For years now, poverty has been one of the world’s biggest problems for its tragic results. Poverty exists across the world. Poverty has a big impact on the children. Also, poverty cause people to die in hunger and of homelessness. Lastly, poverty leads to economical degradation and government dysfunction. For these reasons, people should be more aware of poverty and help stop it from getting worse. Before it becomes any more bigger poverty is worth fighting against.
The first tragic result of poverty is the effect it has on the children. According to UNICEF, One billion children around the world are born into poverty. When infants are born into poverty, they tend to have low birth weight, which increases the chance of having mental and physical disabilities. These children with disabilities are assumed to die before turning two years old. Despite the low chance, there are still some children who avoid being born with these disabilities. However, they are more likely to have disabled vision, hearing and brain dysfunction. Poverty can be very dangerous because when children are born into poverty, they become trapped in a cycle of poverty. Also, poverty can affect children academically. Many children in poverty suffer academically, mostly because of the lack of education. Lack of education will be led to lack of brain development, which overall affects the children academically. After childhood, the lack of development begins to show impatience, impulsivity, inappropriate emotional responses and many more. For these reasons, the majority of children living in poverty cannot reach the academic level of the children not living in poverty. Education is important when it comes to future careers. However, the kids in hunger don’t have opportunities to think about their future career because of poverty. Without a career, there is no source of income, which means that when uneducated kids have a family, they wouldn’t be able to support and feed their families. If this keeps happening, there will be more and more cycle of poverty around the world.
Another reason why poverty is worth fighting against is because poverty causes people to die of starvation. Recently, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations noted that almost 1.2 billion people around the world go to bed hungry everyday. This type of living has been continuing for years now. Skipping meals will bring malnutrition, which can cause weight loss, poor growth and even internal organ dysfunction. This is a big problem as people in poverty don’t have enough nutritious food to feed their body. As a result, NCCP (National Center for Children in Poverty) stated that 15 million children across the world are found dead every year because of malnutrition. That is about 200,000 children dying each day from poverty. Also, poverty relates to homelessness. People under absolute poverty (not being able to live a secure life) cannot afford a regular dwelling, which leaves them to ‘rough sleeping’, where they just find a place outside to sleep. 100 million and more people are homeless and becoming homeless. It is also a large problem around the world. In 2008, there were around 600,000 homeless families, including 1.35 million children. As of today, the size has decreased a lot. However, if poverty continues, homelessness continues as well. These statistics of death rates of people under poverty and the size of homelessness show how many people are in need of help.
Finally, poverty causes nations’ economies to be weakened and government dysfunction makes it hard for a nation to recover. As said above, many people living in poverty lack education. Thus,this percentage of the population is not helpful to the country and its economy. First of all, the government becomes weaker and weaker because of the lack of development. This type of regressive government function will worsen the economy, which leads to degradation to LEDC (Less Economically Developed Country) in no time. A decent example would be the bankruptcy that happened in Zimbabwe in 2008. CNN reported that Zimbabwe’s government suffered from a food shortage (poverty) and hyperinflation, which caused their economy to shrink in a blink of an eye. During that time, both unemployment and poverty rate was at about 80% and was still increasing. Poverty can bring many other side effects than the results it is famous for. Poverty can become dangerous to people and the nation in a flash. Also, poverty has to stop before it hurts the economy as the government suffering from poverty is unlikely to go back to its original economic state. This graph by Maxim Pinkovskiy, the professor of economics in Columbia University, focusing on $1/day poverty and growth in Sub-Saharan Africa, clearly shows how the poverty rate co-relates to the GDP (Gross Domestic Product) rate. As you can see, as the poverty rate increases, the economic growth was seen. On the other hand, as the poverty rate decreased, the GDP rate decreased too. This graph proves that if poverty exists, the economy of the nation can’t grow, which means if the economy is in a weak state, poverty will bring it down more. Poverty needs to be stopped before it begins to hurt a nation’s government and economy.
Although poverty seems to be unstoppable,s there is hope. The UN’s millennium development goals is one of the biggest projects that help end poverty. The UN promised that poverty should end by 2015 if everybody participates. Fortunately, poverty is actually falling in Africa. From 2000, almost all countries around Africa began to work towards ending poverty and now, the poverty rate has decreased hugely. Because every bit helps, all people across the world should help end poverty.
