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Helping The Poor and Needy

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Published: Sep 1, 2023

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Essay on Helping the Poor

Students are often asked to write an essay on Helping the Poor in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Helping the Poor

Understanding poverty.

Poverty is a global issue. Many people worldwide live under challenging conditions and struggle daily to meet basic needs.

Why Help the Poor?

Helping the poor is important. It’s about compassion, empathy, and making the world a better place. It helps reduce inequality and suffering.

Ways to Help

There are many ways to help. Donating money, food, or clothes can make a big difference. Volunteering time to community service or teaching skills also helps.

Impact of Helping

Helping the poor not only improves their lives but also makes us feel good. It promotes love, unity, and peace in society.

250 Words Essay on Helping the Poor

Introduction, the importance of empathy.

The first step towards helping the poor is cultivating empathy. Empathy allows us to understand the challenges faced by the less fortunate, thereby enabling us to devise effective solutions. It is not about pity; it’s about acknowledging their struggles and working towards alleviating them.

Education: The Key to Change

Education is a powerful weapon in the fight against poverty. By providing quality education to the underprivileged, we equip them with the tools to break the cycle of poverty. It fosters self-reliance, opening doors to better job opportunities and a brighter future.

Creating Sustainable Systems

Merely providing aid is not a sustainable solution. We need to create systems that promote equality and provide the poor with the resources they need to improve their circumstances. This includes access to healthcare, clean water, and affordable housing.

Helping the poor is not a one-time act, but a continuous process that requires collective effort. It is about creating a society where every individual has an equal shot at success. By fostering empathy, promoting education, and implementing sustainable systems, we can make a significant difference in the lives of the less fortunate.

500 Words Essay on Helping the Poor

Helping the poor is not just a moral obligation, but a societal necessity that promotes overall societal growth and development. It is a topic that deserves serious attention, especially in an era where wealth inequality is at its peak.

The Moral Imperative

Economic perspective.

From an economic perspective, helping the poor can stimulate economic growth. The poor, when given the right resources and opportunities, can contribute positively to the economy. They can become consumers, producers, and even innovators, thus driving economic growth. This concept is also known as ‘inclusive growth’, which suggests that including everyone in economic development is beneficial for the economy as a whole.

Social Cohesion

Helping the poor also enhances social cohesion. In societies with high levels of poverty, there is often a corresponding increase in social unrest and crime. By addressing poverty, we can reduce these negative social phenomena, thus fostering peace and unity in the society.

Challenges and Solutions

Secondly, there is the issue of corruption and mismanagement of funds meant for the poor. This can be mitigated by promoting transparency and accountability in the distribution of aid.

In conclusion, helping the poor is a multifaceted issue that involves moral, economic, and social aspects. It is not just about giving handouts, but about empowering the poor to rise above their situation. By addressing the challenges and implementing effective strategies, we can make a significant difference in the lives of the poor and, by extension, the society at large.

Apart from these, you can look at all the essays by clicking here .

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7 Essays About Poverty: Example Essays and Prompts

Essays about poverty give valuable insight into the economic situation that we share globally. Read our guide with poverty essay examples and prompts for your paper.

In the US, the official poverty rate in 2022 was 11.5 percent, with 37.9 million people living below the poverty line. With a global pandemic, cost of living crisis, and climate change on the rise, we’ve seen poverty increase due to various factors. As many of us face adversity daily, we can look to essays about poverty from some of the world’s greatest speakers for inspiration and guidance.

There is nothing but a lack of social vision to prevent us from paying an adequate wage to every American citizen whether he be a hospital worker, laundry worker, maid or day laborer. There is nothing except shortsightedness to prevent us from guaranteeing an annual minimum—and livable—income for every American family. Martin Luther King Jr., Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?

Writing a poverty essay can be challenging due to the many factors contributing to poverty and the knock-on effects of living below the poverty line . For example, homelessness among low-income individuals stems from many different causes.

It’s important to note that poverty exists beyond the US, with many developing countries living in extreme poverty without access to essentials like clean water and housing. For help with your essays, check out our round-up of the best essay checkers .

Essays About Poverty: Top Examples

1. pensioner poverty: fear of rise over decades as uk under-40s wealth falls, 2. the surprising poverty levels across the u.s., 3. why poverty persists in america, 4. post-pandemic poverty is rising in america’s suburbs.

• 5. The Basic Facts About Children in Poverty
• 6. The State of America’s Children 
• 7. COVID-19: This is how many Americans now live below the poverty line

10 Poverty Essay Topics

1. the causes of poverty, 2. the negative effects of poverty, 3. how countries can reduce poverty rates, 4. the basic necessities and poverty, 5. how disabilities can lead to poverty, 6. how the cycle of poverty unfolds , 7. universal basic income and its relationship to poverty, 8. interview someone who has experience living in poverty, 9. the impact of the criminal justice system on poverty, 10. the different ways to create affordable housing.

There is growing concern about increasing pensioner poverty in the UK in the coming decades. Due to financial challenges like the cost of living crisis, rent increases, and the COVID-19 pandemic, under 40s have seen their finances shrink.

Osborne discusses the housing wealth gap in this article, where many under the 40s currently pay less in a pension due to rent prices. While this means they will have less pension available, they will also retire without owning a home, resulting in less personal wealth than previous generations. Osborne delves into the causes and gaps in wealth between generations in this in-depth essay.

“Those under-40s have already been identified as  facing the biggest hit from rising mortgage rates , and last week a study by the financial advice firm Hargreaves Lansdown found that almost a third of 18- to 34-year-olds had stopped or cut back on their pension contributions in order to save money.” Hilary Osborne,  The Guardian

In this 2023 essay, Jeremy Ney looks at the poverty levels across the US, stating that poverty has had the largest one-year increase in history. According to the most recent census, child poverty has more than doubled from 2021 to 2022.

Ney states that the expiration of government support and inflation has created new financial challenges for US families. With the increased cost of living and essential items like food and housing sharply increasing, more and more families have fallen below the poverty line. Throughout this essay, Ney displays statistics and data showing the wealth changes across states, ethnic groups, and households.

“Poverty in America reflects the inequality that plagues U.S. households. While certain regions have endured this pain much more than others, this new rising trend may spell ongoing challenges for even more communities.” Jeremy Ney,  TIME

In this New York Times article, a Pulitzer Prize-winning sociologist explores why poverty exists in North America.

The American poor have access to cheap, mass-produced goods, as every American does. But that doesn’t mean they can access what matters most. Matthew Desmond,  The New York Times

The U.S. Census Bureau recently released its annual data on poverty, revealing contrasting trends for 2022. While one set of findings indicated that the overall number of Americans living in poverty remained stable compared to the previous two years, another survey highlighted a concerning increase in child poverty. The rate of child poverty in the U.S. doubled from 2021 to 2022, a spike attributed mainly to the cessation of the expanded child tax credit following the pandemic. These varied outcomes underscore the Census Bureau’s multifaceted methods to measure poverty.

“The nation’s suburbs accounted for the majority of increases in the poor population following the onset of the pandemic” Elizabeth Kneebone and Alan Berube,  Brookings

5.  The Basic Facts About Children in Poverty

Nearly 11 million children are living in poverty in America. This essay explores ow the crisis reached this point—and what steps must be taken to solve it.

“In America, nearly 11 million children are poor. That’s 1 in 7 kids, who make up almost one-third of all people living in poverty in this country.” Areeba Haider,  Center for American Progress

6.  The State of America’s Children  

This essay articles how, despite advancements, children continue to be the most impoverished demographic in the U.S., with particular subgroups — such as children of color, those under five, offspring of single mothers, and children residing in the South — facing the most severe poverty levels.

“Growing up in poverty has wide-ranging, sometimes lifelong, effects on children, putting them at a much higher risk of experiencing behavioral, social, emotional, and health challenges. Childhood poverty also plays an instrumental role in impairing a child’s ability and capacity to learn, build skills, and succeed academically.” Children’s Defense Fund

7.  COVID-19: This is how many Americans now live below the poverty line

This essay explores how the economic repercussions of the coronavirus pandemic 2020 led to a surge in U.S. poverty rates, with unemployment figures reaching unprecedented heights. The writer provides data confirming that individuals at the lowest economic strata bore the brunt of these challenges, indicating that the recession might have exacerbated income disparities, further widening the chasm between the affluent and the underprivileged.

“Poverty in the U.S. increased in 2020 as the coronavirus pandemic hammered the economy and unemployment soared. Those at the bottom of the economic ladder were hit hardest, new figures confirm, suggesting that the recession may have widened the gap between the rich and the poor.” Elena Delavega,  World Econmic Forum

If you’re tasked with writing an essay about poverty, consider using the below topics. They offer pointers for outlining and planning an essay about this challenging topic.

One of the most specific poverty essay topics to address involves the causes of poverty. You can craft an essay to examine the most common causes of extreme poverty. Here are a few topics you might want to include:

• Racial discrimination, particularly among African Americans, has been a common cause of poverty throughout American history. Discrimination and racism can make it hard for people to get the education they need, making it nearly impossible to get a job.
• A lack of access to adequate health care can also lead to poverty. When people do not have access to healthcare, they are more likely to get sick. This could make it hard for them to go to work while also leading to major medical bills.
• Inadequate food and water can lead to poverty as well. If people’s basic needs aren’t met, they focus on finding food and water instead of getting an education they can use to find a better job.

These are just a few of the most common causes of poverty you might want to highlight in your essay. These topics could help people see why some people are more likely to become impoverished than others. You might also be interested in these essays about poverty .

Poverty affects everyone, and the impacts of an impoverished lifestyle are very real. Furthermore, the disparities when comparing adult poverty to child poverty are also significant. This opens the doors to multiple possible essay topics. Here are a few points to include:

• When children live in poverty, their development is stunted. For example, they might not be able to get to school on time due to a lack of transportation, making it hard for them to keep up with their peers. Child poverty also leads to malnutrition, which can stunt their development.
• Poverty can impact familial relationships as well. For example, members of the same family could fight for limited resources, making it hard for family members to bond. In addition, malnutrition can stunt the growth of children.
• As a side effect of poverty, people have difficulty finding a safe place to live. This creates a challenging environment for everyone involved, and it is even harder for children to grow and develop.
• When poverty leads to homelessness, it is hard for someone to get a job. They don’t have an address to use for physical communication, which leads to employment concerns.

These are just a few of the many side effects of poverty. Of course, these impacts are felt by people across the board, but it is not unusual for children to feel the effects of poverty that much more. You might also be interested in these essays about unemployment .

Different countries take different approaches to reduce the number of people living in poverty

The issue of poverty is a major human rights concern, and many countries explore poverty reduction strategies to improve people’s quality of life. You might want to examine different strategies that different countries are taking while also suggesting how some countries can do more. A few ways to write this essay include:

• Explore the poverty level in America, comparing it to the poverty level of a European country. Then, explore why different countries take different strategies.
• Compare the minimum wage in one state, such as New York, to the minimum wage in another state, such as Alabama. Why is it higher in one state? What does raising the minimum wage do to the cost of living?
• Highlight a few advocacy groups and nonprofit organizations actively lobbying their governments to do more for low-income families. Then, talk about why some efforts are more successful than others.

Different countries take different approaches to reduce the number of people living in poverty. Poverty within each country is such a broad topic that you could write a different essay on how poverty could be decreased within the country. For more, check out our list of simple essays topics for intermediate writers .

You could also write an essay on the necessities people need to survive. You could take a look at information published by the United Nations , which focuses on getting people out of the cycle of poverty across the globe. The social problem of poverty can be addressed by giving people the necessities they need to survive, particularly in rural areas. Here are some of the areas you might want to include:

• Affordable housing
• Fresh, healthy food and clean water
• Access to an affordable education
• Access to affordable healthcare

Giving everyone these necessities could significantly improve their well-being and get people out of absolute poverty. You might even want to talk about whether these necessities vary depending on where someone is living.

There are a lot of medical and social issues that contribute to poverty, and you could write about how disabilities contribute to poverty. This is one of the most important essay topics because people could be disabled through no fault of their own. Some of the issues you might want to address in this essay include:

• Talk about the road someone faces if they become disabled while serving overseas. What is it like for people to apply for benefits through the Veterans’ Administration?
• Discuss what happens if someone becomes disabled while at work. What is it like for someone to pursue disability benefits if they are hurt doing a blue-collar job instead of a desk job?
• Research and discuss the experiences of disabled people and how their disability impacts their financial situation.

People who are disabled need to have money to survive for many reasons, such as the inability to work, limitations at home, and medical expenses. A lack of money, in this situation, can lead to a dangerous cycle that can make it hard for someone to be financially stable and live a comfortable lifestyle.

