population in these countries, people can hardly share the resources available. The government is forced to find means of taking care of its people. As a result, these nations get to more debt every year. For instance, Zambia one of the poorest counties (Gentilinil and Sumner 17). Such aspects leave the country ever borrowing funds and extend the poverty to higher heights.
- Corruption is an unfortunate and sad fact that strikes developing countries. Amongst the contributing factors to under development, corruption is a leading cause. Corrupt leaders have grabbed the best for themselves leaving the poor to languish in their extreme poverty. Although some countries have expensive minerals and other natural resources the same do not benefit the common people because powerful and influential figures determine who leaders the line of investment. Likewise, they determine the market prices to their benefit. For instance, in Nigeria (oil rich country) about $400 billion goes into corruption.
- Poor health, education, and low industrialization have resulted to poverty. While people seek for opportunities, either of these reasons presents an obstacle. The majority are pulled back while only a few manage to make a few steps ahead thus maintaining the poverty status quo.
It is sad to think that the poor people are not ready to accept their predicament and figure a way out. While the issue affects the less fortunate, it is surprising that in their desperation the affected population blame the affluent societies in these nations. This is one of the reasons as to why poverty remains a major issue in these countries. The rich push the blame to the poor and vice versa contrary to figuring out a means to counter this problem. As a result, every one pulls the strings to his or her end at the cost of the other as in the picture of violence and corruption.
Effects of global poverty
Poverty results in poor health and malnutrition. Lack of enough resources leads to lack of food and water that result to defective health status. For instance, a person with many challenges in poverty may suffer depression, high blood pressure, or heart attacks. In young children, health conditions such as Marasmus and kwashiorkor are likely. In addition, malnutrition is a significant cause of starvation, which can lead to death (Pogge 73).
High death rate in the developing countries, in most cases, poverty has resulted in many unwanted situations that have triggered premature deaths. In the endeavors of solving this mystery of poverty at a global scale, a lot of live have been lost with children being the most affected. Subsequently, there are more orphans and widows across the globe thus increasing poverty and vulnerability (Friedmann 160).
Recommendations
Global poverty has raised an alarm across the world as one of the worst global issues ever recorded. As a cause to thousands of premature deaths every day it is imperative for nation leaders and world influential people to device a means of eliminating poverty across the globe. Various nongovernmental organizations have come up to rescue the situation repeatedly. However, it is clear beyond doubt that this is only a drop of water in the ocean because the number of people languishing in poverty is too many. As a result, it is a major corporate responsibility to every individual to contribute in one way or the other to ensure that the pain of poverty is not more all over the world.
It is paramount for the people living in poverty to understand their predicament too. Although the situation they are in is challenging than they can bear, being proactive can contribute a lot in redeeming oneself from this death wanting situation. Consequently, every person must embrace a strong spirit to figure out the best means out of it rather than taking on short routes that are more disastrous than poverty itself.
Works Cited
Besley, Timothy. and Burgess, Robin. Halving Global Poverty. The Journal of Economic Perspectives, 17(3): 1-22. 2003.
Chen, Shaohua, and Ravallion, Martin. More Relatively-Poor People in a Less Absolutely-Poor World. Review of Income and Wealth. Volume 59, Issue 1, pages 1–28, March 2013.
Friedmann, John. Rethinking poverty: empowerment and citizen rights. International Social Science Journal, 48: 161–172.1996.
Gentilinil, Ugo, and Sumner, Andy. What Do National Poverty Lines Tell Us About Global Poverty? Volume 2012, Issue 392, pages 1–48, June 2012.
Notten, Geranda, and De Neubourg, Chris. Monitoring Absolute and Relative Poverty: “Not Enough” Is Not the Same as “Much Less”. Review of Income and Wealth, 57: 247–269. 2011.
Pogge, W. Thomas. Eradicating Systemic Poverty: brief for a global resources dividend. Journal of Human Development. Journal of Human Development, Vol. 2, No. 1, 2001
