Poverty And Poverty

Post the economic crisis in America and the recession during the years of 2008 and 2009, the country saw a great increase in poverty and worsening of living conditions of Americans. Currently, almost 50 million of fellow Americans are living in extremely bad conditions under the poverty line which means earning less than $11490 for a single person or $23550 for a family of four people. That’s about 1 in every 6 people in this country are living under poverty. A person living in this country on minimum wage which is $7.25 an hour also cannot pull himself out of poverty even after working 40 hours a week.

As a main theme in Hunger and Shame, child malnutrition is a serious problem that has affected many different societies. Child malnutrition is a complicated concept that often has many causes; each society is different and must be studied closely to fully understand the reason for such a horrific epidemic. Focusing on the Chagga population, many factors catalyzed the epidemic including environmental, cultural, and global.

One way to destroy the vicious cycle of high birth rates is to empower women through social change, specifically, education. There is a proven connection between the education level of a mother and how many children she will have, statistically. In the United States, birth rates of women with less than 12 years of total education are more than triple their college-educated counterparts. This can logically be applied to Guatemala’s situation to find that if more women are educated, not only in school, but in proper child care and contraception use, their Total Fertility Rate should rapidly decrease to a more sustainable level. This is a one-two punch: not only will women have less children, the ones they do have will likely be raised more effectively and are less likely to die of disease in infancy. Guatemala must engage in a campaign to enroll more girls in school. This will be difficult, due to the culture of the country. Women are expected to stay at home and work the fields. Culture must shift to make progress, as it so often does.

The motto of the Indonesian family planning program has a great impact on the struggling individuals in the Indonesian society. It states that with two children, "We are a happy and prosperous family" (Hartmann 60). For a poor landless and unemployed family, however, limiting fertility is a hardship and does not promote happiness and prosperity. Poor families thrive on large families because it creates more workers and therefore, more earned income for the family. Supporters of the Indonesian family program contend that governmental pressure is necessary in order to get individuals to use the right means of birth control. In the long-run, the Indonesian Government believes they are only creating benefits for the families' lives because eventually, individuals will develop their own personal motivation to use contraceptions.

The concepts of “worthy” and “unworthy” poor came about during the English Poor Laws that were introduced in the 1500’s. The English poor laws classified poor or dependent people into three major categories and established many requirement before aid was provided. Dependent persons were categorized as: vagrant (nomadic; with no permanent home or employment), the involuntary unemployed and the helpless. In effect, the poor laws separated the poor into two classes which were the worthy and the unworthy. The worthy were classified as orphans, widows, handicapped, or the frail elderly. The unworthy were the drunkards, suspicious, or lazy. (Hansan, J.E. (2011). Poor relief in early America)

Homelessness is an epidemic problem that faces many American’s and families across the United States, especially in Detroit. You may see homeless people sleeping in the underpasses of freeways or walking and sitting on street corners or holding up a sign asking for some support for their next meal. We all have seen homeless individuals and thought it was not our problem for their circumstances or maybe had a belief he/she was lying about their situation. Many of us make a choice to give money or buy food, but there are others who make a choice to ignore or overlook the homeless population. Society has placed a stigma and label the homeless population labeling them destitute by choice, but for many homelessness has become a way of life.

Birth control should be able to be accessed by all because a leading cause of poverty is unplanned pregnancy. My unwanted pregnancies can result in neglection of the children. In the article “The way to beat poverty” By Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl Wudunn It refers to a study done by Michael Meaney of Mcgill university, Michael Meaney studied the effects of mothers attention on rat pups. He noticed some rat mothers were more attentive of their young while others were not, “He found that rats that had been licked and cuddled as pups were far more self-confident, curious and intelligent. They were also better at mazes, healthier and longer-lived.” In order to eliminate error of biological intelligence Meaney switched the rat pups mother at birth and yet again the tests proved that pups who were attended to more as pups were more intelligent. This study can be attributed to the stress hormone called

Scientists and economists equally agree that the answer to our population problem is education; specifically the education and empowerment in women. “The relationship between population and development with education is undeniable.” Education among women affects fertility rates in many ways, it

The world population is only growing. The U.N. predicts that from today’s 7.5 billion we will reach 9.3 billion by the year 2050. (World Population Prospects n.p) In New York Times author Nicholas Kristof’s article, The Birth Control Solution, Kristof attempts to promote family planning as a solution to many of the world’s problems. He will do this by giving examples that an out of control global population causes poverty, conflict, and environmental damage; and that family planning would be a cost effective solution.

