POVERTY

BY: JAMIR SUGGS

WHAT IS POVERTY

Poverty is one of the main causes of hunger in the United States. Many individuals and families have to make a trade-off between buying food and paying for other expenses such as health insurance, utilities bills, medical expenses and others. Poverty affects access to nutritious meals and restricts resources to finding these nutritious meals.

TYPES OF POVERTY

Absolute Poverty - It is the extreme kind of poverty involving the chronic lack of basic food, clean water, health and housing. People in absolute poverty tend to struggle to live and experience a lot of child deaths from preventable diseases like malaria, cholera and water-contamination related diseases.

Relative Poverty - This kind is usually in relation to other members and families in the society. For example, a family can be considered poor if it cannot afford vacations, or cannot buy presents for children at Christmas, or cannot send its young to the university.

Situational Poverty - People or families can be poor because of some adversities like earthquakes, floods or a serious illness. Sometimes, people can help themselves out of this situation quickly if they are given a bit of assistance, as the cause of their situations was just one unfortunate event.

WHERE ARE THE POOR ?

Sub Saharan Africa, South Asia and Latin America have been known to have large areas of chronic poverty. In the last decade, joint efforts by governments, authorized organizations and charity groups have improved the situation for many, but there is still a lot of poverty in these areas.

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THE EFFECTS OF POVERTY

Hunger, Health and Deaths.

Absolute poverty results in extreme hunger, starvation and malnutrition. People (and children) become vulnerable to preventable diseases such as cholera, dysentery and tuberculosis, with no access to health services and medications. Death rates rise. Relative poverty on the other hand, forces people to engage in behaviors that expose them to diseases such as HIV Aids. Whiles they may not starve to death, they may be living on unhealthy foods, which ultimately weaken their immunity and expose them to diseases.