Causes of Poverty Nowadays - Essay Example

Module INTRODUCTION Its not surprising if we read that more people die of hunger than people die of cancer. And its even less surprising to hear that 640 million live without adequate shelter and have no source of clean water ,21 million don’t have health facilities. Around 21,000 people die day of hunger every day. Mostly, these are the innocent children, which are driven to death by poverty. Moreover, about 29,000 children die before they reach the age of 5.If the child did survive more than 5 years, lack of money, scarce facilities, thin resources, etc ends up weakening the child which ultimately results to sickness. In many countries rich dominated the poor. Several projects initiated to fight poverty are sometimes delayed due to the influenced projects driven to help mainly the rich. This makes the rich richer while the poor even more miserable. Influential leaders, prominent actors, multinational corporations, etc can too cause hindrance in these projects for their benefit. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization states that about 800 million people of the 7.3 billion people in the world were suffering from undernourishment in 2012-2014. Almost all the hungry people, 791 million live in developing countries. In several countries there stand a wide gap between rich and poor. The access to school, clean water, proper disposal system, sewage system, health care, electricity, adequate shelter, etc, remains limited to a few proportion of the population only. CAUSES OF POVERTY Many factors unite to produce hunger among people. Poverty, Poverty is one of the most significant causes of hunger. People are unable to fulfill their needs. Life’s other expenditures cripples them miserably. The poverty cycle continues and never stops. Illiterate farmers lack the resources to build up their farm. They cannot acquire high yield seeds and equipment. To cut down the cost of workers, famers prefer family labor. Young children of the family are bought into this field, instead of going to school. When these children grow into adults, they are deprived of the knowledge needed to produce a health and a more secure future.The meager income is not enough to fulfill every need of the family. As most of the money is spent on food less is left for health care. Health is however, disturbed which ultimately leads to lesser money being generated due to incapability of doing work. Farmers are unable to expand their business. They fail to buy seeds or other machinery which might help them to strike success. Growth of population is one more reason Increase in population gives rise to the demand of people for food. Population growth effects many other factors too which include unemployment and limitation of electricity and natural gas. Food prices rise which are bad news for poor people. It has become more difficult to cope up with food production with increasing population growth. Natural disasters have affected the people negatively. They leave dramatic impact on the once-fertile land. Between drought and tropical storms, weather can be extremely unpredictable. A natural disaster may strike quickly and leave but the damage it will leave will surely be for a long term. A huge amount of people’s money is spent on the repair of uncountable things. War and conflict is yet another reason. Areas hit by war are ravaged by hunger. Fleeing refugees have lack of resources. They have to settle in another area which might be hard to cope up with. A family, might experience drastic decrease in their family income. War and conflict also has a huge impact on food supply and security. The opponent can be easily fought if it less strong. Soldiers might starve the opponents. Their livestock and food stress are targeted. Farmers have to abandon their land to due arrival of army. Farmers find their land contaminated by gun powder. The land becomes infertile. This result into less production of food and people are not satisfied. Young men and children who are involved in some monetary activities are enforced to fight and the consequence is a major decline in food production .Often food aid is curtailed and sent to fighters, leaving the needy people to suffer. Too many developing countries lack key agricultural infrastructure, which include machinery, proper roads ,etc. The consequences are high transport expenses, storage facilities and variable water supplies. All result into limiting agricultural yields and access to food. A major cause of poverty and hunger is the common operation of the economic and political systems in the world. Effectively control over resources is dependent on military, political, and economic power that ends up in the hands of a minority while those at the bottom barely survive and turn more poor. EFFECTS OF POVERTY Poverty has many unfortunate results. It not only cripples our society but it leaves us weaker and miserable. War hampers development as the normal life is disturbed. Famers do not purchase fertilizer even when they are aware of the fact that using fertilizer will help increase their outcome. This is mainly due to unavailability of roads. Their bumper crop will fail to thrive. Roads should however be built and if the government fails to construct roads, rich should step in. Peaceful countries are managing to drive a solution of poverty. But this too is delayed due to civil war, ethnic conflict and organized crime. Violence and inadequate government cause hindrance from escaping war. Not many countries survive civil war. Several countries are left with lawlessness in the end. 1.5 billion people live in countries where the country is experience violence, low-intensity conflicts, murder, etc. All this falls short of civil war, but the consequences are awful. Economic inequality and war has several links. 18 billion of our fellow humans die every day from poverty. In 2006, 1.2 billion people lacked safe drinking water. Water bourne diseases killed an estimated 1.8 billion people. Other diseases such as malaria, HIV/AIDS, etc pulls many innocent people to death. This is due to lack of resources offered by the government. Mismanagement is another reason why the government fails to meet the demands of its nation. SOLUTION TO POVERTY If even half of the capital spent on military is consumed on projects run to reduce poverty, many fruitful outcome would be achieved. Money could be used to support the development of better sewage systems and clean water for people in need. All the nations should sit together to find solution of poverty and hunger. Table talks should be held to spend more of the country’s resources for the betterment of its people. And to escape poverty and hunger. People should be more patient too. They can fulfill their responsibility by remaining calm under war conflicts. If the food trucks fail to arrive on time the people can choose to be discipline than being violent. Moreover, dominance of the rich should be pondered upon by the government. The right of the lower class people should be respected by the rich. The rich should finance the projects being run by the government to treat poverty. The government need to start create more employment opportunities for both educated and uneducated people. This will lead to the generation of income in many needy families. Companies that pay low wages should increase the daily wages. Tax breaks can be provided to companies so that they give adequate pay to its servants. Paid leave can be provided and sick leaves need not to be pay-less. Unavailability of affordable, high quality child care is a major barrier to the middle class. A huge sum of money is spent on a child he is unfortunately trapped under a disease. So, health care facilities should be provided by the government. REFERENCES BillMoyers.com,. (2014). Three Steps We Can Take to Solve Poverty, From Someone Who Knows Firsthand | BillMoyers.com. Retrieved 4 April 2015, from http://billmoyers.com/2014/07/11/three-steps-we-can-take-to-solve-poverty-from-someone-who-knows-firsthand/ Countercurrents.org,. (2015). Links Between Poverty And War By John Scales Avery. Retrieved 4 April 2015, from http://www.countercurrents.org/avery040412.htm Read More