Tag Archive for: Global Poverty

Inflammation and stories on global poverty

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Why are Athletic Tracks in China Making Children Sick?

Athletic Tracks_ China
Education is meant to be helpful, but recently thousands of Chinese children have fallen ill due to their school facilities. Adding to the unhealthily high levels of pollution throughout the country, athletic tracks in China composed of low-quality materials have been essentially poisoning the students who use them.

Affected students experienced a wide range of symptoms, from nosebleeds to skin conditions and coughs. Many of the affected schools reside in Beijing, but the problem persists at schools throughout the country.

The main school discussed by the Chinese media has been the Beijing No.2 Experimental School, where the track tested positive for high levels of benzene substances and formaldehyde. Other tracks around China have been proven to contain ethylbenzene and other toxic chemicals.

Many of the athletic tracks in China were produced from recycled materials, including old tires. Manufacturers may have been trying to cut costs by using sub-par materials.

Parents across China have been concerned about their children for months, citing illness, doctors visits, and even noting strange smells coming from the tracks. Some concerned parents even petitioned their schools to remove the dangerous tracks.

Users of China’s social media site, Weibo, have taken to the internet to express their experiences and views using the hashtag #ToxicSchoolTrack.

As a result of the national concern, the Chinese Ministry of Education plans to inspect all affected tracks before the start of the new school year and has already begun to replace those that are deemed below standard. According to the ministry, producers of “poisonous tracks” will be severely punished for their actions.

Thus far, Chinese officials have shut down nine factories involved in the production of the dangerous unregulated tracks. Multiple executives and employees of the factories, who are believed to be directly involved in the scandal, have been detained by authorities.

Even though the Ministry of Education is taking steps to improve the conditions of various running tracks, some parents still lack hope. One father states, “It takes a time to clean up things like these and it requires action from different agencies. I doubt we’ll see any real effects soon. For me, my priority is to guarantee my child safety and a good environment to grow up in.”

Hopefully, the Ministry of Education will take the public outcry to heart and continue cracking down on poisonous track producers, as well as continue working to ensure the safety of affected students.

– Carrie Robinson

Photo: Flickr

Talking About Poverty: What is the Definition of Global Poverty?

Global Poverty Definition
How does one define global poverty? The term is often used in news programs detailing hunger and disease in third-world countries, but what exactly does living in poverty mean?

Merriam-Webster defines poverty as, “The state of one who lacks a usual or socially acceptable amount of money or material possessions.” Based on this definition, the true definition of poverty actually varies from country to country, from city to city, and from town to town based on socially constructed benchmarks for wealth.

Statisticians in the United States and India describe living on less than $1.90 a day (which approximately 702 million people worldwide do) as “extreme poverty.”

Other statisticians prefer to also factor access to health care, education, clean water, and food when assessing global poverty rates. In particular, lack of access to clean water and food are seen as primary symptoms of poverty in developing countries.

Again, this lack of access is seen as a symptom of poverty in relation to the United States and other first-world countries, where access to freshwater and food is a comprehensive widespread system across the nation.

 

Current State of Global Poverty

 

Currently, 1.1 billion people in developing countries have inadequate access to clean drinking water. The population of the United States was 319 million people in 2014, where a family of four has the ability to use up to 400 gallons of water each day.

Furthermore, around 27 percent of all children in developing countries are classified as underweight or stunted as a result of living in poverty. Being underweight and stunted growth is particularly prevalent in Sub-Saharan Africa and Southern Asia.

Global poverty still proves to be difficult to quantify without comparing living standards between countries. However, it’s important to note that poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa can look vastly different from extreme poverty in the United States. Developed countries typically have more safety nets and welfare structures in place to assist their poor while developing countries continue to struggle to support large quantities of impoverished citizens. Thus, while it’s important to prioritize domestic poverty in the U.S., it’s equally important to prioritize the world’s poor who live in worse living conditions.

– Bayley McComb

Photo: Flickr

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4 Influential Humanitarian Athletes

Humanitarian Athletes
Athletes spend numerous hours during the week training and preparing for their next matches, games and adventures. Through their unmatched hard work, they are able to capture titles while simultaneously building a career and global fame.

Going above and beyond, many athletes use their popular status and successful careers to improve the world around them. These four humanitarian athletes utilize their fame and the small amount of free time they have to contribute to global charities.

