Rapid Population growth is the only explanation for poverty. Discuss

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Rapid Population growth is the only explanation for poverty. Discuss

Rapid population growth is only a factor causing poverty and this is only in certain circumstances, unfortunately these circumstances are not rare. Other factors such as debt repayments, war and sanctions and unfair trade rules imposed by western powers also affect the amount of poverty that is to be found within a country.

Rapid population growth can play a very large part in reducing a countries population to poverty. This is especially found in countries with very little resources or with low levels technology. If a country has no resources it has nothing the outside world wants. Also if a country has no resources it has nothing to support its population with. This may not be the case in countries that have developed very high levels of technology, such as Japan. Japan is an example of a country with very small resources but with very high technology levels. High levels of technology mean that there is a higher likelihood of more efficient agricultural techniques being developed. On the other hands there may be a country that has valuable resources but it does not have the technology required to exploit these. For example, Nigeria is one of the world's poorest countries, they however are sitting on large oil reserves. These reserves remain largely untapped due to the lack of technology.

Debt repayments play a very large part in the reduction of a country to poverty. These repayments divert millions from education and healthcare. The UN has estimated that if funds were redirected from loan repayments to healthcare and education, seven million children would be saved every year.

There are two main types of creditors, the first being multilateral creditors such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The other creditors are called bilateral creditors and mainly consist of the Group of Seven richest countries in the world. They all however set stringent guidelines as to who is eligible for a loan. Applicants have got to be willing to bow to the following conditions, privatising industries and services which causes job losses, reducing public expenditure which result in the introduction of fees for education and healthcare and the removal of subsidies for basic food causing prices to increase. These conditions hurt the poor, the people the loans are supposed to help, and make the rich even richer.
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Forty-one countries (33 in Africa) have been selected by the World Bank and the IMF for being extremely poor with very high debts. These countries can apply for debt relief under the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries initiative (HICP). The HICP countries owe $205 billion to their creditors. In 1999, HIPCs paid $185 million a week to creditors. Half of this was owed to bilateral creditors, 37% was owed to multilateral creditors and only 14% is owed to private creditors.

Sub Saharan Africa makes payment of $35 million each day to the rich West, at the same time ...

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