What is the poverty? Some people consider themselves to be poor not being able to buy a bigger house or a fashionable car, and some people cannot even afford to buy a bottle of milk for their children. They are afraid of getting sick because they do not have money for treatment. They lose their children because they are not able to raise money for the vital operation. According to The World Bank Organization, the poverty is a hunger, a lack of shelter, being sick and not being able to see a doctor, not having the access to school and not knowing how to read. Poverty is not having a job, is fear for future, living one day at a time (“What is poverty?, 2009”).
In general, poverty is when a person cannot buy the most needed things: food, shelter, medication, clothes and always lives in uncertainty. There are a lot of causes of poverty. It is strange, but even in the best economically developed countries, there are very poor people.
The most common reasons for the poverty in countries can be:
- Poor education, when there is a lack of institutions that can provide students with a high-quality education so that they could find a well-paid job in the future.
- Unemployment. When the economy is so bad that the companies have to reduce the number of the workers, and leave the same part of the work to fewer employers, without any salary adjustments. Some people work so hard that become sick and some people are jobless at the same time.
- Low salaries that are the results of previous two problems because the lack of the knowledge and vacancies make people work for chicken feed.
- Single parenting. It is not a secret that the number of divorces has dramatically increased, and it is very difficult to provide for a family having one source of income.
- Environmental problems like floods, droughts, water contamination and fires in forests (Shah, 2014).
There are also some deeper causes like history, wars and political instability, national debt, discrimination and social inequality, corruption, social inequality, and this is not a complete list.
There are a lot of negative effects that poverty has. In the poor districts, the crime rate is much higher, and the accidents of poisoning by water or food are more frequent in poor countries as well. People, who do not feel safe, are always anxious, nervous and intense. Trying to relieve these negative feelings, they start alcohol or other substances abusing. All these factors make a vicious cycle that is difficult to unlock. The state has to take drastic measures to help the people, who are already suffering and improve the state of the people, who are on the verge of it.
The first step to eliminating or, at least, reducing the poverty is to realize the existing problem. Unfortunately, the authorities always try to avoid noticing this in order not to make any actions. They have to find exact causes of the problem and assess the complexity of a current situation. Only after that, they can decide on the strategy of alleviating the poverty. Of course, the result will not come in a day, and the problem will not be fully resolved. But, by trial and error, they can make a lot of people happier and even save some people’s lives. Some of the countries cannot escape from poverty by themselves. Developing countries need some help from developed countries, especially, in terms of education and industrialization.
The poorest continent, nowadays, is Africa. Despite being rich in natural resources, they cannot take advantage of it due to the lack of funds to build special infrastructure to extract and exploit them (“World’s Poorest Countries”, 2013)
For example, Nigeria has already managed to find the sources for developing this business, and now is the largest nation that produces oil for the whole world (“History of the Nigerian Petroleum Industry”, 2015)
Of course, as it was stated above, this problem existed, exists and probably will exist forever. But the task of the governments and us is to make all the possible efforts to change the situation and help at least the nations that are most in need.
Works cited
Shah, Anup. “Causes of Poverty.” Global Issues. 28 Sep. 2014. Web. Accessed 17 Feb. 2016. <http://www.globalissues.org/issue/2/causes-of-poverty>.
“World’s Poorest Countries”.2013.infoplease. Web. Accessed 17 Feb. 2016.
< http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0908763.html >
“What is poverty?”.2009. Economic and Social Inclusion Corporation. New Brunswick. Web. Accessed 17 Feb. 2016.
<http://www2.gnb.ca/content/gnb/en/departments/esic/overview/content/what_is_poverty.html>
“History of the Nigerian Petroleum Industry”.2015. Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation. Web. Accessed 17 Feb. 2016.
<http://www.nnpcgroup.com/NNPCBusiness/Businessinformation/OilGasinNigeria/IndustryHistory.aspx>