  1. Cristiano Ronaldo (Professional Soccer Forward)
    Ronaldo is known as one of the most generous athletes in the world. He often donates his bonus checks and portions of his salary to various charities and countries in need of reconstruction and help. For example, he donates millions of dollars to foundations like UNICEF and “World Vision,” which aim to enhance the lives of children in impoverished countries through the enhancement of health and education. When he’s not sweating on the field, he also takes time to physically participate in fundraising campaigns.
  2. Serena Williams (Professional Tennis Player)
    When Williams isn’t grinding on the court winning grand slams, she’s looking to improve the status of the world’s poor. She was named a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador in 2011 because of her commitment to helping the youth around the globe. In 2010, Williams announced the New Schools for Asia Campaign under UNICEF, which looks to provide children in the Asia-Pacific area with schooling. Around the world, there are 67 million people who are not enrolled in school. Of those 67 million people, 26 million live in the Asia-Pacific area. UNICEF’s executive director talked about Serena, explaining that she “isn’t just a tennis champion, she is a champion for children—and a passionate advocate for providing every child with a quality education.”
  3. David Beckham (Professional Soccer Midfielder)
    Beckham was also appointed a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador. His focus under UNICEF is the Unite Against AIDS campaign. After visiting Sierra Leone in 2007, he said, “In Sierra Leone, one in four children dies before reaching their fifth birthday – it’s shocking and tragic especially when the solutions are simple – things like vaccinations against measles or using a mosquito net to reduce the chance of getting malaria.” Beckham hopes to draw attention to the safety and health of children through his global presence.
  4. Jessica Watson (Sailor)
    Watson is known for circumnavigating the globe solo at the age of 16. Now at the age of 23, she continues to the explore the world as a representative for the World Food Program. This humanitarian athlete focuses her time and energy on Laos, saying, “At age 16 I achieved my dream. I want the school children in Laos to be able to achieve their dream. And stopping hunger is the first step in that process.”

Watson works with the School Meals program, making sure that kids in school are able to eat a nutritious meal every day. Global hunger affects 1 out of 7 people in the world. Jessica Watson, along with the World Food Program, aims to help 80 million people in 80 different countries combat lack of food.

These four humanitarian athletes have been able to use their global status to make a positive difference. By representing various foundations, they are not only able to raise awareness of global crises to fans around the world, but their use of fame also makes fighting global poverty a little easier.

– Casey Marx

Photo: Flickr

Why the Cycle? 10 Facts on Global Poverty

Facts on global poverty
As the World Food Programme says, “The poor are hungry and their hunger traps them in poverty.” The number of people living in the world in extreme poverty does continue to decrease, but the number is still incredibly high.

Poverty creates a cycle, where the poorest people are unable to access quality education or health services, and these people continue to be affected by malnutrition and disease. However, there has been a significant reduction in the state of poverty throughout the last decades. Here are ten facts on global poverty:

  1. Approximately 1 billion children or half of the child population across the globe, lives in poverty. Of these children, 10.6 million die before the age of five. This is akin to between 22,000 and 29,000 children dying every day, according to UNICEF.
  2. Around two million children die each year from preventable diseases, as they are too poor to afford treatment. There are 270 million children in the world who do not have access to health services.
  3. In 2012, over 12 percent of the world lived on or below $1.90 per day. That estimate has improved tremendously from 37 percent in 1990.
  4. The most intense reduction in global poverty occurred in East Asia, where 80 percent lived in extreme poverty in 1981. Now a little over seven percent live in poverty.
  5. Within East Asia, China has shown the greatest reduction in poverty with 753 million people becoming above the $1.90 per day line.
  6. Approximately 30 percent of those living in extreme global poverty are concentrated in India. South Asia is now experiencing the lowest amount of extreme poverty since 1981, now standing at 18.7 percent from 58 percent.
  7. Overall, almost 80 percent of those living in extreme poverty are citizens of South Asian and Sub-Saharan African nations. This is almost 700 million people, with an additional 147 million in East Asia and the Pacific.
  8. A quarter of the world’s population lives without electricity, which is 1.6 billion people. Around 400 million also have no access to drinkable war, and 640 million are without proper housing or shelter.
  9. Unsafe drinking water kills more than 840,000 people each year, particularly those living in extreme poverty.
  10. According to Oxfam, $60 billion annually would be able to resolve global poverty. This is less than a quarter of the income of the top 100 billionaires.

Numbers are hardly a way to sum up the real-time suffering that people who live in poverty face everyday, but the facts on global poverty do create a framework of awareness, seriousness, and hope around a situation that isn’t quantifiable.

