The causes and effects of poverty are often interrelated in such a way that one problem hardly ever occurs alone. Bad sanitation, for example, makes it easier to spread around old and new diseases, and hunger and lack of water make people more vulnerable to them.
Impoverished communities often suffer from discrimination and end up caught in cycles of poverty. Let's find out just what this means concretely.
Crime varies over time and space; it’s high in specific areas and low in others, usually with huge differences in wealth. This has always led experts to study why and what happens in those places where there is a concentration of crime.
It’s unquestionable that crime ranks high among the effects of poverty, and those impoverished neighborhoods or entire cities show the same problems with uneducated adults and kids that nurture more unemployment and crime, and then leading to chronic, long-lasting poverty.
Poverty stretches across the globe affecting almost half of the world’s population. Its effects reach deeper. Uniquely connected to different causes, the effects of poverty are
revolving —one result leads to another source leads to another consequence. To fully understand the effects of poverty, the causes have to be rooted out to develop strategies to end hunger and starvation for good. Let’s discuss some of the top effects of poverty.
Poor Health
Globally, millions suffer from poverty-related health conditions as infectious diseases ravage the lives of an estimated 14 million people a year and are of the top effects of poverty. These diseases are contracted through sources like contaminated water, the absence of water and sanitation, and lack of access to proper healthcare. The list is broad and long. Here are the top diseases commonly linked to poverty .
Malaria: Malaria is urbanely referred to as the poor man’s disease, as more than a million people living in poverty die from it each year. Caused by a parasite, malaria is contracted through mosquito bites. Most prevalent in sub-Saharan Africa, malaria affects the lives of many in 97 countries worldwide.
Tuberculosis: Often referred to as TB,
tuberculosis is a bacteria-borne disease. The bacterium, Mycobacterium tuberculosis, targets the lungs. It also affects the kidneys, brain, and spine. When discussing the effects of TB worldwide, it must be broken down by burden—high burden TB and low burden TB—all of which has to do with the number of cases that impact a country. High burden TB affects more than 22 countries, as low burden TB accounts for 10 cases per 100,000 people in a geographical location.
HIV/AIDS: HIV stands for human immunodeficiency virus. This infection attacks the immune system and is contracted by contact with certain fluids in the body. If HIV is left untreated, certain infections and diseases can take over the body and cause a person to develop AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency syndrome). Thirty-six million people in the world have HIV/AIDS.
Consequences on people
The vicious cycles of poverty mentioned before mean that lifelong handicaps and troubles that are passed on from one generation to another. To name just a few of these hereditary plagues: no school or education, child labor to help the parents, lack of basic hygiene, transmission of diseases.
Unemployment and very low incomes create an environment where kids can't simply go to school. As for those who can actually go to school, they simply don't see how hard work can improve their life as they see their parents fail at the task every day.
Other plagues associated with poverty:
Alcohol & substance abuse, from kids in African slums to adults in the US, this is a very common self-destructing habit often taken as a way to cope with huge amounts of stress and... well, despair;
Crippling accidents due to unsafe working environments (machinery in factories or agriculture) as well as other work hazards such as lead poisoning, pesticide poisoning, bites from wild animals due to lack of proper protection;
Poor housing & living conditions, a classic cause of diseases;
Water and food-related diseases, simply because the poor can't always afford "safe" foods.
Effects on society as a whole
In the end, poverty is a major cause of social tensions and threatens to divide a nation because of the issue of inequalities, in particular income inequality. This happens when wealth in a country is poorly distributed among its citizens. In other words, when a tiny minority has all the money.
BELOW ARE SOME BASIC EFFECTS ON POVERTY
Crime
There’s an old adage that says, “If a man don’t work, he don’t eat.” That’s not the case for a large number people living in poverty. Lack of economic opportunity leads to impoverishment which then leads to crime.
Global unemployment is at a high point. One hundred ninety-two million people around the world are jobless. In some parts of the world, mainly poor parts, unemployment standings will drive this number higher. In a study done on youth in the Caribbean, it was determined that joblessness fueled criminal activity in those aged 15 through 24.
Because of the struggles in the Caribbean job market, the murder rates are higher there than in any other region in the world.
Lack of Education
There is a direct correlation between low academic performance and poverty . Children who are exposed to extreme levels of poverty have difficulty with cognitive development, speech, and managing stress, which leads to adverse behaviorThe conditions of the schools are just as poor as the children’s living conditions.
Where there’s poverty, there’s lack of education , joblessness, and poor health. The key to destroying the top effects of poverty is to attack the causes. More funding is needed for programs such as Child Fund International—a program that brings resources to children in poor communities. The International Economic Development Council supports economic developers by helping them create, retain, and expand jobs in their communities. And then there are the international efforts of the World Health Organization that fights to bring vaccinations and health-related resources to impoverished communities suffering from the infectious diseases of poverty. With these efforts along with other strategies, we can continue making strides to end the effects of poverty.
Children antisocial behavior
One of the effects of poverty on children’s development is to lead them to build an antisocial behavior that acts as a psychological protection against their hostile environment. Discrimination and social exclusion often push them to more aggressiveness and less self-control and nuance in reaction to stressful events. Having often been taken advantage of in their early childhood, they rarely come to a constructive way to deal with conflicts.
As they grow up, these behaviors are more and more entrenched in their personalities and often considered unrecoverable.
Life is short(er)
A universal and simple measure of poverty consists in looking at different populations’ health and life expectancy. It’s no surprise that anywhere on earth, poorer communities fare worse than richer ones. But people's health is affected not only by material poverty but also by social exclusion. No matter if poverty affects someone's mental or physical health, the end result is the same: on average the poor live shorter lives than the rich.
This is all the more true of ethnic minorities in whichever country, where they’re often the first groups to suffer from discrimination and unfair treatments. This implies that the impact of poverty is not exclusively physical but also very much psychological: it affects in many ways mental health and human behavior. Every form of poorness, every form of social exclusion – be it material or racial – has its impact on people’s health.
After all, philosophers and sociologists often agree that man is but a social animal. So, living without a society or a group you belong to can have a huge impact on your mental health (though we wouldn't know for hermits). This has massive consequences for policymakers concerned not just about poverty but also about reinforcing social cohesion.
Overcoming differences
A nation-building effort should shift from nationalism to uniting a people around a society that represents and acts according to a common set of values. In particular, it should be a society that nurtures an environment that will enable all of its citizens to best use or develop news skills, to best express their potential and participate in the development of society. An enabling and empowering society (that’s what experts and politicians often mean by those words).
A problem of unemployment... or a more complex issue?
It’s become a commonplace in newspapers to blame poverty of fueling terrorism by creating a state of misery and frustration that pushes people to join terrorist organizations. While this doesn’t seem a totally groundless accusation – it makes sense and feeds the riches’ tormented conscience – more and more research shows that the effect of poverty on terrorism is not that straightforward.
It’s important to note that most of the time terrorists do come from poorer countries with high unemployment, and that terrorist organizations often provide much higher salaries than any other job, if any other job is available at all. In fact, a lot of different factors interact with the decision to become a terrorist. Personal and cultural ideals, values, and principles are just as important as material and social gain (reputation & fame for fighting the imperialists) of entering terrorism.
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