Poverty

The condition of having insufficient resources or income. In its most extreme form, poverty is the lack of basic human needs (nutritious food, clothing, housing, clean water, and health services). Poverty can cause terrible suffering and possibly even death. Depending somewhat on where you live, depends on how severe the poverty you face may be. In many developing areas such as Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Eastern Europe, they suffer from severe malnutrition, disease outbreaks, famine, and war. Poverty in these areas extremely differs from the poverty in somewhat wealthier countries such as the United States, Canada, Japan, and Western Europe where the effects of poverty include poor nutrition, mental illness, drug dependence, crime, and high rates of disease.

There are two types of poverty. There is extreme poverty, and there is relative poverty. Extreme poverty (also known as destitution or absolute poverty) is the poverty that threatens people's health or lives and is related more to developing countries. Relative poverty is the condition of having fewer resources or less income that others within a society or country, or compared to worldwide averages. Relative poverty is related more to wealthier countries.

Causes of Poverty

There are many different reasons for poverty, the basic reasons are over population, the unequal distribution of resources in the world economy, inability to meet high standards of living and costs of living, inadequate education and employment opportunities, environmental degradation certain economic and demographic trends, and welfare incentives. As basic as these causes may sound, more often than not, they interact and become more complex.

Overpopulation is the situation of having large numbers of people with too few resources and too little space. This is one of the causes that is very closely related to poverty. Excessively high population densities put stress on available resources. Certain areas of land can only support a certain number of people. When the number of people living on the land exceed the number of people the land can support, it causes malnutrition and hunger which in turn causes poverty.

Inadequate education and employment are another huge part of poverty, especially in developing countries where illiteracy and lack of education are very common. Without an education, most cannot find income-generating work. Many also pass up the opportunity for an education, especially if they are poor, so that they can work for a minimum living. Developing countries tend to have few employment opportunities, especially for women. As a result, people may have little reason to go to school. Even in developed countries, unemployment rates may be high. When people don't work, they don't make any money. This leads to poverty.

Environmental degradation leads to poverty because it leads to shortages of food, clean water, materials for shelter, and other essential resources such as forests, land, air, and water. When these resources are degraded, the people living directly off of them suffer. Most of these people live in developing countries. People living in developed countries don't suffer as much from this because they have ...