Many people talk about the cycle of poverty, yet many aren’t entirely sure what this means or what it entails. A few key points you should address in this essay include:

• When someone is born into poverty, income inequality can make it hard to get an education.
• A lack of education makes it hard for someone to get into a good school, which gives them the foundation they need to compete for a good job. 
• A lack of money can make it hard for someone to afford college, even if they get into a good school.
• Without attending a good college, it can be hard for someone to get a good job. This makes it hard for someone to support themselves or their families. 
• Without a good paycheck, it is nearly impossible for someone to keep their children out of poverty, limiting upward mobility into the middle class.

The problem of poverty is a positive feedback loop. It can be nearly impossible for those who live this every day to escape. Therefore, you might want to explore a few initiatives that could break the cycle of world poverty and explore other measures that could break this feedback loop.

Many business people and politicians have floated the idea of a universal basic income to give people the basic resources they need to survive. While this hasn’t gotten a lot of serious traction, you could write an essay to shed light on this idea. A few points to hit on include:

• What does a universal basic income mean, and how is it distributed?
• Some people are concerned about the impact this would have on taxes. How would this be paid for?
• What is the minimum amount of money someone would need to stay out of poverty? Is it different in different areas?
• What are a few of the biggest reasons major world governments haven’t passed this?

This is one of the best essay examples because it gives you a lot of room to be creative. However, there hasn’t been a concrete structure for implementing this plan, so you might want to afford one.

Another interesting topic you might want to explore is interviewing someone living in poverty or who has been impoverished. While you can talk about statistics all day, they won’t be as powerful as interviewing someone who has lived that life. A few questions you might want to ask during your interview include:

• What was it like growing up?
• How has living in poverty made it hard for you to get a job?
• What do you feel people misunderstand about those who live in poverty?
• When you need to find a meal, do you have a place you go to? Or is it somewhere different every day?
• What do you think is the main contributor to people living in poverty?

Remember that you can also craft different questions depending on your responses. You might want to let the interviewee read the essay when you are done to ensure all the information is accurate and correct.

The criminal justice system and poverty tend to go hand in hand. People with criminal records are more likely to be impoverished for several reasons. You might want to write an essay that hits on some of these points:

• Discuss the discriminatory practices of the criminal justice system both as they relate to socioeconomic status and as they relate to race.
• Explore just how hard it is for someone to get a job if they have a criminal record. Discuss how this might contribute to a life of poverty.
• Dive into how this creates a positive feedback loop. For example, when someone cannot get a job due to a criminal record, they might have to steal to survive, which worsens the issue.
• Review what the criminal justice system might be like for someone with resources when compared to someone who cannot afford to hire expert witnesses or pay for a good attorney.

You might want to include a few examples of disparate sentences for people in different socioeconomic situations to back up your points. 

Affordable housing can make a major difference when someone is trying to escape poverty

Many poverty-related problems could be reduced if people had access to affordable housing. While the cost of housing has increased dramatically in the United States , some initiatives exist to create affordable housing. Here are a few points to include:

• Talk about public programs that offer affordable housing to people from disadvantaged backgrounds.
• Discuss private programs, such as Habitat for Humanity , doing similar things.
• Review the positive impacts that stable housing has on both adults and children.
• Dive into other measures local and federal governments could take to provide more affordable housing for people.

There are a lot of political and social angles to address with this essay, so you might want to consider spreading this out across multiple papers. Affordable housing can make a major difference when trying to escape poverty. If you want to learn more, check out our essay writing tips !

Center for American Progress

The Top 12 Solutions To Cut Poverty in the United States

Poverty is a policy choice; so is cutting it.

Advancing Racial Equity and Justice, Building an Economy for All, Strengthening Health, Economic Justice, Poverty +2 More

Media Contact

Sarah nadeau.

Associate Director, Media Relations

[email protected]

Government Affairs

Madeline shepherd.

Senior Director, Government Affairs

Since the 1960s, America has made major strides in poverty reduction, and yet, there are still 35 million people living in poverty in the United States. What’s more, poverty would be twice as high if not for decades of significant investments through Social Security, unemployment insurance, nutrition assistance, and low-income tax credits, among other successful anti-poverty programs. However, the concerning reality is that the COVID-19 pandemic and associated economic fallout obliterated those gains, putting individuals and families at a greater risk of being pushed into poverty.

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As of May 2021, more than  9 million Americans  were unemployed, 19 million adults and up to 8 million children had experienced food insecurity, and more than 10 million renters were behind on rental payments. Communities of color and other underserved families have been hit particularly hard by the pandemic and subsequent economic downturn: Black, Indigenous, and Latinx communities have seen higher rates of infection, hospitalization, and death as well as unemployment . Likewise, the disability community has been disproportionately affected by high rates of mortality at congregate facilities , inequitable vaccine rollouts , and delayed stimulus payouts to individuals on Social Security and Supplemental Security Income.

Navigating through the current crisis and rebuilding better and stronger requires policymakers to take immediate action to provide equitable economic relief to all. Equitable rebuilding not only addresses systemic and institutional racism of past policy decisions but also focuses on inclusive economic transformation that can strengthen the U.S. economy and resilience in the long run. When the government invests in meeting peoples’ basic needs and economic security through a robust safety net and jobs that help build financial security, children, families, and other vulnerable populations see improved outcomes in both the short and long term. The good news is that policymakers already have a range of tools that can prevent further increases in poverty and put all people on a pathway to economic mobility and resilience.

Tell Congress To Take Action on Poverty

Congress must support sustained, bold public investments in programs that support people living in—and on the edge of—poverty.

Take Action

This column outlines 12 policy solutions that Congress can use to cut poverty and boost economic security for all in an equitable way.

1. Expand safety net programs to benefit all in need

Safety net programs can help people weather a variety of economic crises by meeting basic needs and providing stability. Yet the pandemic has exposed just how woefully inadequate America’s safety net structure is.

For example, before the pandemic, state unemployment insurance (UI) did not cover monthly expenses anywhere in the country and excluded millions of others due to their work classification, previous earnings, length of employment, or immigration status .

The Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act provided a temporary $600 weekly boost to UI, lifting millions out of poverty before that provision was allowed to expire at the end of July 2020. The American Rescue Plan continued a $300 weekly supplement to UI that started in December 2020, providing an income to millions of long-term unemployed and self-employed workers, independent contractors, gig workers, and others. Unfortunately, this supplement and the other temporary federal UI expansions are set to expire nationally on September 6, 2021. To make matters worse, at least 26 governors have pledged to end some or all of these programs even sooner, cutting benefits for 4.7 million people and severely affecting their ability to recover from the pandemic.

Similarly, programs such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), intended for those with the lowest incomes, have not done enough to prevent hunger and food insecurity in America. Even before COVID-19 hit, the inadequate benefit amounts forced 45 percent of SNAP recipients to limit the food they ate or skip meals just to make it through the month; and nearly a third of SNAP recipients had to visit a food pantry to keep themselves fed. From December 2019 to December 2020, the demand for charitable food assistance rose by nearly 50 percent . This was especially prevalent for households of color, households with children, and people with disabilities. Fortunately, the American Rescue Plan contained significant expansions in food assistance programs to help mitigate the high levels of hunger seen throughout the crisis. But more must be done. Lawmakers must expand eligibility for SNAP, ensuring that currently excluded groups—including undocumented immigrants and many college students—are able to receive necessary food assistance. Burdensome work requirements that only serve to push people away from assistance, rather than encourage work , should also be eliminated.

Temporary expansions of the safety net are not enough to help the millions of Americans who are still struggling with the economic and health fallout from the pandemic. Congress must continue to invest in and modernize safety net programs, ensuring that benefit levels are expanded and more accessible than they were before the crisis. It should also consider implementing automatic triggers that would expand benefits during future economic shocks, such as recessions, without the need for legislative intervention. Not only would this prevent people from falling into poverty while Congress argues over how much relief is necessary, having a system that automatically triggers expanded benefits would also help soften the blow of future recessions and stimulate the economy by giving money to people who desperately need it in a timely fashion.

2. Create good-paying jobs that meet family needs

Rebuilding the economy in an equitable way requires the creation of millions of new, good-paying jobs in key industries, with significant worker protections to ease the burden on working families. Before the pandemic shut down much of the country, unemployment stood at 3.5 percent , but by April 2020, unemployment had risen to almost 15 percent . A year later, hiring is on an upward trajectory, but unemployment is at 5.8 percent , which is still considerably higher than pre-pandemic numbers.

While the uptick in employment is a good sign, the same people who struggled before the crisis are still being left behind: The unemployment rates for Black and Hispanic individuals stand at 9.1 percent and 7.3 percent, respectively, compared with a 5.1 percent unemployment rate for white people. Similarly, the disability community continues to experience difficulty regaining employment, with 10.2 percent remaining unemployed as of May 2021. It is not the first time these communities have seen large unemployment gaps compared with their white and nondisabled peers, as such gaps were consistently present even in the months leading up to the pandemic, when unemployment was low.

Women have particularly borne the brunt of job loss because they are overrepresented in the hardest-hit service sector jobs. From February 2020 to May 2021, women lost a net of 4.2 million jobs . Furthermore, since April 2020, the labor force participation rate for women has hovered between 54.6 and 56.2 percent —the lowest observed rate since the late 1980s.

Even though pandemic-related stimulus packages have helped bolster the economy, labor market growth is sluggish , as many Americans are still unable to come back to work due to caregiving challenges or are taking more time to find safe and decent jobs that support their basic needs.

Creating the jobs needed to build an equitable U.S. economy requires federal investment. The American Jobs Plan is centered on investing $2.3 trillion to create new jobs by rebuilding roads and bridges, creating a green energy economy, expanding essential jobs in the caregiving sector, supporting domestic manufacturing, and ensuring that these jobs provide decent wages and benefits and are accessible to Americans from all walks of life. If passed, the American Jobs Plan could reform and rebuild the economy by significantly shrinking the gap of 7.6 million jobs lost since February 2020 and by allowing people to build financial security and save for the future.

3. Raise the minimum wage to ensure economic stability for all

It is time for Congress to raise the federal minimum wage to meaningfully improve living standards for millions of Americans. Today’s federal minimum wage is just $7.25 per hour, which is about $15,000 annually for a full-time job. It has not been raised in more than a decade and is not enough to keep a one-adult, one-child household out of poverty. This is not how the minimum wage was intended to work: In the late 1960s , a full-time worker earned $1.60 per hour at minimum wage, which is equivalent to more than $12 per hour in today’s dollars.

There are also many workers who earn less than minimum wage, or a “subminimum wage.” Tipped workers are only guaranteed a subminimum wage of $2.13 federally, despite evidence from states demonstrating that ending the subminimum wage nationwide would significantly decrease poverty and inequality without hurting employment .

Subminimum wages are also an issue for disabled workers. In 1938, the Fair Labor Standards Act authorized employers, after receiving a certificate from the Wage and Hour Division, to pay below minimum wages to workers with disabilities. Workers who fall under this classification are paid an estimated average of  $2.15 per hour . This is just one of the many reasons why in 2019, at least  1 in 4 disabled people  lived under the poverty line.

The Raise the Wage Act would gradually lift the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour by 2025 and index it to median wage growth thereafter so that the minimum wage would automatically increase when wages rise nationally. The bill would also phase out the subminimum wage for tipped employees, teenagers employed for 90 days or less, and disabled workers. These changes would lift up to 3.7 million Americans out of poverty and especially benefit people of color, women, and people with disabilities , who are disproportionately represented in low-wage jobs.

For more information on the minimum wage, see “ Building an Economy That Supports All Children Requires Raising the Minimum Wage , ” “ Ending the Tipped Minimum Wage Will Reduce Poverty and Inequality , ” and “ Raising the Minimum Wage Would Be Transformative for Women .”

4. Provide permanent paid family and medical leave and paid sick days

The United States is the only industrialized nation in the world to not guarantee workers access to any paid leave. As of March 2020, an estimated 25 percent of private sector workers—and 69 percent of workers earning less than $11 per hour—did not have access to a single paid sick day. Additionally, in 2020, 4 in 5 private sector workers lacked access to any paid family leave for longer-term family caregiving needs; and the disparity was worse among the lowest-wage workers, where 95 percent did not have access to paid time off.

This puts workers in the impossible position of having to forgo needed income, or even their job, to recover from an illness or care for a sick family member. Every year, workers and their families lose an estimated  $22.5 billion in wages due to a lack of access to paid family and medical leave. While Congress addressed this need during the pandemic by providing temporary emergency paid sick leave and emergency paid child care leave through the Families First Coronavirus Response Act, loopholes and exemptions excluded millions of workers . The program also became voluntary in 2021, meaning employers can now refuse to offer paid leave again.

