To the Editor: Poverty is the inability to obtain the necessities of life. In Canada, we measure poverty by the Low Income Cut-Off line (LICO). According to Stats Canada, LICO represents an income threshold where a family is likely to spend 20% more of its income on food, shelter and clothing than the average family, leaving less income available for other expenses. Canada is a wealthy country… yet 3.5 million Canadians live in Poverty. According to the LICO rates in 2011, poverty troubles mainly seniors, aboriginals, and single parents.
The lack of motivation caused by years of not having a job and watching your family suffer in poverty is a condition that not too many of us are familiar with. “Native American Poverty,” by Tom Rodgers justifies the allegations that a large percentage, about 25%, of the Native Americans live in poverty. “According to the US Census Bureau, these Americans earn a median annual income of $33,627. One in every four (25.3 percent) lives in poverty and nearly a third (29.9 percent) are without health insurance coverage.” The lack of money has become a huge component in the dismemberment of the culture that the Natives so lavishly submerged themselves into, and the picking up other undesirable traits such as drinking. The
The Economics of the Poverty What is Poverty? Poverty in America is the state of being poor, and one lacks the means of providing material needs or comforts. Unfortunately, I have to say that this is still happening in many parts of the world. Poverty is said to exist when people lack the means to satisfy their basic needs. Poverty has been associated, for example, with poor health, low levels of education or skills, an inability or an unwillingness to work.
The American educational system has been at large for the past 40 years. Sadly the only growing correlation I can see with supportive information to back-up my theory is the growing number of poverty in America. The link between poverty and the decline in educational achievement in America is very rarely looked at in the educational system. Many years of numerous academic research show that poor children, or those born to parents who are rather poorly educated also, don’t do as well in school as those students who are raised in a middle-class house. Americas problem of poverty is too big to be ignored in the world, as it has the highest poverty rate in the entire western region of the globe with 22%.
In 2011 Mississippi was ranked the poorest state in America with an average household income of $36,919. They were also ranked the lowest in the United States for per capita income. Ronald Reagan once said, “We fought a war on poverty and poverty won.” With forty-six million Americans now counting was counted as poor, it’s tempting to think we may have been right. This problem has left many families stranded to die of starvation, freezing to death, etc. The purpose of middle class and rich Americans is the responsibility to minimize he poverty level in our country.
Favelas, known as slums in other parts of the world, are generally in very poor condition, with no water supply, plumbing or electricity. Spread of disease is common and often unavoidable, with poor sanitation putting the areas at risk to infestations from rats, for example. Overpopulation affects developed countries, as well as those which are developing. Portsmouth, a city in the Uk, is a prime example of this. Portsmouth has the highest population density of any city in Europe, estimated at 5100 people per square mile.
Dwellings that housed workers were subdivided to accommodate many people which meant families were forced to share one room, poorly built tenements housed the poorest, these had no sewers, running water or sanitation and were damp and dirty. Due to the cramped living conditions diseases were easily spread, typhoid fever, tuberculosis, smallpox and cholera were the most dangerous. In 1832 an outbreak of Cholera reportedly killed 6536 people in London alone (Halliday (1999) pg 124). The government at
The Central African Republic has the second lowest level of human development in the world. Out of the 4.9 million people that live in CAR, 2.5 million are food insecure. No human on earth can survive without food and residents of CAR are struggling to feed their families a healthy meal. When food is available, the prices skyrocket so much that almost nobody can afford to feed their families. Subsistence farming is used in the Central African Republic to make ends meet.
Difficult choices must be made when limited resources cover only some of these necessities. Often it is housing, which absorbs a high proportion of income that must be dropped. If you are poor, you are essentially an illness, an accident, or a paycheck away from living on the streets. First, A lack of affordable housing and the limited scale of housing assistance programs have contributed to the current housing crisis and to the homelessness. Housing assistance can make the difference between stable housing, precarious housing, or no housing at all.
At the start of the 20th century the average life expectancy was low as 50 years in the Caribbean. The single most important cause of death in adults was tuberculosis which is caused by and overcrowding housing. Malaria, yaws and venereal diseases were widespread. Hookworm disease affected people in every district. Hookworm bred where there was poor sanitation but was caught mostly by children and adults who had no shoes.