– Amanda Panella

Photo: Pixabay

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Why Poverty Exists and What We Can Do About It

Why Poverty ExistsPoverty has causes deeply rooted in evolving human interests. In today’s society, the interpretations for why poverty exists have become intertwined in history, politics and the economy. The big question being asked—are people suffering needlessly?—deserves an answer.

A Lack of Resources

The World Health Organization reports that nearly 700 million people in the world lack access to safe water. According to The World Food Programme, nearly 800 million, or one in nine people, lack the food and nutrition necessary to live a healthy and active life.

Water and food are becoming an increasingly large concern as the world population is expected to reach between nine and 11 billion by the end of the century. However, the world already produces enough food to feed 10 billion people. Furthermore, with desalination and water recycling technology, supplying safe drinking water to even the driest areas of the world is possible with enough energy and money.

Despite the rising population, there are currently more than enough resources to nourish everyone, and there exists a significant incentive to disperse these resources. Every U.S. dollar spent on water and sanitation returns $4 to the global economy. Likewise, every dollar spent on proven nutrition interventions returns $16, as adequately nourished children go on to have higher IQs, increased education and better salaries.

On the right track, Congress recently passed the Global Food Security Act, which provides a platform and allocated funding to develop a global nutrition security strategy. Many developed nations have similar programs, but despite the economic incentive to provide water and food security, not enough funding is provided for these programs. There have been steps taken to end resource poverty but not at the necessary scale.

A Lack of Education

At the heart of many narratives, and perhaps a symptom of the larger issue, individual shortcomings are the reasons why poverty exists. Those who are unable to compete in the market do so because they lack skills relative to the population at large.

For many, disadvantage takes the form of fewer opportunities for education and economic growth. More than 72 million children of school age are not in school, and 759 million adults remain illiterate and unable to better their living conditions.

For others, disadvantage begins with conception. Prenatal malnutrition, drug use, environmental toxins and even stress can lead to poor brain development in the womb. Poor development begets poor performance as well as inadequate skills to compete economically. A lack of skills and education becomes the cause of one generation’s poverty, and a symptom of that of the next.

Many steps in the cycle of why poverty exists are easily preventable. Over 16,000 children under the age of five die of preventable causes, and 800 women die everyday related to childbirth and pregnancy. The Reach Every Mother and Child Act, which has been introduced to the House and Senate, aims to help save the lives of 600,000 women and 15 million children by 2020, and will help to ensure healthy development. Healthy, well-nourished children are much easier to educate.

Social v. Economic Reasons

Institutionalized inequalities create cycles of poverty exacerbated by lack of resources, education and opportunity.

Political systems that favor the wealthy may not have the interests of the working poor at heart. Corrupt governments prevent aid from reaching those in need. Social structures may prevent movement between classes. Historical exploitation of a country’s resources may have long-lasting effects, and oppression of a population leads to large income disparities. One does not have to search far to find documented examples of each of these depravities, and they even point to a larger problem than just a lack of resources or skills.

If we are in fact past our colonial era, then our involvement in developing countries should be in the interest of cultivating a global economy–one that works for all countries involved. Allocating funds to foreign aid and growth is a step in that direction. Domestic and foreign interests need not be mutually exclusive.

Successful poverty reduction exists but could be improved and expanded with more time and resources. The U.S allocates only 0.19 percent of its gross national income to foreign aid. Only six countries have ever met the target laid forth by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, which sits at just 0.7 percent of GNI. Not only will aid help improve the global economy, but also many developed countries play a role in creating the political and social inequalities listed above. With economics and ethics on the side of the poverty reduction, is 0.19 percent cutting it?.

In a fair world, choice will be the only reason for why poverty exists, and at that point it can be deemed inevitable, but at present, the suffering of many stems from causes, if not within our control, then within our reach.

– Lia Ferguson

Photo: Pixabay

Global Poverty and Foreign Aid: What Works

Global poverty and foreign aid

Despite various myths about global poverty and foreign aid, evidence supports the claim that foreign aid works well in the fight against poverty.

According to the Gates Foundation, there are currently more than one billion people worldwide living in extreme poverty. Foreign aid (when one country donates a portion of their resources to another) aims to lower that number.

However, many people subscribe to the belief that foreign aid is ineffective. They argue that corruption prevents resources from reaching the people who need it most. In addition, they assume that countries who receive foreign aid will grow to depend on it too much.