Congress must prioritize passing paid sick leave and permanent paid family and medical leave, particularly to support the lowest-income earners. Several proposals—including the American Families Plan , the Family and Medical Insurance Leave (FAMILY) Act , and the Healthy Families Act —have been introduced to address this issue. They include comprehensive paid family and medical leave, allowing workers to take time off work to recover from a health condition, care for a child or loved one, or grieve the loss of a loved one.

For more information on paid leave, see “ Quick Facts on Paid Family and Medical Leave ” and “ The Rising Cost of Inaction on Work-Family Policies .”

5. Increase worker power to rebalance the labor market

Union representation is a key protection against the exploitation of and discrimination against workers. Unions help their members to negotiate with employers for decent wages and benefits and to ensure that working people have a voice in U.S. democracy by promoting progressive priorities, including state and local minimum wage increases. Research shows that unions increase workers’ wages and benefits, boost economic mobility in future generations, decrease poverty, improve workers’ general well-being, and close gender and racial wage and wealth gaps . In the midst of mass layoffs as states shut down last year, unions were able to negotiate furlough and work-share arrangements with employers to help members keep their jobs. Yet in 2020, only 12 percent of essential workers were covered by a union contract, and workers seeking to unionize face an uphill battle.

Passing the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act would increase worker power by creating new penalties for employers who retaliate against workers trying to organize, banning forced arbitration agreements that prevent workers from pursuing collective litigation, adopting a new set of employer guidelines to prevent employees from being misclassified as independent contractors, and ensuring that workers can bargain in the modern economy. In addition, the Public Service Freedom to Negotiate Act would provide essential protections for millions of public sector workers to organize and bargain collectively. By ensuring that employers are responsible to their workers during the pandemic, they can share the benefits of recovery as the economy opens back up.

Furthermore, policymakers must build worker protections into at-will employment and just-in-time scheduling to ensure fair labor and workplace standards.

For more information on worker power, see “ American Workers Need Unions ,” “ Combating Pay Gaps with Unions and Expanded Collective Bargaining ,” and “ Unions Help the Middle Class, No Matter the Measure .”

6. Make permanent increases to the child tax credit and earned income tax credit

Two of the nation’s most effective anti-poverty tools, the child tax credit (CTC) and earned income tax credit (EITC), lifted 7.5 million Americans out of poverty in 2019.

Both programs provide a reliable source of income to parents, helping them meet immediate needs and plan for the future while making them more financially stable on a day-to-day basis. These programs also pay long-term dividends by improving infant and maternal health outcomes while boosting the educational, health, and income potential of future generations.

The American Rescue Plan Act was able to close some glaring holes within the tax credits by:

• Making the CTC fully refundable so low-income parents can get the full credit if their tax liability is less than their credit amount by paying them the difference
• Increasing the amount of the CTC to $3,600 for children under 6 and $3,000 for children ages 6 to 17
• Distributing the CTC monthly instead of all at once at tax time
• Nearly tripling the maximum EITC for workers who are not raising children in their home
• Revising the eligibility requirements to make EITC accessible to workers ages 19 to 24, as well as workers who are 65 and older
• Extending the credits or providing supplemental funding to Puerto Rico and other U.S. territories

However, these changes are temporary and will expire in 2022. Considering that the changes to the CTC alone were estimated to lift nearly 4 million children out of poverty , the best way to ensure that these credits continue to support low-wage workers and families with children is to make them permanent. Policymakers must also make the CTC as accessible as possible by removing barriers for immigrant families.

For more information on the CTC and EITC, see “ Now Is the Time To Permanently Expand the Child Tax Credit and Earned Income Tax Credit .”

7. Support pay equity to create a fair labor market

Equal pay ensures that workers are paid fairly. In 2019, women working full time, year-round earned just 82 cents for every $1 earned by their male counterparts. This pay gap is even worse for women of color: For every dollar earned by white, non-Hispanic men in 2019, Black women earned 63 cents, Native women earned 60 cents, and Latinas earned 55 cents. And while Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) women, on average, earned 85 percent of what white, non-Hispanic men earned, there were much wider gaps for many AAPI sub-populations. Disabled women also struggle with a pay gap , receiving 80 cents for every dollar earned by men with disabilities. If women in this country received equal pay to men, poverty for working women would be reduced by half and $512.6 billion would be added to the economy through additional wages.

What’s more, equal pay is essential to helping workers attain the stability and savings necessary to weather current and future crises. The pandemic has stalled women’s economic progress , as a lack of access to child care and paid leave, coupled with mass job losses, has forced many women out of the workforce entirely, exacerbating the gender wage gap . For example, mothers of young children have lost jobs at three times the rate of fathers during the crisis. This is on top of ever-present compounding factors such as bias and discrimination that may deflate women’s earnings.

Passing the Paycheck Fairness Act would enhance existing equal pay protections, further combat discriminatory practices, and better hold employers accountable for pay discrimination. Pandemic or not, securing equal pay has always been essential to the economic security of women and families.

For more information on pay equity, see “ Quick Facts About the Gender Wage Gap ” and “ When Women Lose All the Jobs: Essential Actions for a Gender-Equitable Recovery .”

8. Invest in affordable, high-quality child care and early childhood education

More than half of all Americans live in a  child care desert , where child care shortages lead to waiting lists, job disruptions, and fewer mothers in the paid labor force. Child care in the United States is prohibitively expensive, with infant and toddler care often costing between $800 and $1,230 a month . While there are subsidies for low-income families, in most states, they reach fewer than 1 in 10 eligible children under the age of 6. As a result, low-income families can spend more than  one-third of their income on child care just to be able to work.

Not surprisingly, the pandemic has eviscerated child care across the United States. About  700,000 parents left the workforce in 2020 to care for young children who were not able to go to school or have access to child care. Since then, only half of the nearly 400,000 child care jobs lost at the start of the pandemic have returned, leading to a 144 percent increase in the number of parents who have missed work to care for children compared with 2019.

The $39 billion for subsidized child care that was already included in the American Rescue Plan will help providers recover from a year of unprecedented revenue losses, but additional funding is needed to expand these services to everyone who needs them. The American Families Plan would make significant investments in  universal preschool for 3- and 4-year-olds , which would help more struggling families obtain the child care they need to work, better meeting their families’ basic needs and building future economic stability. The plan would also cap child care costs for low- and moderate-income families at 7 percent of their income, making it far more affordable and manageable as they juggle other needs.

Another bill currently introduced in Congress, the Child Care for Working Families Act (CCWFA), would ensure free or affordable child care for 76 percent of working families with children under the age of 6, expanding quality care for millions of families. As Congress deliberates future funding, it must invest in affordable, high-quality child care and early education, providing parents with the means to foster family security and healthy child development.

For more information on child care and early childhood education, see “ Understanding the True Cost of Child Care for Infants and Toddlers ,” “ Working Families Are Spending Big Money on Child Care ,” and “ Saving Child Care Means Preserving Jobs and Supporting Working Families and Small Businesses .”

9. Expand access to health care

Since it was signed into law in 2010, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) has expanded access to high-quality, affordable health coverage for millions of Americans , especially those with preexisting conditions . Today, 31 million Americans are enrolled in coverage through the ACA marketplaces or the law’s expansion of Medicaid. However, 12 states continue to refuse to expand their Medicaid programs to cover adults making up to 138 percent of the federal poverty guideline —placing a heavy burden on families already on the brink. About 2.2 million uninsured people are without an affordable option for health insurance because they live in nonexpansion states and have incomes too low to qualify for marketplace premium tax credits.

Expanding Medicaid would mean more than just access to health care; it would give people financial protection from unexpected medical costs and free up limited household income for other basic needs such as paying rent and putting food on the table. Increases in Medicaid enrollment are associated with reduced rates of medical debt and other unpaid bills among low-income individuals. Studies also link Medicaid coverage to improved access to health care services, greater financial security, lower mortality rates , reduced racial health care disparities , and lower rates of eviction .

While the American Rescue Plan included increased federal Medicaid funding for two years as an incentive to encourage more states to expand their programs, it is unlikely that the remaining nonexpansion states will take up this option. Congress has an opportunity to enact federal policies that ensure people in the Medicaid coverage gap can gain access to affordable, comprehensive health insurance.

For more information on Medicaid, see “ The Pandemic and Economic Crisis Are Wake-Up Call for State Medicaid Expansion ,” “ Expanding Medicaid in All States Would Save 14,000 Lives Per Year ,” and “ Building On the ACA To Reduce Health Insurance Disruptions .”

10. Reform the criminal justice system and enact policies that support successful reentry

Robust changes are needed to restructure and reform a U.S. criminal justice system that incarcerates more of its citizens than any other country in the world , holding about 2.3 million people in prisons, jails, and other correctional facilities. If not for the rapid increase in mass incarceration since 1980, poverty rates would have dropped by 20 percent by 2009. The impact on communities of color is particularly staggering: Black and Latino men are, respectively, 6 times and 2.5 times more likely to be incarcerated than white men; and Black and Latina women are, respectively, 1.7 times and 1.3 times more likely to be incarcerated than white women. Likewise, Native Americans are incarcerated at more than twice the rate of white Americans.

Mass incarceration is a key cause and consequence of poverty. When a person is incarcerated, their family must find a way to make ends meet without a necessary source of income. Additionally, even a minor criminal record or an arrest without a conviction can prevent an individual from getting a job, housing, or certain benefits, contributing to cycles of multigenerational poverty . Currently, there are more than 44,000 legal sanctions that create barriers to housing for people with criminal records. Moreover, various restrictions prohibit justice-involved individuals’ access to SNAP and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) benefits if they have prior felony drug convictions, unless additional requirements are fulfilled. This can include being required to wait for months after completion of a sentence to be considered eligible or to participate in mandatory periodic drug testing, both of which are unnecessary obstacles that hinder successful reentry.

Sentencing reform is essential to addressing mass incarceration. Policymakers should also implement clean slate laws , which help expand access to automated criminal record clearing, and explore alternatives to incarceration, such as diversion programs for individuals with mental health and substance abuse challenges. Additionally, it is critical to review the role of policing in public safety, health, and well-being. There has been a recent move across the nation to divert away from police certain health, public safety, and community care emergency responses and funds—such as responding to people experiencing a mental health crisis—that better fit agencies and social workers. Barriers to employment, housing, education, and public assistance must also be removed. A decades-old criminal record should not consign an individual to a life of poverty .

For more information on criminal justice, see “ A Criminal Record Shouldn’t Be a Life Sentence to Poverty ” and “ Criminal Records Create Cycles of Multigenerational Poverty .”

11. Invest in affordable, accessible housing

One in 4 renter households in the United States is extremely low income, and half of renters are moderately or severely cost-burdened , meaning that they pay more than a third to half of their income on rent and utilities.

Overall, Native American, Black, and Latinx renters are more likely to be extremely low income . A long history of racially targeted policies has worsened housing security for people of color, who are more cost-burdened and face more discrimination in obtaining and maintaining housing. Facing and experiencing eviction, which also disproportionately affects communities of color—and Black women in particular—can lead to negative mental and physical health outcomes , difficulty obtaining future housing , and exacerbated financial hardship, all of which can fuel cycles of multigenerational poverty .

Disparities have persisted during the pandemic, as renters of color and disabled renters report higher rates of housing insecurity. These and other measures of housing insecurity contribute to the ongoing homelessness crises and continue to put the most vulnerable community members at risk. Rates of homelessness, and particularly chronic homelessness , are on the rise. The 2020 point-in-time count conducted by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development estimated that more than 580,000 people experience homelessness on any given night, a number that is likely a vast undercount. Strikingly, of those experiencing homelessness, nearly 25 percent are people with disabilities.

Investments in permanent housing programs, such as Housing First and a national Homes Guarantee , should be supported to provide a path for people experiencing homelessness or living in transitional housing to obtain and maintain long-term, stable housing, while also addressing the shortage of more than 7 million affordable housing units .

Policymakers should also increase renter protections by guaranteeing a right to counsel , investing in tenant-landlord mediation , regulating the use of background checks in rental housing applications, and making the Housing Choice Voucher and rental assistance programs an entitlement that does not sunset. Furthermore, policymakers should prohibit source-of-income discrimination , which creates barriers to obtaining rental housing for households that receive housing vouchers. To further prevent housing discrimination and build more inclusive communities, the disparate impact rule under the Fair Housing Act should be reinstated alongside the revised Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rule, which is currently set to go into effect at the end of July .

For more information on housing, see “ The Pandemic Has Exacerbated Housing Instability for Renters of Color ” and “ Recognizing and Addressing Housing Insecurity for Disabled Renters .”

12. Modernize the Supplemental Security Insurance program

Supplemental Security Insurance (SSI) is an essential anti-poverty program for the disability community, providing monthly cash assistance for those with little or no income and assets. Nearly 8 million people received benefits in May 2021, and in 2019, 57 percent of recipients reported SSI being their sole source of income. However, little has been done to maintain this program, leaving millions of disabled people farther and farther behind.

