|
|
Discrimination is another big problem that is directly correlated with poverty. Many times, there is a lot of hostility between the more affluent class and the less affluent class. Most times, the more affluent class are excessively paranoid about the less financially stable. Since crime is one of the major effects of poverty, many people consider the less affluent people to be criminals. They often act with prejudice against the less financially developed and the less affluent then react in indignation. After all, if you are a law-abiding citizen, with children who need an education and shelter yet do not steal because you think it is wrong, and then, you still get blamed for the crime, why not commit it and sustain your family?
None of us are unaware of the life-threatening diseases that affect the extremely poor in places like Central Asia day in and day out. Other than HIV/AIDS, we have ever-looming cholera, dysentery, malaria and a host of other infectious diseases. The state that the people below the poverty line live in is ridiculous. Open sewers, public pit latrines and rubbish heaps are the order of the day. This provides a cesspool for disease carrying organisms that live, breed and feed around these people. To make matters worse, virtually none of these people can afford proper medical attention and so the diseases often go untreated and may result in not only permanent complications but fatalities as well.
The world population problem is a bewildering mixture of the simple and the complex, the clear and the confused. What is relatively simple and clear is that the population in the world is getting larger, and that this process cannot go on indefinitely because there are, after all, limits to the resources, such as food, that are needed to sustain human life. Like all living things, people have an inherent tendency to multiply geometrically - that is, the more people there are the more people they tend to produce. In contrast, the supply of food rises more slowly, for unlike people it does not increase in proportion to the existing rate of food production. This is, of course, the familiar Malthusian relationship and leads to the conclusion that the population is certain eventually to outgrow the food supply (and other needed resources), leading to famine and mass death unless some other countervailing force intervenes to limit population growth. However when we turn from merely stating the problem to analysing and attempting to solve it, the issue becomes much more complex. The fact is that we are faced with a problem and this problem (i.e. poverty) causes over population and not the opposite. Thus we are faced with the following problem: People think that by having more children, they will earn more money because according to them, more children are more workers, more income generators and more time. However, that is not the case. Often, more children simply mean more mouths to feed and more money put into education. All of a sudden, we are faced with a crisis. So what do we do? Encourage child labour and prostitution because it seems like the only way out of the hole we have dug for ourselves. These children often grow up and make the same mistakes and once again. In what seems like a cliché we conclude with the continuing cycle of poverty.
We have listed some of the effects poverty has on our world. We now have some idea of what millions of people have to face day after day after unbearable day. So what? What are you going to do about it? Personally I have always disliked the term: The youth are the future, because we are not. We are the present! The Global Movement for children, NGOs and so many other people have proved that the youth, as well as adults, can do something about poverty today. You can, the question is, will you?
|
Tags
You must be logged in to add tags.
|
Writer Profile
Thomas Igeme
This user has not written anything in his panorama profile yet.
|
Comments
You must be a TakingITGlobal member to post a comment. Sign up for free or login.
|
|