The Millennium Development Goals

Thankfully, the data suggests otherwise. The relationship between foreign aid and global poverty is a positive, effective one.

Perhaps some of the strongest examples of the effectiveness of foreign aid are the Millennium Development Goals.

These goals, proposed by the United Nations and ratified by all countries across the globe, aimed to:

  • reduce poverty, hunger and child mortality;
  • achieve universal primary education, gender equality and environmental sustainability;
  • improve both overall health by fighting treatable diseases;
  • and act as a global partnership for development.

“The MDGs helped to lift more than one billion people out of extreme poverty, to make inroads against hunger, to enable more girls to attend school than ever before and to protect our planet. They generated new and innovative partnerships, galvanized public opinion and showed the immense value of setting ambitious goals,” stated Ban Ki-moon, Secretary General of the United Nations, in the project’s 2015 annual report.

After the success of the MDGs, the U.N. introduced a set of followup goals in 2015. These new initiatives were called the Sustainable Development Goals and have a deadline set at 2030.

Global Food Security Act

In 2010, the United States shifted the focus of its foreign aid spending to small farmers across the globe through initiatives such as Feed the Future. The Global Food Security Act aims to build off of the Feed the Future Initiative by expanding investments in small farmers.

The hope is that these investments would aid families (especially women and children) lift themselves out of poverty. In addition, they would also simultaneously provide families access to cheap, nutritious food.

During an interview with Grist, Raj Shah, head of USAID, said that thanks to Feed the Future, they “are starting to see a rapid reduction in rural poverty, in the percentage of children who are stunted, and in the total number of people that don’t get 2,100 calories a day. Those are rough indicators of a large-scale transformation starting to occur.”

Domestic Benefits from Global Contributions

Despite strides made towards ending global poverty, less than 1% of the U.S. federal budget goes toward foreign aid.

In terms of foreign aid, nations can and should do more to help the world’s poor. Moral obligations aside, lifting people out of poverty also provides new economic markets for the U.S. and reduces national security risks.

– Sabrina Santos

Global Poverty TEDx Talk Challenges Perceptions About Aid and Trade

TEDx Talk Challenges Perceptions About Aid

In April, Anna Hagemann Rise gave a global poverty TEDx talk at the Stockholm School of Economics (TEDxSSE) entitled “Why we need a rethink in the fight against global poverty.” Her lecture focused on “trade versus aid” and the complexity of sustainably solving global poverty.

Rise begins her talk by posing a simple question about global poverty relief: “Who’s not in favor?” No hands go up. Of course no one is going to say they are against helping the impoverished. However, this speaker has a unique challenge for her audience.

Rise has a diverse academic background in international politics, communication and peace and conflict resolution. She has worked for the UN in various positions both in the U. S. and in Denmark, her home country. Her recent work has included communications, media, marketing and field work with the Swedish fruit smoothie company Froosh. She is currently its Group Communication & Public Affairs Director.

Rise admitted in her talk that her thinking about aid was initially “institutionalized” by her education. She perceived that trading with developing countries was exploitation, and that giving aid was always a helpful poverty solution.

As she traveled with Froosh and worked on the farms in developing countries where the company buys its produce, Rise saw the value in supporting farmers through trade. She realized that buying from developing countries was a sustainable way to fight poverty. In fact, she believes that this is the best way to fight global poverty.

In her global poverty TEDx talk, Rise passionately recounted how influential the fruit farms that she visits are in their own communities. For example, Guatemalan fruit farms invest in schools, local businesses and even housing in order to give back to their communities. Rise saw the value in the long-term investments that these farms were making to develop their communities.

Rise believes that the key to solving poverty is this type of long-term thinking that creates more sustainable solutions. According to her, the private and public sectors must work together to accomplish this. As she expressed in her talk and an interview, sustainable solutions require involvement and cooperation from both sectors.

Unfortunately, a vast number of trade barriers and bureaucratic procedures still exist that impair developing countries from trading with the rest of the world. The media can also negatively impact trade in developing countries since popular sentiments are not always open to some of these nations.

As Rise put it in her talk, “We need to be open and honest about how the conditions and how the reality is for these people.” For example, aid can sometimes harm developing nations despite good intentions. Leaders can misuse aid money and NGOs sometimes fail to provide long-term solutions for developing communities.

For this reason, Rise encouraged her audience to think critically about where aid money goes and how it works in developing communities. Educated consumerism is a “trendy” way to support good causes. But in her opinion, labels are simply advertising techniques for corporations to connect with conscious consumers.