Numerous policy adjustments could update SSI and help pull the disability community out of poverty. Raising the minimum benefit to at least the poverty level is a great first step. In 2021, the maximum benefit for individuals was raised to $794 per month , which is well below the federal poverty guideline of $1,073 per month . Asset limits also need to be increased, as they have not been updated since 1989 . Currently, individuals and couples are allowed limits of $2,000 and $3,000, respectively, in assets, such as money in joint or personal bank accounts , investments in stocks or bonds, and life insurance policies with a total face value of more than $1,500. Asset limits have become deadly poverty traps , particularly in times of disaster such as the pandemic, as they prevent recipients from being able to save, forcing them into economic precarity. Other rule changes, including the elimination of penalties for in-kind support from family and friends and an update to income disregards that have not been changed since the program began in 1974 would go a long way toward ensuring that this program remains a strong safety net for disabled adults and children.

The continued disinvestment in SSI has essentially reduced its efficacy, putting disabled people on the brink of poverty and destitution. Prioritizing the economic security of such marginalized communities helps ensure the security of all communities. Congress must act now to help the disability community not only weather the pandemic but also build a stable financial future.

For more information on SSI, see “ A Deadly Poverty Trap: Asset Limits in the Time of the Coronavirus .”

It is possible for America to dramatically cut poverty. From 1959 to 1973, a strong economy, along with investments in family economic security, helped cut the U.S. poverty rate in half . Investments in nutrition assistance have resulted in improvements in educational attainment, food insecurity, and health outcomes. Expansions of public health insurance have contributed to lower infant mortality rates and better overall health and health care access for children at a reduced out-of-pocket cost. Rental assistance programs have been shown to decrease stress, eviction, and homelessness among low-income renters. And expansions in tax credits for poor families have helped boost incomes for the next generation, on top of improving educational and health outcomes.

Poverty is preventable. America has the power and ability to ensure that all people residing within its borders can build financial stability and live their lives with dignity. The policy priorities detailed above are essential for preventing poverty and promoting economic opportunity for all. As a nation, we simply need to build the political will to enact these intersectional policies so that all residents can attain their American dream.

The Latest Poverty, Income, and Food Insecurity Data Reveal Continuing Racial Disparities

Dec 21, 2022

Kyle Ross , Justin Dorazio

The authors would like to thank Lily Roberts, Mara Pellittieri, Mia Ives-Rublee, Jaboa Lake, Areeba Haider, Justin Schweitzer, Seth Hanlon, Diana Boesch, Robin Bleiweis, Karla Walter, Laura McSorley, Rasheed Malik, Emily Gee, and CAP’s Editorial team for their contributions.

The positions of American Progress, and our policy experts, are independent, and the findings and conclusions presented are those of American Progress alone. A full list of supporters is available here . American Progress would like to acknowledge the many generous supporters who make our work possible.

Arohi Pathak

Former Director, Policy

Policy Analyst, Inclusive Economy

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7 Ways You Can Help Fight Poverty in Your Community

• CommonBond Communities
• October 5, 2022

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, 7.8 million people have fallen into poverty—the biggest jump in a single year since the government began tracking poverty 60 years ago. It’s easy to think about poverty as a national crisis that is bigger than you, but there are actually lots of things you can do to influence this systemic problem right in your own community. CommonBond works to help fight poverty through housing in Minneapolis, Milwaukee, and Iowa, and we’ve outlined some examples of how you can help fight poverty in your community .

How to Help Poverty Issues in Your Community

1. challenge ideas and assumptions.

Whether you have preconceived notions about poverty within your community, or as a concept in general, it’s important to challenge those assumptions so you aren’t unintentionally spreading harmful biases. One common misconception, for example, is that people experiencing homelessness choose not to work. This misconception is incredibly harmful because it negates the many uncontrollable and systemic conditions that can cause housing instability or poverty. In reality, there are many factors people have to deal with that make it hard to find employment, including loss of affordable housing , inequitable access to training and tools, and mental illness.

If you recognize this myth, be sure to challenge it. Want to go a step further with how to help the poor and fight poverty in your community? Learn about the specific poverty issues your town or city faces; this will educate you on matters and enable you to apply context and critical thinking while pushing back against assumptions and myths.

2. Create awareness/get informed

Poverty is in every community, so it’s important to know where the issues lie within your own. Get informed about the resources that are already available and those that are still needed. There are local groups doing this work that could use your help—you can then do your part in getting the word out and listening to these community experts about where you can be helpful in fighting poverty in your community. A great resource in Minneapolis, for example, is the Twin Cities Mutual Aid Map . This map shows a myriad of organizations and mutual aid efforts around the Twin Cities area that are accepting donations or other resources.

3.  Donate funds and time & find volunteer opportunities

One of the most straightforward ways to help fight poverty in your community is to donate funds to organizations whose mission it is to end these economic disparities. No amount of money is too small or too large. As these donations add up, organizations can put the funds toward fixing housing inequalities, education gaps, food insecurities and more.

Another helpful option is to p artner with local organizations that help the community by donating time. Whether it’s helping out in a food kitchen or working with children after school to get their homework done, there are ways that don’t require money that can still make an impact. We’ve created a volunteer list that you can join to support our work, whether you’re in Minneapolis, Milwaukee, or Iowa.

Fighting Poverty in Your Community is as Simple as Donating a Few Dollars.

Donate Today!      

4. Make kits or fundraise for those experiencing homelessness in your neighborhood

In addition to donating time, you can also reach out to local organizational leaders to see what specifically folks who are experiencing poverty in their communities need. To ensure your donations have the most impact, listen to these community experts. Be sure to donate items that are specifically being asked for, not just what you have in your pantry! Use that info to create meal kits or baskets full of food or house cleaning products that will keep people stocked up on essentials for a while, and give it to local organizations and community experts to distribute.

Another option is to hold fundraisers. How about fighting poverty in your community by throwing a pizza party where the proceeds go to local shelters or other organizations that provide critical services? Get bigger local businesses to donate services for a silent auction. Doing fundraisers like this can be a fun way to bring people together for an important cause.

5. Attend demonstrations or rallies to increase awareness

Another way to create and increase awareness and help fight poverty in your community is to attend events like demonstrations and rallies. These may be block parties or parades or any other kind of peaceful event that will grab the community’s attention and turn it toward fighting against systemic poverty. There are organizations that regularly hold events that both raise awareness, as well as stand in solidarity with those affected by poverty—and by joining their work, you may learn how to be a better advocate.

6. Create jobs

If you own a business or an organization in the community, look for areas you could use some help with. Many people living in poverty may not have had access to higher education or specialty certifications, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have skills to contribute. Identifying areas of opportunities within your business or organization, expanding your recruiting pool, and paying a living wage is one way to make a change to help neighbors living in poverty in your community.

DONATE TODAY!

7. Provide paid leave and paid sick days

If you’re a business owner within your community, offer paid leave and paid sick days. Although it’s an investment for you, taking a day off every now and then without pay can seriously hurt some of your employees, especially if they’re under the poverty line. Your employees are going to get sick from time to time—let them rest easy by offering paid sick leave. For staff who are earning under the area median income, consider offering stipends for childcare, or even consider an on-site childcare option to create an environment where working families don’t have to choose between income and childcare.

CommonBond Can Help

Poverty affects more people than you think, and as you now know, there are many ways to help fight poverty in your community. Serving your community by donating time or money is a valuable way to get involved. Our team at CommonBond wants to help you in your fight, whether you’re in Minneapolis, Milwaukee, or Iowa. Get in touch to learn more about how to help the poor and fight poverty in your community today!

Donate Today!

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390 Poverty Essay Topic Ideas & Examples

• 📑 Aspects to Cover in a Poverty Essay

Students who learn economics, politics, and social sciences are often required to write a poverty essay as part of their course. While everyone understands the importance of this topic, it can be hard to decide what to write about. Read this post to find out the aspects that you should cover in your essay on poverty.

🏆 Best Poverty Topics & Free Essay Examples

👍 powerful topics on poverty and inequality, 🎓 simple & easy topics related to poverty, 📌 interesting poverty essay examples, ⭐ strong poverty-related topics, 🥇 unique poverty topics for argumentative essay, ❓ research questions about poverty.

Topics related to poverty and inequality might seem too broad. There are so many facts, factors, and aspects you should take into consideration. However, we all know that narrowing down a topic is one of the crucial steps when working on an outline and thesis statement. You should be specific enough to select the right arguments for your argumentative essay or dissertation. Below, you will find some aspects to include in your poverty essay.

Poverty Statistics

First of all, it would be beneficial to include some background information on the issue. Statistics on poverty in your country or state can help you to paint a picture of the problem. Look for official reports on poverty and socioeconomic welfare, which can be found on government websites. While you are writing this section, consider the following:

• What is the overall level of poverty in your country or state?
• Has the prevalence of poverty changed over time? If yes, how and why?
• Are there any groups or communities where poverty is more prevalent than in the general population? What are they?

Causes of Poverty

If you look at poverty essay titles, the causes of poverty are a popular theme among students. While some people may think that poverty occurs because people are lazy and don’t want to work hard, the problem is much more important than that. Research books and scholarly journal articles on the subject with these questions in mind:

• Why do some groups of people experience poverty more often than others?
• What are the historical causes of poverty in your country?
• How is poverty related to other social issues, such as discrimination, immigration, and crime?
• How do businesses promote or reduce poverty in the community?

Consequences of Poverty

Many poverty essay examples also consider the consequences of poverty for individuals and communities. This theme is particularly important if you study social sciences or politics. Here are some questions that may give you ideas for this section:

• How is the psychological well-being of individuals affected by poverty?
• How is poverty connected to crime and substance abuse?
• How does poverty affect individuals’ access to high-quality medical care and education?
• What is the relationship between poverty and world hunger?

Government Policies

Governments of most countries have policies in place to reduce poverty and help those in need. In your essay, you may address the policies used in your state or country or compare several different governments in terms of their approaches to poverty. Here is what you should think about:

• What are some examples of legislation aimed at reducing poverty?
• Do laws on minimum wage help to prevent and decrease poverty? Why or why not?
• How do governments help people who are poor to achieve higher levels of social welfare?
• Should governments provide financial assistance to those in need? Why or why not?

Solutions to Poverty

Solutions to poverty are among the most popular poverty essay topics, and you will surely find many sample papers and articles on this subject. This is because poverty is a global issue that must be solved to facilitate social development. Considering these questions in your poverty essay conclusion or main body will help you in getting an A:

• What programs or policies proved to be effective in reducing poverty locally?
• Is there a global solution to poverty that would be equally effective in all countries?
• How can society facilitate the reduction of poverty?
• What solutions would you recommend to decrease and prevent poverty?

Covering a few of these aspects in your essay will help you demonstrate the in-depth understanding and analysis required to earn a high mark. Before you start writing, have a look around our website for more essay titles, tips, and interesting topics!

