An Explanation Of An Inadequate Food Intake And Repeated Infectious Diseases

As mentioned by Ruane and Cerulo in Second Thoughts, harsh realities of poverty affect children’s lives in profound ways. Children lack any power in improving their circumstances and depend on adults to gain access to basic necessities. Access to proper healthcare, education, and basic nutrition continues to be an obstacle for children. Poverty impedes children’s aptitude to learn and contributes to poor overall health and mental health. Perhaps most important, poverty becomes a cyclical nature that is difficult to overcome. Children who experience poverty when they are young tend to experience persistent poverty over the course of their entire lives. According to the Child Welfare League of America, the national poverty rate for children

According to an article written by Jason M. Breslow, as of 2011, children had the highest poverty level with over 16 million children living in poverty. That is just in the United States. Imagine the number of children living in poverty in the entire world.

|poverty in 2007. (www.bbc.com). There were also 250,000 children living in relative poverty, and 150,000 children living in absolute|

Malnutrition is a common health problem and is caused by either an inadequate diet or a problem absorbing nutrients from food. There are many reasons why this might happen, including having reduced mobility, a long-term health condition or a low income. The most common symptom of under-nutrition is unplanned weight loss and other signs could be weak muscles, feeling tired all the time, low mood and an increase in illnesses or infections. The main sign of over-nutrition is being overweight or obese. However, people with under-nutrition can also be overweight if they eat a diet high in energy (calories), but low in other nutrients. Signs of malnutrition in children can include failure to grow at the expected rate and changes in behaviour such as appearing unusually irritable, sluggish or anxious

If a child is living in poverty statistically they are more likely to to suffer ill health in later life and also be unemployed and turn to crime and substance abuse this will then cause their children to then suffer and the cycle continues.

According to cliffnotes, there are different types of poverty; absolute poverty: the lack of access to the minimum food and shelter that is necessary for maintaining life; relative poverty: the poor who earns less than half of the nation median income, so they tend lack what is necessary to live decently; feminization of poverty: a number of single women who live in poverty alone, mainly as single mothers; and cultural poverty: where nothing can be done to change their economic outcomes. There are so many serious effects from poverty, but children are known to be affected the most. It is shown that children who grow up in poverty are more likely to suffer from more persistent, frequent, and severe health problems, than those children who grow up in a better financial circumstances and environment

Children in need of these nutrients can suffer from stunted growth never reaching potential height. Statistics have shown stunted growth children score significantly lower on intelligence tests than do normal children. Hunger interferes with physical, emotional and academic development. According to Freedom from Hunger, “more than 4 million children will die due to hunger related causes.” NASW(2016) shows an important connection food security and nutrition play in physical and mental health.

People with under nutrition means they have an imbalanced consumption of nutrients, when there is a lack of nutrients going into the body problems will start to arise, the body will star to use its glycogen/sugar reserves, stored water and body protein. Then the body will start to use fatty acids and lean muscle which will then have a dramatic effect on your weight loss. Individuals that this will affect are children in poor countries with no food and dirty water to live on children in poverty that are abused or abandoned and they then have to take care of themselves.

In 1998, more than 13 million children (19 percent of all children) under age eighteen lived in families with incomes below the official poverty threshold. Although children age eighteen and under represent 26 percent of the United States population, they comprise nearly 40 percent of the poverty population. Despite a steady decrease from 1993 (23%) to 1999 (17%) in the rate of children in poverty, the United States still ranks highest in childhood poverty among all industrialized nations.

            According to the State of the World's Children 2001, a child born today in the developing world has a 4 out of 10 chance of living in extreme poverty.   Absolute poverty is "poverty by any standard...[it] is life at the very margin of existence" (218-219).  Confronted with "malnutrition, illiteracy, disease, squalid surroundings, high infant mortality, and low life expectancy...beneath any reasonable definition of human decency" (219), those in absolute poverty struggle merely to

“High rates of child poverty are a cause for concern, as low family income has been associated with a range of negative health, education, justice, labour market and social outcomes. Negative health outcomes include low birth weight, infant mortality, poorer mental health and cognitive development, and hospital admissions from a variety of causes” (Craig, Reddington, Wicken, Oben & Simpson, 2013, pg. 24).

An increase in poverty contributes to the lack of nutritional care within low birth weight children.

Among developing countries in Africa, Tanzania has the third largest number of undernourished children. An estimated 42% of children under the age of 5 are malnourished. Although malnutrition can impact people of any age, the effects on infants

Socioeconomic status of the family was found most important predictor of underweight and stunting. Availability of cultivable land and food sufficiency represents how much family is boosted up to provide sufficient food to their children which shows its effect in long run as children brought up in poor socioeconomic family were found prone to be stunted and underweight. Furthermore, children reared in the family with medium socioeconomic status were also found vulnerable to chronic under

Although, the multiple causes of malnutrition, when modelling the determinants of malnutrition, we can distinguish between immediate, intermediate, and underlying determinants (UNICEF 1993). While malnutrition is always immediately related to either insufficient nutrient intake or the inability of the body to absorb nutrients (primarily due to illness), these are themselves caused by food security, care practises, and the health environment at the household level, which themselves are influenced by the socioeconomic and demographic situation of households, communities and public health policies (Kandala NB, Fahrmeir L, Klasen S, Priebe J. 2009). Factors such as food security, care practises and health environment are a matter of public health policies which are distal determinants of malnutrition.