Birth control commonly referred to, as fertility control and contraception are devices that are used as a precautionary measure against pregnancy. Substantial evidence proves that there are varieties of birth control methods that have been in existence since the ancient times. In the 20th century, birth control methods have been improvised and advanced to facilitate safety and effectiveness. The purpose of this term paper is to provide three world arguments for birth control and two against the use of contraceptives.

Starting from the beginning of society, man and woman have been given specific roles to carry out. Men were the species that provided for the family financially, while women were the species that took care of household chores and looked after the children. This tradition has carried on for centuries until women were brave enough to fight the stigma of being a woman. Women began fighting for independency such as the right to vote or better working conditions. Despite these victorious events, one thing that prevented further life goals for women was having children. They had to put their life on pause if their husband wanted to have kids and start a family and women had to adhere to that because they were still less powerful than men. Due to this, women had to choose to put family first and give up their dreams of getting higher education or joining the work force. Until, in 1950, a woman named Margaret Sanger started the first birth control clinic in the United States just for women and this prompted a revolution. Women were finally given a chance in society to create their own future by using contraceptives and it has given them more power in America’s society. Now in the 21st century, women who use birth control gives them control over their fertility without a man’s input, improves standard of living, and allows them to focus on creating a stable life for themselves.

The main reason women want birth control is to prevent pregnancy. During the course of just nine years, the amount of women that wanted birth control to prevent pregnancy jumped from 716 million to over 850 million(“ThinkProgress”). Not only are women hesitant to have children because of poverty, but also because of fatal deliveries. For instance, some African countries, such as Nigeria, have very poor maternal conditions. Moreover, according to NPR, in a lot of third world countries where there is overpopulation, “studies show higher risks of premature birth, pregnancy complications and delivery problems, as well as higher death rates.”

Appropriately called by some one of the “Seven Modern Wonders of the World,” the birth control pill has absolutely revolutionized the lives of women around the globe. As an effective means to control if and when a woman has a child, the pill opened up doors to spaces where women weren’t allowed prior. A person controlling their own fertility is an essential component of creating economic security, limiting unwanted pregnancies, and creating healthier families. There are many new options for contraception for women today, but the pill was the original catalyst in the United States for women claiming control over their fertility, career, and overall health status.

Poverty for centuries has been a very severe issue that has troubled many nations while impeding economic developments and progress. Poverty stricken countries are majorly concentrated in the continents of Africa and Asia. Continents like the Americas and Europe have globally been recognized as been wealthier yet still many parts of these ostensible countries face massive cases of poverty. Most at times, countries with high populations owing to high birth rates face the most cases of poverty. The definition of poverty can be boundless in the sense that poverty entails so many subsections as it sometimes gets complicated to group everything under one umbrella. Society tends to focus more on the tangible aspects of poverty because many people associate poverty with lacking money and it makes sense because poverty in terms of lacking money is a major problem affecting almost every country in the world. Even though it is debatable that poverty can be physical, intellectual, spiritual and even emotional, it is best to talk about the lack of money and economic developments in this essay. With reference to the oxford English Dictionary, poverty is state of being extremely poor and the state of being inferior in quality or insufficient in amount. Reflecting on this definition given, I deduced that malnutrition and hunger can define poverty. In the light of this, I think poverty is lacking a comfortable place of shelter, being ill and not having access to a better

Poverty traps are economic anomalies that continually reinforce poverty within a country’s, or multiple countries’, economies. There are many different types of poverty traps such as savings traps, “big push” models, nutritional traps, behavioral traps, geographic traps, etc. that all affect an economy in different ways. Not only can poverty be enforced through these traps, but also through the way an economy is run or the moralities of the government. According to Mark Koyama (2015), poverty traps are important due to more than 3 billion people, nearly half the world’s population, living on less than $2.50 per day, and about 1.3 billion people living in extreme poverty on just $1.25 per day. Among these 3 billion some people living in poverty, one billion of them are children of which thousands are dying daily. It is necessary to study these different poverty traps in order to begin to decrease the distressingly high percentages of people living in poverty.