• Wordsworth’s Vision of Childhood in His Poems “We Are Seven” and “Alice Fell or Poverty” Specifically, the joint publication he released in 1798 known as “Lyrical Ballads” are considered the most important publications in the rise of the Romantic literature in the UK and Europe.
• Poverty Research Proposal To justify this, the recent and most current statistics from the Census Bureau shows that the level and rate of poverty in USA is increasing, with minority ethnic groups being the most disadvantaged.
• Analysis of Theodore Dalrymple’s “What Is Poverty?” With ethical arguments from Burnor, it can be argued that Dalrymple’s statements are shallow and based on his values and not the experience of those he is judging.
• Poverty: A Sociological Imagination Perspective I was raised in a nuclear family, where my mum was a housewife, and my father worked in a local hog farm as the overall manager.
• Max Weber’s Thoughts on Poverty Weber has contributed to the exploration of the origins of poverty and the impact of religions on the attitude to it.
• Poverty in Africa These pictures have been published online to show the world the gravity of the poverty situation in the African continent. The pictures represent the suffering of majority of the African people as a result of […]
• Poverty and the Environment The human population affects the environment negatively due to poverty resulting to environmental degradation and a cycle of poverty. Poverty and the environment are interlinked as poverty leads to degradation of the environment.
• Poverty in the World In this paper, we will be looking at the situation of poverty in the world, its causes and the efforts of the international organizations to manage the same.
• Children Living in Poverty and Education The presence of real subjects like children is a benefit for the future of the nation and a free education option for poor families to learn something new and even use it if their children […]
• Microcredit: A Tool for Poverty Alleviation In recognition of the role that microfinance’s can play in the eradication of poverty and hence the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals, The UN duped 2005 as the “year of microcredit”.
• Relationship Between Crime Rates and Poverty This shows that the strength of the relationship between the crime index and people living below the line of poverty is.427.
• “The Singer Solution to World Poverty” by Peter Singer The article “The Singer Solution to World Poverty” by author Peter Singer attempts to provide a workable solution to the world poverty problem.
• What Causes Poverty in the World One of the major factors that have contributed to poverty in given areas of the world is overpopulation. Environmental degradation in many parts of the world has led to the increase of poverty in the […]
• Poverty Alleviation and Sustainable Development The research focuses on the causes of poverty and the benefits of poverty alleviation in achieving sustainable development. One of the causes of poverty is discrimination and social inequality.
• The Singer Solution to World Poverty: Arguments Against The article compares the lives of people in the developed world represented by America and that of developing world represented by Brazil; It is about a school teacher who sells a young boy for adoption […]
• Social Issues of Families in Poverty With the tightened budget, parents of the families living in poverty struggle to make ends meet, and in the course of their struggles, they experience many stresses and depressions.
• Poverty Simulation Reflection and Its Influence on Life Something that stood out to me during the process is probably the tremendous emotional and psychological impact of poverty on a person’s wellbeing.
• Cause and Effect of Poverty For example, the disparities in income and wealth are considered as a sign of poverty since the state is related to issues of scarcity and allocation of resources and influence.
• The Philippines’ Unemployment, Inequality, Poverty However, despite the strong emphasis of the government on income equality and poverty reduction along with the growth of GDP, both poverty and economic and social inequality remain persistent in the Philippines.
• Global Poverty: Famine, Affluence, and Morality In the article Famine, Affluence, and Morality, Michael Slote contends that rich people have a moral obligation to contribute more to charities.
• The Problem of Poverty in Bob Marley’s “No Woman, No Cry” To see the situation from the perspective of its social significance, it is necessary to refer to Mills’ concept of sociological imagination and to the division of problems and issues into personal and social ones.
• Poverty as a Great Social Problem and Its Causes The human capital model assumes that the inadequate incomes of the working poor are the result of characteristics of the labor market rather than the inadequacy of the poor.
• Community Work: Helping People in Poverty The first project would be water project since you find that in most villages water is a problem, hence $100 would go to establishing this project and it’s out of these water then the women […]
• Poverty Effects on Child Development and Schooling To help children from low-income families cope with poverty, interventions touching in the child’s development and educational outcomes are essential. Those programs campaign against the effects of poverty among children by providing basic nutritional, academic, […]
• Poverty in Urban Areas The main reason for escalation of the problem of poverty is urban areas is because the intricate problems of urban poverty are considered too small to attract big policies.
• Aspects of Global Poverty There are arguments that have been put forth in regard to the causes of poverty in various nations with some people saying that the governments in various nations are there to be blamed for their […]
• Poverty in Bambara’s The Lesson and Danticat’s A Wall of Fire Rising It is important to note the fact that culture-based poverty due to discrimination of the past or political ineffectiveness of the nation can have a profound ramification in the lives of its victims.
• Intro to Sociology: Poverty It is challenging to pinpoint the actual and not mythological reasons for the presence of poverty in America. The former can be summed up as a “culture of poverty”, which suggests that the poor see […]
• The End of Poverty Philippe Diaz’s documentary, The End of Poverty, is a piece that attempts to dissect the causes of the huge economic inequalities that exist between countries in the Northern Hemisphere and the Southern Hemisphere.
• Is Poverty a Choice or a Generational Curse? The assumption that poverty is a choice persists in public attitudes and allows policy-makers to absolve themselves of any responsibility for ensuring the well-being of the lower socioeconomic stratum of society.
• Poverty and Wealth in “The Lesson” by Toni Cade Bambara This theme contributes to the meaning of “The Lesson” because the narrator illustrates the differences that exist amid the prosperous and poor kids in the fictitious story.
• Poverty and Its Effect on Adult Health Poverty in the UK is currently above the world average, as more than 18% of the population lives in poverty. In 2020, 7% of the UK population lived in extreme poverty and 11% lived in […]
• Children in Poverty in Kampong Ayer, Brunei Part of the reason is likely malnutrition that results from the eating or consumption patterns of the families and also dependency on the children to help out with the family or house chores.
• Poverty and Diseases A usual line of reasoning would be that low income is the main cause of health-related problems among vulnerable individuals. Such results that the relationship between mental health and poverty is, in fact, straightforward.
• Poverty, Government and Unequal Distribution of Wealth in Philippines The author of the book Poverty And The Critical Security Agenda, Eadie, added: Quantitative analyses of poverty have become more sophisticated over the years to be sure, yet remain problematic and in certain ways rooted […]
• Poverty and Global Food Crisis: Food and Agriculture Model Her innovative approach to the issue was to measure food shortages in calories as opposed to the traditional method of measuring in pounds and stones.
• The Connection Between Poverty and Mental Health Problems The daily struggle to earn a daily bread takes a toll on an individual mental health and contributes to mental health problem.
• The Problems of Poverty and Hunger Subsequently, the cause in this case serves as a path to a solution – more social programs are needed, and wealthy citizens should be encouraged to become beneficiaries for the hungry.
• Poverty in Rural and Urban Areas My main focus is on articles explaining the sources of poverty in rural and urban areas and the key difference between the two.
• Poverty Areas and Effects on Juvenile Delinquency The desire to live a better life contributes to the youths engaging in crimes, thus the increase in cases of juvenile delinquencies amid low-income families. The studies indicate that the fear of poverty is the […]
• Concept of Poverty The main difference between this definition and other definitions of poverty highlighted in this paper is the broad understanding of the concept.
• Consumerism: Affecting Families Living in Poverty in the United States Hence, leading to the arising of consumerism protection acts and policies designed to protect consumers from dishonest sellers and producers, which indicates the high degree of consumer’s ignorance, and hence failure to make decisions of […]
• The Causes of Poverty Concentration in the Modern World Even though the average income of people living in developed countries is above the poverty line, the nations still experience concentrations of poverty especially when it comes to income inequality.
• Global Poverty: The Ethical Dilemma Unfortunately, a significant obstacle to such global reforms is that many economic systems are based on the concept of inequality and exploitation.
• Analysis of a Social Problem: Poverty Furthermore, the World Bank predicts that both the number of people and the percentage of the population living in extreme poverty will increase in 2020 and 2021 due to the coronavirus outbreak.
• Reflective Analysis of Poverty It can be further classified into absolute poverty where the affected do not have the capability to make ends meet, and relative poverty which refer to the circumstances under which the afflicted do not have […]
• Poor Kids: The Impact of Poverty on Youth Nevertheless, the environment of constant limitations shapes the minds of children, their dreams and the paths they pursue in life, and, most importantly, what they make of themselves.
• Poverty and Hip-Hop: Notorious B.I.G.’s “Juicy” Notorious B.I.G.’s music video for the song “Juicy” was chosen for the analysis because the rapper explored the theme of poverty that deeply affected his life.
• Poverty and Challenges in Finding Solutions It is obvious, that an ideal solution to the issue of poverty is distribution of these funds between people in need and improvement of current situation.
• African Poverty: To Aid, or Not to Aid In my opinion, granting educational aid to Africa is one of the best strategies required by African economies and eradicates poverty.
• Environmental Degradation and Poverty It is however important to understand the causes of the environmental degradation and the ways to reduce them, which will promote the improvement of the environmental quality.
• Freedom from Poverty as a Human Right and the UN Declaration of Human Rights This reveals the nature of the interrelatedness of the whole boy of human rights and the need to address human rights in that context.
• Poverty Through a Sociological Lens Poverty-stricken areas, such as slums, rural villages, and places hit by disasters, lack the required economic activities to improve the employment and wealth status of the people.
• Poverty: The Main Causes and Factors Because of the constant process of societal development, the concept of poverty changes rapidly, adapting to the new standards of modern human life.
• Inequality and Poverty Relationship To begin with, it is necessary to define the concepts of poverty and inequality. As of inequality, it is the difference in access to income, power, education, and whatever.
• Global Health Governance and Poverty The aim of this paper is to outline the importance of health in global governance and discuss the issue of poverty in less-developed nations as a significant challenge to the global health system.
• The Myth of the Culture of Poverty Unfortunately, rather all of the stereotypes regarding poor people are widespread in many societies and this has served to further increase the problem of generational poverty. Poor people are regarded to be in the state […]
• Poverty in Saudi Arabia It is expected that through the various facts and arguments presented in this paper.the reason behind the high poverty rate within Saudi Arabia despite its oil wealth as compared to its neighbors will become clear […]
• Poverty in America Rural and Urban Difference (Education) The understanding of the needs of the poverty American rural and urban schools is the first step on the way to reforming the system of elementary and secondary education.
• How Poverty Contributes to Poor Heath The results show that poverty is the main cause of poor health. The study was purposed to assess the effect of poverty in determining the health status of households.
• Global Poverty Project: A Beacon of Hope in the Fight Against Extreme Poverty The organization works with partners worldwide to increase awareness and understanding of global poverty and inspire people to take action to end it.
• The Causes of an Increase in Poverty in Atlanta, Georgia The key causes of the high poverty rise in the city include housing policies and instabilities, the lack of transit services and public transportation infrastructure in suburban areas, and childhood poverty.
• Thistle Farms: Help for Women Who Are Affected by Poverty As I said in the beginning, millions of women need help and assistance from the community to overcome poverty and heal emotional wounds caused by abuse. You can purchase a variety of its home and […]
• Median Household Incomes and Poverty Levels The patterns of poverty in the Denver urban area show that rates are higher in the inner suburb and the core city and lower in the outer suburb.
• Poverty: The American Challenge One of the main problems in the world is the problem of poverty, which means the inability to provide the simplest and most affordable living conditions for most people in a given country.
• The Poverty Issue From a Sociological Perspective The core of the perspective is the idea that poverty is a system in which multiple elements are intertwined and create outcomes linked to financial deficits.
• Saving the Planet by Solving Poverty The data is there to make the necessary links, which are needed when it comes to the economic variations and inadequate environmental impacts of climate change can be distinguished on a worldwide scale.
• Anti-Poverty Programs From the Federal Government The programs provide financial assistance to low-income individuals and families to cover basic needs like housing and food. The anti-poverty programs that have been most effective in reducing poverty rates in the United States are […]
• Rural Development, Economic Inequality and Poverty The percentage of the rural population is lower for developed countries, including the United States and the United Kingdom. Thus, the objective of the proposal is to determine how the inhabitants of the country in […]
• Global Poverty: Ways of Combating For example, one of such initiatives is social assistance and social protection programs, which ensure the safety and creation of various labor programs that will help increase the number of the working population.
• Poverty and Homelessness as a Global Social Problem What makes the task of defining poverty particularly difficult is the discrepancy in the distribution of social capital and, therefore, the resulting differences in the understanding of what constitutes poverty, particularly, where the line should […]
• Poverty: Aspects of Needs Assessment The target neighborhood and population for the following analysis are women of reproductive age, defined as 15 to 49 years, in Elmhurst and Corona, Queens. 2, and the percentage of births to women aged over […]
• What Is Poverty in the United States? Estimates of the amount of income required to meet necessities serve as the foundation for both the official and supplemental poverty measurements.
• The Caribbean Culture: Energy Security and Poverty Issues Globally, Latin American and the Caribbean also has the most expensive energy products and services because of fuel deprivation in the Caribbean and the Pacific regions.
• How to Overcome Poverty and Discrimination As such, to give a chance to the “defeated” children and save their lives, as Alexie puts it, society itself must change the rules so that everyone can have access to this ticket to success. […]
• Poverty and Homelessness in American Society It is connected with social segregation, stigmatization, and the inability of the person to improve their conditions of life. The problem of affordable housing and poverty among older adults is another problem that leads to […]
• Private Sector’s Role in Poverty Alleviation in Asia The ambition of Asia to become the fastest-growing economic region worldwide has led to a rapid rise of enterprises in the private sector.
• Connection of Poverty and Education The economy of the United States has been improving due to the efforts that have been made to ensure that poverty will not prevent individuals and families from having access to decent education.
• The Opportunity for All Program: Poverty Reduction The limiting factors of the program may be the actions of the population itself, which will not participate in the employment program because of the realized benefits.
• Early Childhood Financial Support and Poverty The mentioned problem is a direct example of such a correlation: the general poverty level and the well-being of adults are connected with the early children’s material support.
• Discussion: Poverty and Healthcare One of the research questions necessary to evaluate this issue is “How do ethical theories apply to the issue?” Another critical research question worth exploring is “Which cultural values and norms influence the problem?” These […]
• Explosive Growth of Poverty in America The three richest Americans now own 250 billion USD, approximately the same amount of combined wealth as the bottom 50 percent of the country. Wealth inequality is a disturbing issue that needs to be at […]
• “Life on a Shoestring – American Kids Living in Poverty” by Claycomb Life on a Shoestring – American Kids Living in Poverty highlights the widening disparity between the poor and the wealthy in America and how the economic systems are set up to benefit the rich and […]
• Decreasing Poverty With College Enrollment Program In order to achieve that, it is necessary, first and foremost, to increase the high school students’ awareness of the financial aid programs, possibilities of dual enrollment, and the overall reality of higher education.
• Reducing Poverty in the North Miami Beach Community The proposed intervention program will focus on the students in the last semester of the 9th and 10th grades and the first semester of the 11th and 12th grades attending the client schools.
• Food Banks Board Members and Cycle of Poverty What this suggests is that a large portion of the leadership within these collectives aim to provide assistance and food but not to challenge the current system that fosters the related issues of poverty, unemployment, […]
• Poverty as a Social Problem in Burundi The rationale for studying poverty as a social problem in Burundi is that it will help to combat poverty through the advocacy plan at the end of this paper.
• Poverty: Subsidizing Programs Subsidizing programs are considered welfare and net initiatives that the government takes to aid low-income families and individuals affected by poverty.
• Is Globalization Reducing Poverty and Inequality? & How to Judge Globalism The article Is Globalization Reducing Poverty and Inequality by Robert Hunter Wade explores the phenomenon of globalization and its influence on the poverty and inequality ratios all over the world.
• The Problem of Poverty in Chad Thus, the study of the causes of poverty in the Republic of Chad will help to form a complete understanding of the problem under study and find the most effective ways to solve it.
• “Poverty, Toxic Stress, and Education…” Study by Kelly & Li Kelly and Li are concerned with the lack of research about poverty and toxic stress affecting the neurodevelopment of preterm children.
• Poverty in “A Modest Proposal” by Swift The high number of children born to poor families presents significant problems for a country.”A Modest Proposal” is a satirical essay by Jonathan Swift that proposes a solution to the challenge facing the kingdom.
• Life Below the Poverty Line in the US The major problem with poverty in the US is that the number of people living below the poverty threshold is gradually increasing despite the economic growth of the country. SNAP is not considered to be […]
• The Relationship Between Single-Parent Households and Poverty The given literature review will primarily focus on the theoretical and empirical aspects of the relationship between single-parent households and poverty, as well as the implications of the latter on mental health issues, such as […]
• Child Poverty in the United States The causes of child poverty in the United States cannot be separated from the grounds of adult poverty. Thus, it is essential to take care of the well-being of children living in poverty.
• Poverty in New York City, and Its Reasons The poverty rate for seniors in New York is twice the poverty rate in the United States. New York City’s blacks and Hispanics have a much higher poverty rate than whites and Asians in the […]