So although buying from developing countries is good, it is important to keep questioning and challenging the system. “All aid is not bad. Of course. All trade is not good. No, of course not. All labels are not bad, either.”

Since global poverty is not a cut-and-dry issue, Rise’s advice to challenge the simple answers proves valuable for everyone concerned with helping to solve world poverty. “The world is not black and white. It’s actually very colorful.”

Rise’s global poverty TEDx talk encourages people to use the knowledge and inquisitiveness of this colorful world to improve conditions for all humans everywhere.

“Who’s not in favor?”

–Addie Pazzynski

Photo: Flickr

Poverty in Central America: Advancements and Needs

Poverty in Central America
The area of Latin or Central America includes the countries of Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Panama. Central America also includes the Caribbean Islands. Poverty in Central America is pervasive: half the population lives below the poverty line.

In rural areas, the figure rises to two-thirds. Seventy-five percent of rural people struggle to meet basic food needs. Income from traditional exports, agriculture and textiles is in the control of a few of the most powerful and richest.

Despite considerable advancements in wealth distribution, vast inequalities still exist. According to a report by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), “The poorest 20% of the population receive only 3% of all income; the wealthiest 20% receive 60%.”

The farms generally belong to the wealthy; the poor work on them. Small farmers often work deteriorating plots that produce low yields. This leads to food insecurity, hunger and the need for other wage-producing work.

Rural poverty in Central America is widespread, but percentages differ within separate countries.

Honduras is the worst affected: 75% of the country’s rural population lives in poverty and 63% live in extreme poverty.

Guatemala is next: 54% of its rural population lives in poverty.

Nicaragua and El Salvador both have 47% of their rural population living in poverty.

Panama has 37% and Costa Rica has 23% of rural poverty rates.

Indigenous populations have the highest rates of poverty in Central America. They also have the lowest income and lack access to much-needed services. Some of these include housing, schools and healthcare.

Indigenous peoples account for more than 40% of the total population in Guatemala and 75% of them live in poverty. In Panama, indigenous peoples make up eight percent of the population and 95% live in poverty.

Agriculture is a major employer of the rural poor, providing jobs for more than 30%. As a result, IFAD believes that agriculture could be used to help ease poverty in Central America. The area is a major producer of the world’s bananas, coffee, maize and sugar.

IFAD reports, however, that the area is “highly vulnerable” to the world market. It is also vulnerable to other factors it has no power over, such as climate change and natural disasters.

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) announced in June that there has been much progress in reducing poverty in Central America. Despite these advancements, the area still desperately needs more social services.

UNDP called on the governments of the area to invest in “better employment opportunities, in financial systems that prevent over-indebtedness and reducing gender gaps.”

In a press release on June 16, 2016, UNDP stressed that “The main threat to progress in Latin America and the Caribbean is the relapse of millions of families back into poverty.”

The poor and those who are not considered living in poverty but who are not cushioned from external forces need four important elements to keep them from falling back into poverty: public security systems, healthcare systems, economic assets and job skills.

– Rhonda Marrone

Photo: Pixabay

The Importance of Data Analysis in Monitoring Global Poverty

Monitoring Global Poverty

While taking action is an important part of fighting global poverty, it is also critical that international organizations correctly assess the situation through different methods of data collection and analysis. Monitoring global poverty is crucial for ending it.

Since the World Bank’s first census in 1975, attempts to monitor global poverty levels have widened in both scope and methodology. The invention of PovcalNet in the 1980s enabled researchers to access the poverty distributions of 191 countries online. However, the diversification of research methods entailed as much inconsistency as convenience, as data collected by different teams seemed to suggest entirely different results.

Since one organization cannot survey all the households of the world, analysts often collect survey results from the governments of different countries. This introduces inconsistencies into investigation methods, including differing methods of selecting and interviewing sample populations.

When measuring qualitative measures such as household participation, patterns of consumption and perception towards poverty, long-term participatory observation can be more appropriate than surveys, as the wording of questions can manipulate the results.

After data is collected, it is classified and represented into charts or graphs, where more complications can occur. There exist many statistical methodologies, including parametric, non-parametric and lognormal, and countries differ on how to define poverty in various environments.

To standardize data collection and facilitate monitoring global poverty, the World Bank has been urging nations to adopt the National Strategies for the Development of Statistics (NSDS), emphasized at the Marrakech Action Plan for Statistics in 2004.

