Poverty as a Social Issue - Essay Example

The United Nations also has the United Nations Development Project as one of its organs that is tasked with the mandate to come up with measures to tackle poverty. There are various sources of poverty that include; Corruption that leads to development of social classes hence projecting poverty further, dependence on aid is also a major factor especially in third world countries, lack of sustainable agriculture and food production are some of the economic causes of poverty in most countries of the world.

Sociologists have time and again tried to come up with theories and propositions as to the causes of poverty. The effects of poverty are a major concern to most people. Most social evils like robbery, prostitution are attributable to poverty. Among the theories that have come up is that poverty has been due to the flight of the middle class from cities into suburbs. This has led to few limited opportunities for the poor people living in cities. Other sociologists argue that the poor are choosy of employment opportunities and would rather be dependants of the government rather than work in low paying jobs like barmaids, sweepers or even in fast food restaurants.

However, the most critical theories in trying to explain the poverty situation from a psychological point of view are the conflict theory and the functionalist perspective theory. The conflict theory argues that most nations are able to run their systems well. They have adequate financial resources and food is also readily available, so why do people still live in abject poverty despite all these? The conflict theory brings about a social, political and economic perspective to this. Its major argument is based on the class systems that exist within a society.

It basis its argument from Karl Marx’s proposition that conflict theories are as a result of struggle for limited resources in the society. The conflict theory argues that based on Karl Marx’s proposition, that the society has the ruling elite who hold onto power and control the means of production. The group consists of a few members of the society who control huge significant resources in the society. These members of the society normally dictate and control the functions of the society and most of the members are usually on top of the society tier.

The other group consists of the working class. These are members of the society who are under the members of the elite society and mostly work for them or are their juniors. Members of this category normally work for wage. Members of this category are normally viewed as the struggling to have. This then leads to a struggle or a tussle between those members of the society who have possessions and those who don’t have. This class struggle is what is referred to as the conflict theory. The theory argues that those who have the possessions use them to exploit those who don’t have them.

They are said to exploit their labour, raw materials. Classic examples of Conflict theory in action are colonialism, capitalism and even feudalism. In some examples members of the society who didn’t have the possessions were classified as slavers and were at the lowest tier of the society. In modern day society they are also placed at the lowest point of the society. Another theory that can explain the pover