• “The Hidden Reason for Poverty…” by Haugen It is also noteworthy that some groups of people are specifically vulnerable and join the arrays of those living in poverty.
• Juvenile Violent Crime and Children Below Poverty The effect of this trend is that the number of children below poverty will continue to be subjected to the juvenile and criminal justice systems.
• Poverty and Homelessness as Social Problem The qualifications will include a recommendation from the community to ensure that the person is open to help and willing to be involved in the neighborhood of Non-Return.
• Poverty Effects and How They Are Handled Quality jobs will provide income to the younger people and women in the community. The focus on developing and facilitating small and medium-sized enterprises is a great strategy but more needs to be done in […]
• Feminization of Poverty and Governments’ Role in Solving the Problem However, women form the greatest percentage of the poor, and the problem continues to spread. Furthermore, the public supports available are inaccessible and inadequate to cater for women’s needs.
• Free-Trade Policies and Poverty Level in Bangladesh The purpose of this paper is to examine the way in which the end of the quota system and introduction of a free-trade system for the garment industry in Bangladesh has impacted on poverty in […]
• Poverty and Risks Associated With Poverty Adolescents that are at risk of being malnourished can be consulted about the existing programs that provide free food and meals to families in poverty.
• Poverty and Inequality Reduction Strategies Thus, comprehending the causes of poverty and inequalities, understanding the role of globalization, and learning various theoretical arguments can lead to the establishment of appropriate policy recommendations.
• International Aid – Poverty Inc This film, the research on the impact of aid on the states receiving it, and the economic outcomes of such actions suggest that aid is a part of the problem and not a solution to […]
• Poverty Effects on American Children and Adolescents The extent to which poor financial status influences the wellbeing of the young children and adolescents is alarming and needs immediate response from the community.
• Progress and Poverty Book by Henry George George wrote the book following his recognition that poverty is the central puzzle of the 20th century. Thus, George’s allegation is inconsistent with nature because the number of living organisms can increase to the extent […]
• Vicious Circle of Poverty in Brazil The vicious circle of poverty is “a circular constellation of forces that tend to act and react on each other in such a way that the country in poverty maintains its poor state”.
• Global Education as the Key Tool for Addressing the Third World Poverty Issue Global education leads to improvements in the state economy and finances. Global education helps resolve the unemployment problem.
• Poverty, Partner Abuse, and Women’s Mental Health In general, the study aimed at investigating the interaction between poverty and the severity of abuse in women. The research question being studied in this article is how income intersects with partner violence and impacts […]
• America’s Shame: How Can Education Eradicate Poverty The primary focus of the article was global poverty, the flaws in the educational system, as well as the U.S.government’s role in resolving the problem.
• Global Poverty and Ways to Overcome It These are some of the strategies, the subsequent application of which would significantly reduce the level of poverty around the world.
• Social Work at Acacia Network: Poverty and Inequality Around the 1980s, the number of older adults was significantly increasing in society; the local government of New York established a home for the aged and was named Acacia Network. The supporting staff may bond […]
• Poverty and Sex Trafficking: Qualitative Systematic Review The proposed research question is to learn how the phenomenon of poverty is connected to sex trafficking. To investigate the relationship between the phenomenon of poverty and sex trafficking.
• Political Economy: Relationship Between Poverty, Inequality, and Nationalism The prevalence of nationalism leads to changes in the education system, as the government tries to justify the superiority of the country by altering the curriculum.
• End of Extreme Poverty Importantly, the ability to remain the owners of a substantial amount of accumulated wealth is the primary motivation for such individuals.
• The Problem of Poverty in the United States The problem of increasing poverty is one of the major political issues in the United States, which became especially agile after the appearance of the COVID-19 pandemic due to the difficult economic situation all over […]
• Poverty and Unemployment Due to Increased Taxation The government on its side defended the move while trying to justify the new measures’ benefits, a move that would still not benefit the country.
• Poverty as a Global Social Problem For example, the research shows that Kibera is the largest slum in the country, and this is where many people move to settle after losing hope of getting employed in towns.
• Researching the Problem of Poverty However, the rich people and the rich countries reduce poverty to some extent by providing jobs and markets to the poor, but the help is too little compared to the benefits they get thus accelerating […]
• Poverty, Social Class, and Intersectionality I prefer the structural approach to the issue as I believe the created structures are responsible for the existence of diverse types of oppression.
• Wealth and Poverty: The Christian Teaching on Wealth and Poverty To illustrate the gap between the world’s richest and the world’s poorest, a recent UN publication reported that the wealth of the three richest persons in the world is greater than the combined wealth of […]
• Guns Do Not Kill, Poverty Does It is widely accepted that stricter gun control policies are instrumental in alleviating the problem, as they are supposed to reduce the rate of firearm-related deaths, limiting gun access to individuals at-risk of participating in […]
• Poverty’s Effects on Delinquency The economic status of people determines their social class and the manner in which they get their basic needs. Seeing these things and the kind of life rich people lead motivates the poor to commit […]
• The Criminalization of Poverty in Canada In this regard, with a special focus on Canada, the objective of this essay is to investigate how public policy has transformed alongside the public perception of social welfare reform.
• The Issue of Vicious Circle of Poverty in Brazil The persistence of poverty, regardless of the many shocks that every state receives in the normal course of its survival, raises the feeling that underdevelopment is a condition of equilibrium and that there are pressures […]
• Community Health Needs: Poverty Generally, the higher the level of poverty, the worse the diet, and hence the higher the chances of developing diabetes. Consequently, a considerable disparity in the prevalence of diabetes occurs between communities with high levels […]
• “Poverty, Race, and the Contexts of Achievement” by Maryah Stella Fram et al. The article “Poverty, race, and the contexts of achievement: examining the educational experience of children in the U.S. Multilevel models were then applied in the analyses of how children varied in their reading scores depending […]
• Microeconomic Perspective on Poverty Evolution in Pakistan The periodic spike in poverty levels, notwithstanding economic growth, implies incongruous policy functionality in relation to drivers of poverty and the subsequent failure to improve the indicators.
• The Impact of Poverty on Children Under the Age of 11 The strengths of the Marxist views on poverty are in the structural approach to the problem. Overall, the Marxist theory offers a radical solution to the problem of child poverty.
• Dependency Theory and “The End of Poverty?” It is also reflected in the film “The End of Poverty?” narrating the circumstances of poor countries and their precondition. It started at the end of the fifteenth century and marked the beginning of the […]
• Poverty Policy Recommendations Different leaders have considered several policies and initiatives in the past to tackle the problem of poverty and empower more people to lead better lives.
• Poverty Reduction and Natural Assets Therefore, the most efficient way to increase the efficiency of agriculture and reduce its environmental impacts is ensuring the overall economic growth in the relevant region.
• Corporate Social Responsibility & Poverty Alleviation Researchers state that “preventing and managing the negative impacts of the core business on the poor” are essential indicators of the social responsibility of the company.
• Health, Poverty, and Social Equity: The Global Response to the Ebola Outbreak Canada and Australia, as well as several countries in the Middle East and Africa, were the most active proponents of this ban, halting the movements for both people and goods from states affected by the […]
• Health, Poverty, and Social Equity: Indigenous Peoples of Canada Another problem that much of northern Canada’s Indigenous Peoples face is the availability of healthcare services and people’s inability to access medical help.
• The Problem of Childhood Poverty Unequal income distribution, adult poverty, government policies that exclude children and premature pregnancy are some of the items from the long list of childhood poverty causes. Before discussing the causes and effects of childhood poverty, […]
• Individualistic Concepts and Structural Views on Poverty in American Society The concepts presented in the book Poverty and power help to better understand the content of the article and the reasons for such a different attitude of people to the same problem.
• Poverty: Causes and Effects on the Population and Country Thesis: There are a great number of factors and issues that lead a certain part of the population to live in poverty and the input that such great numbers of people could provide, would be […]
• The Internet and Poverty in Society The information that can be found on the web is a very useful resource but at the same time it is important to consider several things with the treatment and examination of the presented information.
• Poverty in Africa: Impact of the Economy Growth Rate Thus, a conclusion can be made that economic growth in Africa will result in the social stability of the local population.
• Poverty and Disrespect in “Coming of Age in Mississippi” by Anne Moody Life was not fair to a little Anne the chapters about her childhood are alike to a chain of unfortunate events that happened to her and her relatives.
• Vietnam’s Economic Growth and Poverty & Inequality A significant part of the population was active in employment, and this means that the numerous income-generating activities improved the economy of this country.
• Poverty and Disasters in the United States Focusing on the precaution measures and the drilling techniques that will help survive in case of a natural disaster is one of the most common tools for securing the population.
• The Notion of “Poverty” Is a Key Word of a Modern Society As far as the countries of the Third World are deprived of these possibilities, their development is hampered and the problem of poverty has become a chronic disease of the society.
• The Problem of Poverty in Africa The major aim of the study is to identify the causes of poverty and propose best strategies that can help Africans come out of poverty.
• Poverty Sustainability in Sub-Saharan Countries: The Role of NGOs The position of research and statistics in undertaking social-counting work is not queried. It is after the research method is used in other tribulations of the charity that gaps emerge between management and research.
• “The End of Poverty” by Phillipe Diaz In the film End of Poverty, the filmmaker tries to unravel the mystery behind poverty in the world. The film is arranged in such a way that the author has persuasively argued his case that […]
• The Effects of Poverty Within Criminal Justice The approach used in this study is deductive since the reasoning in the study proceeds from the general principle regarding the fact that poverty has a role to play in the administering of fairness in […]
• The Poverty Rates in the USA Poverty in the U. Officially the rate of poverty was at14.3%.
• Poverty in America: A Paradox Many people especially the young people living in other countries and more so in developed countries wish to immigrate to America instead of working hard to achieve the dream of better opportunities.
• Values and Ethics: Poverty in Canada The case study1 has indicated for instance, that the number of people living in poverty in 2003 is at 4. A group of individuals would therefore be granted the mandate to lead the others in […]
• War and Poverty Connection in Developing Countries The scholars claim that conflict and war in most nations have been found to exacerbate the rate of poverty in the affected nations.
• Poverty and Criminal Behavoiur Relation The level of accuracy that the data collected holds cannot be 100%; there is a level of error that affects the reliability of the data collected.
• Urban Relationship Between Poverty and Crime The areas with high poverty level in the US urban areas have the highest cases of crime but this is inadequate to justify that poverty is the cause of crime.
• Social and Economic Policy Program: Globalization, Growth, and Poverty Topic: Sustainable approaches to poverty reduction through smallholder agricultural development in rural South Africa and Kenya The majority of the poor in Africa, and indeed the whole world, live in rural areas.
• Is Poverty From Developing Countries Imagined? That is why concepts like the “Third World Countries”, the “Second World Countries”, the “First World Countries” and now the “Developing Countries” has been coined.
• How Gender and Race Structure Poverty and Inequality Connected? In essence, feminization of poverty has been constructed in the context of the rise in households headed by female and the family participation in the low income generating activities, thus creating three distinct areas of […]
• Poverty by Anarchism and Marxism Approaches It is important to note that the very different ways in which social scientists approach the study of social phenomena depend to a great extent upon their particular philosophical view of the social world, a […]
• Environmental Deterioration and Poverty in Kenya Poverty is the great cause and consequence or effect of the degradation of the environment and depletion of the resources that pose threats to the present and future growth of the economy.
• Marginalization and Poverty of Rural Women
• Pockets of Poverty Mar the Great Promise of Canada
• The Underclass Poverty and Associated Social Problems
• Child Poverty in Toronto, Ontario
• Children’s Brain Function Affected by Poverty
• Poverty Issue in America Review
• Microeconomics. Poverty in America
• Poverty and Inequality in Modern World
• Poverty and Its Effects on Women
• Poverty as a General Problem
• Feminization of Poverty – A Grave Social Concern
• Poverty Level in any Country
• Theories of Fertility. Economics Aspect and Poverty.
• The Cultural Construction of Poverty
• Poverty in the US: Causes and Measures
• “Old Age Poverty” Study by Kwan & Walsh
• Phenomena of Poverty Review
• Healthcare Development. Poverty in the 1800s
• Teen Pregnancy Can Lead to Suicide and Poverty
• Poverty in Los Angeles
• Poverty in the US: Essentials of Sociology
• Econometrics: Poverty, Unemployment, Household Income
• Religious Quotes on Poverty and Their Interpretations
• Poverty and Inequality in “Rich and Poor” by Peter Singer
• The Relation Between Poverty and Justice
• Canada and the Imposition of Poverty
• The Impact of Poverty in African American Communities
• “Poverty and Joy: The Franciscan Tradition” by Short
• International Financial Institutions’ Poverty Reduction Strategy
• Video Volunteers’ Interventions Against Poverty
• Poverty and Its Relative Definitions
• Poverty in America: An Ethical Dilemma
• Child Poverty and Academic Achievement Association
• Poverty as a Factor of Terrorist Recruitment
• Poverty: An Echo of Capitalism
• Poverty, Inequality and Social Policy Understanding
• Breastfeeding Impact on Canadian Poverty Gaps
• Poverty Impact on Life Perception
• Energy Poverty Elimination in Developing Countries
• Vietnamese Poverty and Productivity Increase
• Poverty Rates Among Whites and Blacks Americans
• Culture of Poverty in the “Park Avenue” Documentary
• Poverty in the US
• Poverty as a Cause of the Sudanese Civil War
• “Halving Global Poverty” by Besley and Burges
• Do Poverty Traps Exist? Assessing the Evidence
• American War on Poverty Throughout US History
• Children and Poverty in “Born into Brothels” Documentary
• Poverty in Orwell’s “Down and Out in Paris and London”
• Poverty in “A Theology of Liberation” by Gutierrez
• Poverty Reduction Among American Single Mothers
• The Relationship Between Poverty and Education
• Divorce Outcomes: Poverty and Instability
• African Poverty at the Millennium: Causes and Challenges
• Global Poverty and the Endeavors of Addressing It
• Global Poverty Reduction: Economic Policy Recommendation
• Global Conflict and Poverty Crisis
• Poverty in the Novel “Snow” by Orhan Pamuk
• The Rise of Poverty in the US
• Profit From Organizing Tours to Poverty Areas
• Poverty: $2.00 a Day in America
• Detroit Poverty and “Focus Hope” Organization
• Poverty Controversy in the USA
• Poverty as the Deprivation of Capabilities
• Suburbanisation of Poverty in the USA
• The Solution to World Poverty by Peter Singer
• The Poverty Across the US Culture
• How Racial Segregation Contributes to Minority’s Poverty?
• Catholic Dealing With Poverty and Homelessness
• Human Capital and Poverty in Scottsdale
• Global Poverty Studies and Their Importance
• The World Bank and the Poverty of Reform
• Challenges of Social Integration: Poverty
• Globalization and the Issue of Poverty: Making the World a Better Place
• The Economic Effect of Issuing Food Stamps to Those in Poverty
• Business and Pollution Inequality in Poor States
• “Facing Poverty With a Rich Girl’s Habits” by Suki Kim
• What Should You Do? Poverty Issue
• Causes of Poverty Traps in an Economy, Its Results and Ways of Avoiding Them
• Tourism Contribution to Poverty Reduction
• Millennium Development Goals – Energy and Poverty Solutions
• Energy and Poverty Solutions – Non-Traditional Cookstoves
• Energy and Poverty Solutions – World Bank
• How do Migration and Urbanization Bring About Urban Poverty in Developing Countries?
• Poverty and Domestic Violence
• Measuring Poverty and Social Exclusion in Australia
• Does Poverty Lead to Terrorism?
• “Urban and Rural Estimates of Poverty: Recent Advances in Spatial Microsimulation in Australia” by Tanton, R, Harding, A, and McNamara, J
• Importance of Foreign Aid in Poverty Reducing
• Hispanic Childhood Poverty in the United States
• How Poverty Affects Children Development?
• Why Is Poverty Important in Contemporary Security Studies?
• Millennium Development Goals in Kenya, Ivory Coast, Haiti, and Chad
• Development Is No Longer the Solution to Poverty
• Issues Underlying Global Poverty and Provision of Aid
• Films Comparison: “The Fields” by Roland Joffe and “Hotel Rwanda” by Terry George
• Poverty Prevalence in the United States
• Terrorism, Poverty and Financial Instability
• Global Poverty and Education
• Critical Analyses of the Climate of Fear Report From Southern Poverty Law Center
• How World Vision International Contributes to Poverty Reduction
• Global Poverty, Social Poverty and Education
• Global Poverty, Social Policy, and Education
• Poverty Reduction in Africa, Central America and Asia
• Does Parental Involvement and Poverty Affect Children’s Education and Their Overall Performance?
• Technological Development in Trade and Its Impacts on Poverty
• Poverty and Development Into the 21st Century
• Social Dynamics: The Southern Poverty Law Centre
• Property, Urban Poverty and Spatial Marginalization
• Rural Poverty in Indonesia
• Is Poverty of Poor Countries in Anyway Due to Wealth of the Rich?
• Poverty and Gender Violence in Congo
• Correlation Between Poverty and Obesity
• Fight Poverty, Fight Illiteracy in Mississippi Initiative
• Civil War and Poverty: “The Bottom Billion” by Paul Collier
• Analytical Research: Poverty in Thailand: Peculiarities and Perspectives
• Poverty, Homelessness and Discrimination in Australia: The Case of the Aboriginal
• Social Business Scope in Alleviating Poverty
• Africa’s Poverty: The Influence of Western States
• Susceptibility of Women and Aboriginal People to Poverty in Canada
• Social Issues; Crime and Poverty in Camden
• MDG Poverty Goals May Be Achieved, but Child Mortality Is Not Improving
• We Can Stop Poverty in Ghana Today
• Poverty in India and China
• Third World Countries and the Barriers Stopping Them to Escape Poverty
• Impacts of Global Poverty Resistance
• Reducing Poverty: Unilever and Oxfam
• Poverty in the United States
• The Mothers Who Are Not Single: Striving to Avoid Poverty in Single-Parent Families
• Effect of Poverty on Children Cognitive and Learning Ability
• Sweatshops and Third World Poverty
• War on Poverty: Poverty Problem in US
• War on Poverty in US
• Poverty as Capability Deprivation
• Poverty as a Peculiarity of the Economical Development
• Capitalism and Poverty
• The Problems of Poverty in the Modern World
• Poverty Among Women and Aboriginals
• On (Not) Getting by in America: Economic Order and Poverty in the U.S.
• The Singer Solution to World Poverty
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IvyPanda. (2024, March 2). 390 Poverty Essay Topic Ideas & Examples. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/poverty-essay-examples/