NSDS requires not only economic support, but political cohesion between departments and local communities in each country. The NSDS Knowledge Base will compile research techniques and provide 100 indicators to the progress of Sustainable Development Goals so that results from different countries can be comparable.

Difficulties of standardization often derive from insufficient infrastructure, such as the failure to register all citizens on census, and requires a long-term investment. In such cases, innovative measures can improve cost-benefit efficiency.

The UN’s Data for Development report from 2015 suggests using satellite imagery and mobile-phone-based data collection. Instead of designing a separate survey, data from social media and mobile call traffic can be repurposed as an indirect indicator. In East Africa, for example, mobile technology is expected to cut up to 60 percent of the cost of traditional paper surveys.

– Haena Chu

Photo: Flickr

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What are the Causes of Poverty?

what causes global poverty
As governments, aid workers and activists search for solutions to the urgent problem of widespread poverty and seek to combat its many negative effects, there is a need to identify the causes of poverty in order to create sustainable change. Understanding what causes global poverty is a crucial part of the process of devising and implementing effective solutions.

Most analysts would agree that there is no single root cause of all poverty everywhere throughout human history. However, even taking into account the individual histories and circumstances of particular countries and regions, there are significant trends in the causes of poverty.

 

Top 5 Causes of Poverty

 

  1. History
    Many of the poorest nations in the world were former colonies from which slaves and resources had been systematically extracted for the benefit of colonizing countries. Although there are notable exceptions (Australia, Canada and the U.S. being perhaps the most prominent), for most of these former colonies, colonialism and its legacies have helped create the conditions that prevent many people from accessing land, capital, education and other resources that allow people to support themselves adequately. In these nations, poverty is one legacy of a troubled history involving conquest.
  2. War & political instability
    Whatever the causes of war and political upheaval, it is clear that safety, stability and security are essential for subsistence and, beyond that, economic prosperity and growth. Without these basics, natural resources cannot be harnessed individually or collectively, and no amount of education, talent or technological know-how will allow people to work and reap the benefits of their labor. Laws are needed to protect rights, property and investments, and without legal protections, farmers, would-be entrepreneurs and business owners cannot safely invest in a country’s economy. It is a telling sign that the poorest countries in the world have all experienced civil war and serious political upheaval at some point in the 20th century, and many of them have weak governments that cannot or do not protect people against violence.
  3. National Debt
    Many poor countries carry significant debt due to loans from wealthier nations and international financial institutions. Poorer nations owe an average of $2.30 in debt for every $1 received in grant aid. In addition, structural adjustment policies by organizations like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund often require poorer nations to open their markets to outside business and investors, thereby increasing competition with local businesses and, many argue, undermining the potential development of local economies. In recent years, calls for debt reduction and forgiveness have been increasing, as activists see this as a key means of reducing poverty. The United Nations has also made it a priority to examine how economic structural adjustment policies can be designed to place less pressure on vulnerable populations.
  4. Discrimination and social inequality
    Poverty and inequality are two different things, but inequality can feed widespread poverty by barring groups with lower social status from accessing the tools and resources to support themselves. According to the United Nations Social Policy and Development Division, “inequalities in income distribution and access to productive resources, basic social services, opportunities, markets, and information have been on the rise worldwide, often causing and exacerbating poverty.” The U.N. and many aid groups also point out that gender discrimination has been a significant factor in holding many women and children around the world in poverty.
  5. Vulnerability to natural disasters
    In regions of the world that are already less wealthy, recurrent or occasional catastrophic natural disasters can pose a significant obstacle to eradicating poverty. The effects of flooding in Bangladesh, drought in the Horn of Africa and the 2005 earthquake in Haiti are examples of the ways in which vulnerability to natural disasters can be devastating to affected countries. In each of these cases, already impoverished people became refugees within their own countries, losing whatever little they had, being forced out of their living spaces and becoming almost completely dependent on others for survival. According to the World Bank, two years after Cyclone Nargis hit Myanmar in 2008, the debt burden of local fishermen had doubled. The Solomon Islands experienced an earthquake and tsunami in 2007 and the losses from that disaster equaled 95 percent of the national budget. Without foreign aid, governments in these countries would have been unable to meet the needs of their people.

These are only five causes of poverty. They are both external and internal causes; both man-made and natural. Just as there is no single cause of poverty, there is no single solution. Nevertheless, understanding the ways in which complex forces like these interact to create and sustain the conditions of widespread global poverty is a vital step toward combating poverty around the world.

– Délice Williams

Source: Global Issues, USCCB, World Bank