Half of humanity already lives on the equivalent of just two dollars a day. Life expectancy, as the article reports, suffers as a result. The decrease in life expectancy results from people nationwide with no access to necessities such as food, water, sufficient healthcare. Crime rates potentially rise as a result; people often resort to crime when other aspects fail to sustain their quality of life. The deprivation of job opportunities inevitably means that income is restricted or very minimal at the most. This will fundamentally remove people’s access to everyday resources to sustain personal health for example. Poor health, due to nutritional discrepancies and limited hygiene further decreases the opportunity for work. Children are often ridded of education such that, not just being too expensive to pay for, but they are required to fend on the crop fields for their families. Within these societies, the poor tend to experience the short straw on in decision-making; the rich and powerful are often favoured to decide the best manoeuvres for the national civilization.
There are various factors that cause poverty. Climate and weather play important aspects upon farmers’ stock that is distributed around the country. Geography can also hamper the prosperity of new technologies being built within a country also. Economically, unemployment proves a fundamental factor in poverty. High unemployment rates means less workers providing the needed productivity levels in order to boost the economy. These developing countries tend to also hold high tariffs and other forms of protectionism on their goods; this can also prove important grounds for establishing poverty as it restricts the sale of goods abroad in order to generate financial backing by which to improve a country’s necessities such as hospitals and schools.
Below is a diagram to show poverty on an International perspective.
As one can see, the South-Asian region experiences the largest wave of poverty. This is because of the huge population within China in particular. The huge population causes a higher demand for productivity, which is fuelled by a larger workforce subject to reasonable wages. The more citizens looking for work, the more the government has to provide job opportunities and more access to wage distribution.
Below are diagrams to show previous and future-targeted percentages of international poverty:
‘The poverty cycle’ works as an inter-linking chain such that individual aspects contributing to the depletion living standards are concurrent within each other. Average propensities to save are extremely low as a result of poorer peoples’ incentives to purchase everyday necessities. Such that incomes are low, investment lacks; in order for firms to provide higher incomes, larger wages need to be paid to fuel this investment. Productivity is thus deprived, and so incomes are therefore low. The inevitable factors putting a potential halt to poverty being increase in incomes and investment levels increased also, as well as increases in both labour productivity and education and health guarantees. There are other factors that enable the deeming of an area as poor. Aspects such as calories and protein per day are often the causes of malnutrition within a country; this of course develops from lack of basic foods. Literacy rates and numbers of hospital beds also contribute to the overall stability of a country.
The article explains that there is no prospect of a remedy within the meagre life expectancy of poverty’s billions of potential victims. However, direct aid and free trade can enable the generating of potential finances; by establishing more children into primary and secondary education, with the help of the correct government management to ensure these are efficient, the bigger the chance people have to obtain future jobs and career paths.