"390 Poverty Essay Topic Ideas & Examples." IvyPanda , 2 Mar. 2024, ivypanda.com/essays/topic/poverty-essay-examples/.

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IvyPanda . 2024. "390 Poverty Essay Topic Ideas & Examples." March 2, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/poverty-essay-examples/.

1. IvyPanda . "390 Poverty Essay Topic Ideas & Examples." March 2, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/poverty-essay-examples/.

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10 Ways to Start Helping the Poor

Last Updated: August 14, 2024 Fact Checked

This article was co-authored by Direct Relief and by wikiHow staff writer, Janice Tieperman . Direct Relief is an award-winning humanitarian aid organization, active in all 50 states and more than 80 countries. They focus on helping people affected by emergencies and natural disasters. Direct Relief has been highly rated by Charity Navigator, GuideStar, and the Center for High Impact Philanthropy at University of Pennsylvania, for their effectiveness, efficiency, and transparency. This article has been fact-checked, ensuring the accuracy of any cited facts and confirming the authority of its sources. This article has been viewed 500,893 times.

There’s no denying that poverty is a serious concern all over the world, including your own community. How can we as individuals hope to make a difference when facing such a widespread issue, though? Don’t worry—by offering your voice and using your time and resources wisely, there are plenty of ways for you to make a positive impact on the world around you.

Things You Should Know

• Support businesses with a track record of giving back to impoverished communities, like Kroger, The Home Depot, and Johnson & Johnson.
• Donate to charities dedicated to helping those in poverty. Resources like Charity Navigator can help you find high-quality organizations to donate to.
• Support local food banks in your area by donating groceries.

Support businesses that donate to charity.

• The Home Depot
• Johnson & Johnson

Give money to reputable charities.

• Evidence Action Inc
• Haitian Health Foundation
• Amref Health Africa
• Equalize Health
• Tip: Try to make thoughtful purchases when you go out shopping. Before making an impulse buy, ask yourself if you really need the item. Could that money be better used as a charitable donation?

Donate groceries to local food banks.

• Not sure where your local food bank is? If you live in the United States, click here .
• Does your community not have a local food bank? Think about starting one yourself .

Volunteer your time.

• Make meals with groups like Orphan Grain Train or No Kid Hungry
• Build homes with groups like Habitat for Humanity
• Help out at a local soup kitchen
• Volunteer at a homeless shelter [2] X Research source

Distribute meal kits to the local homeless community.

• Pads and tampons
• Toothbrushes and toothpaste

Start a fundraiser.

• Hosting a collection drive
• Hosting a dance-a-thon
• Organizing a charity BBQ
• Organizing a charity quiz night

Call your government officials.

• Not sure who your local representative is or how to contact them? Check out this website for more information.

Advocate on social media.

• “I’ve been thinking a lot about some of the low-income families in our community. Did you know that United Way offers healthcare support to families in need?”
• “As a new mother myself, it breaks my heart to know that some mothers are struggling to provide for their little ones. I’m grateful and relieved to know that charities like Life of a Single Mom and Bridge of Hope are offering support to this vulnerable community.”

Talk about poverty-related issues with others.

• “Did you know that about 1 in every 6 kids in America is currently experiencing poverty?”
• “Did you know that over 15 million Americans are currently making 50% below the poverty level of income?”
• “I learned recently that over 10% of American families/households don’t have food security.” [5] X Research source

Live empathetically and help others to the best of your ability "We have a responsibility to be aware of others. We need to make justice the norm, not the exception."

Research and learn more about poverty.

• Poverty USA (poverty in America)
• UNICEF (child poverty)
• World Bank (learning poverty)
• World Vision (global poverty)

Expert Q&A

You might also like.

• ↑ https://www.giveforms.com/blog/25-companies-that-donate-to-nonprofits
• ↑ https://students.1fbusa.com/pay-it-forward/25-ways-to-volunteer-in-your-community
• ↑ https://portlandrescuemission.org/news/about-homelessness/how-to-pack-a-care-kit-to-help-someone-homeless/
• ↑ https://www.nspcc.org.uk/support-us/charity-fundraising/do-your-own-fundraising/a-z-fundraising-ideas/
• ↑ https://www.povertyusa.org/facts

About This Article

You can help the poor by donating food, clothing, or toiletries to a local shelter or giving your old books to a books for prisoners program. You can also donate your time by volunteering in an community center or soup kitchen. To have a greater impact in your community, try joining an organization or starting a petition to help low-income kids in your community. To learn more ways to help the poor through activism, keep reading. Did this summary help you? Yes No

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5 Essays About Poverty Everyone Should Know

Poverty is one of the driving forces of inequality in the world. Between 1990-2015, much progress was made. The number of people living on less than $1.90 went from 36% to 10%. However, according to the World Bank , the COVID-19 pandemic represents a serious problem that disproportionately impacts the poor. Research released in February of 2020 shows that by 2030, up to ⅔ of the “global extreme poor” will be living in conflict-affected and fragile economies. Poverty will remain a major human rights issue for decades to come. Here are five essays about the issue that everyone should know:

“We need an economic bill of rights” –  Martin Luther King Jr.

