Poverty

Isaiah Doxey

Federal Govt. 2301
Professor Ray
November 19, 2014

Poverty is one of the serious issues faced by the world today. Poverty is an economic condition which reflects that the available means are less than the needs. The standards for poverty vary for different societies and it is not established as universal. Poverty in a specific country directly relates to the economic and social conditions of that country. Poverty can be a major cause for crimes. One of the most common economic issues that attack humanity through decades is poverty. It affects in all places around the world and has no restriction on religion, skin color and age. There are several factors of which some nations seem to be affected by scarceness such as education, disasters, diseases, hunger and specially the lack of resources. Society should attempt focusing on this universal problem in order to maintain a secure life for our kids. Through periods of time, poverty exists among people. In all religious conviction, families suffer from this epidemic since they are born. . Poverty is an extreme social issue in most of the developing and under-developed countries especially in Asia and Africa.
As we talk about poor countries, we imagine that Africa and its color citizens are the poorest people on Earth; which may have some truth to it but not completely accurate, because this occurs in every nation. In most of the poor countries the crime ratio is much higher than that of the rich countries. The rich countries are also not left out from this general rule. The poor areas in a wealthy country witness more crimes than the high class areas of the same country. The modern world is well aware of poverty and the threats caused by this problem. Hundreds of international organizations are working on this issue in various countries. It is generally believed that the poverty could be controlled if not totally eliminated in poor and developing countries by improving their economic conditions. Micro-financing is considered as an acceptable remedy for this long standing problem. But its products rarely reach to needy people in poor countries due to social problems established in those countries like corruption and bad governance.
One basic cause of poverty is wrongful distribution of wealth. Governments are also to blame for this. Most of the governments went through welfare cuts all over the world after the fall of communist bloc. In absence of a just economic system it is very difficult to erase poverty once and for all. In the United States, poverty is clearly defined in dollar figures by the Social Security Administration. By “determining the amount of money needed to survive on food, and then multiplying that number by three, the Social Security Administration sets the poverty line”1. For example, if the SSA decided that the amount of money needed to continue a survivable diet during a year was $5,000, then it would set the poverty line at $15,000. Thus, citizens whose income was less than this amount for a year would be considered to be living in poverty.
In America, African Americans and Latinos have, by far, the largest poverty rate. The communities segregated by socioeconomic status are often the ones who share “characteristics of developing nations: low economic development, poor health conditions, and low levels of educational attainment.”2 Even more discriminatory is the status of women among those living in poverty. Many factors such as poor wages for women and the increase of single-woman parented families have caused an increase in the percentage of women among the poor. Also in a high percentage are children. The elderly, however fill a much smaller percentage as they receive benefits such as social security. Poverty in American families has been shown to lead to child abuse, sex crimes, drug addiction, child neglect, spouse abuse and other criminal behaviors. Although these effects are not always the result of poverty,