Poverty: causes, impacts, and mitigation strategies

Sociology -- Social Work

Poverty

Poverty is the condition of one who lacks a definite amount of material possessions or money. Absolute poverty or destitution refers to the one who lacks basic human needs, which normally includes clean and fresh water, nutrition, health care, education, clothing and shelter. Nearly two billion people are anticipated to live in absolute poverty today. Relative poverty refers to lacking a normal or communally acceptable level of resources or income as compared with others within a society or nation. For most of history poverty had been typically accepted as foreseeable as conventional modes of production were inadequate to give an entire population a comfortable standard of living. After the industrial revolution, mass production in factories made wealth increasingly more economical and accessible. Of more importance is the transformation of agriculture, such as fertilizers, in order to provide sufficient yields to feed the population (Poverty, 2012).

People living in poverty tend to be gathered in certain neighborhoods rather than being evenly dispersed across geographic areas. Measuring this concentration of poverty is significant because researchers have found that living in areas with many other poor people places burdens on low-income families beyond what the families' own individual conditions would dictate. Many argue that this concentration of poverty consequences in higher crime rates, underperforming public schools, poor housing and health conditions, as well as limited access to private services and job opportunities. In acknowledgment of these burdens, some government programs target resources to areas with concentrated poverty (Areas with Concentrated Poverty: 2006 -- 2010., 2011).

"Following the Office of Management and Budget's (OMB) Statistical Policy Directive 14, the Census Bureau uses a set of money income thresholds that vary by family size and composition in order to determine who is in poverty. If a family's total income is less than the family's threshold, then that family and every individual in it is considered in poverty. The official poverty thresholds do not vary geographically, but they are updated for inflation using Consumer Price Index (CPI-U). The official poverty definition uses money income before taxes and does not include capital gains or noncash benefits such as public housing, Medicaid, and food stamps"(Bartle, 2011).

Poverty will never end unless there are real solutions to end it. These solutions have to be based on economic justice and political changes. The reasons for poverty as a social dilemma include ignorance, disease, apathy, dishonesty and dependency. If it is the choice of a group of people, as in a society or in a community, to decrease and get rid of poverty, they will have to, without value judgment, watch and recognize these factors, and take action to abolish them as the way to eliminate poverty. "These main factors contribute to secondary factors such as lack of markets, poor infrastructure, poor leadership, bad governance, under-employment, lack of skills, absenteeism, lack of capital, and others" (Bartle, 2011).

Ignorance means having a lack of knowledge. It is dissimilar from stupidity which is lack of intelligence, and dissimilar from foolishness which is lack of wisdom. The three are frequently mixed up and understood to be the same by some people. It is significant to figure out what the information is that is lacking. A lot of planners and good minded people, who want to help a group of people become stronger, think that the solution is education (Bartle, 2011).

When a group of people has a high disease rate, absenteeism is high, productivity is low, and less wealth is produced. Separately from the misery, discomfort and death that results from disease, it is also a major factor in poverty in a society. Being well not only helps the persons who are healthy, it adds to the abolition of poverty in the community. The financial system is much healthier if the population is always fit; more so than if people get sick and have to be taken care of. "Health contribute to the eradication of poverty more in terms of access to safe and clean drinking water, separation of sanitation from the water supply, knowledge of hygiene and disease prevention" (Bartle, 2011).

Apathy happens when people do not care, or when they feel so helpless that they do not attempt to change things, to right a wrong, to fix a mistake, or to improve conditions. Sometimes, some people feel so not capable to achieve something; they are envious of their family links or associate members of their society who attempt to do so. Then they seek to bring the attempting hard worker down to their own stage of poverty. In the end apathy just breeds more apathy and nothing is ever resolved (Bartle, 2011).

When resources that are planned to be utilized for society services or facilities, are diverted into the personal pockets of someone in a situation of power, there is more than ethics at stake. When investment money is taken out of transmission, the quantity of wealth by which the society is deprived is greater than the amount gained by the embezzler. Resources are scarce and need to be protected at all costs (Bartle, 2011).