The Guardian published an abridged version of this essay in 2018, which was originally released in Look magazine just after Dr. King was killed. In this piece, Dr. King explains why an economic bill of rights is necessary. He points out that while mass unemployment within the black community is a “social problem,” it’s a “depression” in the white community. An economic bill of rights would give a job to everyone who wants one and who can work. It would also give an income to those who can’t work. Dr. King affirms his commitment to non-violence. He’s fully aware that tensions are high. He quotes a spiritual, writing “timing is winding up.” Even while the nation progresses, poverty is getting worse.

This essay was reprinted and abridged in The Guardian in an arrangement with The Heirs to the Estate of Martin Luther King. Jr. The most visible representative of the Civil Rights Movement beginning in 1955, Dr. King was assassinated in 1968. His essays and speeches remain timely.

“How Poverty Can Follow Children Into Adulthood” – Priyanka Boghani

This article is from 2017, but it’s more relevant than ever because it was written when 2012 was the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. That’s no longer the case. In 2012, around ¼ American children were in poverty. Five years later, children were still more likely than adults to be poor. This is especially true for children of colour. Consequences of poverty include anxiety, hunger, and homelessness. This essay also looks at the long-term consequences that come from growing up in poverty. A child can develop health problems that affect them in adulthood. Poverty can also harm a child’s brain development. Being aware of how poverty affects children and follows them into adulthood is essential as the world deals with the economic fallout from the pandemic.

Priyanka Boghani is a journalist at PBS Frontline. She focuses on U.S. foreign policy, humanitarian crises, and conflicts in the Middle East. She also assists in managing Frontline’s social accounts.

“5 Reasons COVID-19 Will Impact the Fight to End Extreme Poverty” – Leah Rodriguez

For decades, the UN has attempted to end extreme poverty. In the face of the novel coronavirus outbreak, new challenges threaten the fight against poverty. In this essay, Dr. Natalie Linos, a Harvard social epidemiologist, urges the world to have a “social conversation” about how the disease impacts poverty and inequality. If nothing is done, it’s unlikely that the UN will meet its Global Goals by 2030. Poverty and COVID-19 intersect in five key ways. For one, low-income people are more vulnerable to disease. They also don’t have equal access to healthcare or job stability. This piece provides a clear, concise summary of why this outbreak is especially concerning for the global poor.

Leah Rodriguez’s writing at Global Citizen focuses on women, girls, water, and sanitation. She’s also worked as a web producer and homepage editor for New York Magazine’s The Cut.

“Climate apartheid”: World’s poor to suffer most from disasters” – Al Jazeera and news Agencies

The consequences of climate change are well-known to experts like Philip Alston, the special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights. In 2019, he submitted a report to the UN Human Rights Council sounding the alarm on how climate change will devastate the poor. While the wealthy will be able to pay their way out of devastation, the poor will not. This will end up creating a “climate apartheid.” Alston states that if climate change isn’t addressed, it will undo the last five decades of progress in poverty education, as well as global health and development .

“Nickel and Dimed: On (not) getting by in America” – Barbara Ehrenreich

In this excerpt from her book Nickel and Dimed, Ehrenreich describes her experience choosing to live undercover as an “unskilled worker” in the US. She wanted to investigate the impact the 1996 welfare reform act had on the working poor. Released in 2001, the events take place between the spring of 1998 and the summer of 2000. Ehrenreich decided to live in a town close to her “real life” and finds a place to live and a job. She has her eyes opened to the challenges and “special costs” of being poor. In 2019, The Guardian ranked the book 13th on their list of 100 best books of the 21st century.

Barbara Ehrenreich is the author of 21 books and an activist. She’s worked as an award-winning columnist and essayist.

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About the author, emmaline soken-huberty.

Emmaline Soken-Huberty is a freelance writer based in Portland, Oregon. She started to become interested in human rights while attending college, eventually getting a concentration in human rights and humanitarianism. LGBTQ+ rights, women’s rights, and climate change are of special concern to her. In her spare time, she can be found reading or enjoying Oregon’s natural beauty with her husband and dog.

Why poverty is not a personal choice, but a reflection of society

Research Investigator of Psychiatry, Public Health, and Poverty Solutions, University of Michigan

Disclosure statement

Shervin Assari does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

University of Michigan provides funding as a founding partner of The Conversation US.

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As the Senate prepares to modify its version of the health care bill, now is a good time to back up and examine why we as a nation are so divided about providing health care, especially to the poor.

I believe one reason the United States is cutting spending on health insurance and safety nets that protect poor and marginalized people is because of American culture, which overemphasizes individual responsibility. Our culture does this to the point that it ignores the effect of root causes shaped by society and beyond the control of the individual. How laypeople define and attribute poverty may not be that much different from the way U.S. policymakers in the Senate see poverty.

As someone who studies poverty solutions and social and health inequalities, I am convinced by the academic literature that the biggest reason for poverty is how a society is structured. Without structural changes, it may be very difficult if not impossible to eliminate disparities and poverty.

Social structure

About 13.5 percent of Americans are living in poverty. Many of these people do not have insurance, and efforts to help them gain insurance, be it through Medicaid or private insurance, have been stymied. Medicaid provides insurance for the disabled, people in nursing homes and the poor.

Four states recently asked the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services for permission to require Medicaid recipients in their states who are not disabled or elderly to work.

This request is reflective of the fact that many Americans believe that poverty is, by and large, the result of laziness , immorality and irresponsibility.

In fact, poverty and other social miseries are in large part due to social structure , which is how society functions at a macro level. Some societal issues, such as racism, sexism and segregation, constantly cause disparities in education, employment and income for marginalized groups. The majority group naturally has a head start, relative to groups that deal with a wide range of societal barriers on a daily basis. This is what I mean by structural causes of poverty and inequality.

Poverty: Not just a state of mind

We have all heard that the poor and minorities need only make better choices – work hard, stay in school, get married, do not have children before they can afford them. If they did all this, they wouldn’t be poor.

Just a few weeks ago, Housing Secretary Ben Carson called poverty “ a state of mind .” At the same time, his budget to help low-income households could be cut by more than US$6 billion next year.

This is an example of a simplistic view toward the complex social phenomenon. It is minimizing the impact of a societal issue caused by structure – macro‐level labor market and societal conditions – on individuals’ behavior. Such claims also ignore a large body of sociological science.

American independence

Americans have one of the most independent cultures on Earth. A majority of Americans define people in terms of internal attributes such as choices , abilities, values, preferences, decisions and traits.

This is very different from interdependent cultures , such as eastern Asian countries where people are seen mainly in terms of their environment, context and relationships with others.

A direct consequence of independent mindsets and cognitive models is that one may ignore all the historical and environmental conditions, such as slavery, segregation and discrimination against women, that contribute to certain outcomes. When we ignore the historical context, it is easier to instead attribute an unfavorable outcome, such as poverty, to the person.

Views shaped by politics

Many Americans view poverty as an individual phenomenon and say that it’s primarily their own fault that people are poor. The alternative view is that poverty is a structural phenomenon. From this viewpoint, people are in poverty because they find themselves in holes in the economic system that deliver them inadequate income.

The fact is that people move in and out of poverty. Research has shown that 45 percent of poverty spells last no more than a year, 70 percent last no more than three years and only 12 percent stretch beyond a decade.

The Panel Study of Income Dynamics ( PSID ), a 50-year longitudinal study of 18,000 Americans, has shown that around four in 10 adults experience an entire year of poverty from the ages of 25 to 60. The last Survey of Income and Program Participation ( SIPP ), a longitudinal survey conducted by the U.S. Census, had about one-third of Americans in episodic poverty at some point in a three-year period, but just 3.5 percent in episodic poverty for all three years.

Why calling the poor ‘lazy’ is victim blaming

If one believes that poverty is related to historical and environmental events and not just to an individual, we should be careful about blaming the poor for their fates.

Victim blaming occurs when the victim of a crime or any wrongful act is held entirely or partially responsible for the harm that befell them. It is a common psychological and societal phenomenon. Victimology has shown that humans have a tendency to perceive victims at least partially responsible . This is true even in rape cases, where there is a considerable tendency to blame victims and is true particularly if the victim and perpetrator know each other.

I believe all our lives could be improved if we considered the structural influences as root causes of social problems such as poverty and inequality. Perhaps then, we could more easily agree on solutions.

• Social mobility
• Homelessness
• Health disparities
• Health gaps
• US Senate health care bill
• US health care reform

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2.6 Reducing Poverty

Learning objectives.

• Explain why the United States neglects its poor.
• List any three potentially promising strategies to reduce US poverty.
• Describe how to reduce global poverty from a sociological perspective.

As this chapter noted at the outset, the United States greatly reduced poverty during the 1960s through a series of programs and policies that composed the so-called war on poverty. You saw evidence of the success of the war on poverty in Figure 2.1 “US Poverty, 1959–2010” , which showed that the poverty rate declined from 22.2 percent in 1960 to a low of 11.1 percent in 1973 before fluctuating from year to year and then rising since 2000. The Note 2.19 “Lessons from Other Societies” box showed that other democracies have much lower poverty rates than the United States because, as many scholars believe, they have better funded and more extensive programs to help their poor (Brady, 2009; Russell, 2011).

The lessons from the 1960s’ war on poverty and the experience of other democracies are clear: It is very possible to reduce poverty if, and only if, a nation is willing to fund and implement appropriate programs and policies that address the causes of poverty and that help the poor deal with the immediate and ongoing difficulties they experience.

A major reason that the US poverty rate reached its low in 1973 and never went lower during the past four decades is that the United States retreated from its war on poverty by cutting back on the programs and services it had provided during that good war (Soss, et. al., 2007). Another major reason is that changes in the national economy during the past few decades have meant that well-paying manufacturing jobs have been replaced by low-paying service jobs with fewer benefits (Wilson, 2010). Yet this has also happened in other democracies, and their poverty rates remain lower than the US rate because, unlike the United States, they have continued to try to help their poor rather than neglect them.

Why does the United States neglect its poor? Many scholars attribute this neglect to the fact that many citizens and politicians think the poor are poor because of their own failings. As summarized by sociologist Mark R. Rank (Rank, 2011), these failings include “not working hard enough, failure to acquire sufficient skills, or just making bad decisions.” By thus blaming the poor for their fate, citizens and politicians think the poor do not deserve to have the US government help them, and so the government does not help, or at least not nearly as much as other democracies do. We have seen that the facts do not support the myth that the poor lack motivation to work, but that does not lessen the blame given the poor for being poor.

To renew the US effort to help the poor, it is essential that the actual facts about poverty become better known so that a fundamental shift in thinking about poverty and the poor can occur. Rank (Rank, 2011) says that one aspect of this shift must include the recognition, as noted at the beginning of this chapter, that “poverty affects us all” because it costs so many tax dollars to help the poor and because a majority of the public can expect to be poor or near poor at some point in their lives. A second aspect of this shift in thinking, adds Rank, is the recognition (following a blaming-the-system approach) that poverty stems much more from the lack of opportunity, lack of jobs, declining government help for the poor, and other structural failings of American society than from individual failings of the poor themselves. A third aspect of this shift in thinking, he concludes, is that poverty must become seen as a “moral problem” and as “an injustice of a substantial magnitude” (Rank, 2011). As he forcefully argues, “Something is seriously wrong when we find that, in a country with the most abundant resources in the world, there are children without enough to eat, families who cannot afford health care, and people sleeping on the streets for lack of shelter” (Rank, 2011). This situation, he says, must become seen as a “moral outrage” (Rank, 2011).

Sociologist Joe Soss (Soss, 2011) argues that a change in thinking is not enough for a renewed antipoverty effort to occur. What is needed, he says, is political protest and other political activity by the poor and on behalf of the poor. Soss notes that “political conflict and mass mobilization played key roles” in providing the impetus for social-welfare programs in the 1930s and 1960s in the United States, and he adds that the lower poverty rates of Western European democracies “are products of labor movements, unions, and parties that mobilized workers to demand more adequate social supports.” These twin histories lead Soss to conclude that the United States will not increase its antipoverty efforts unless a new wave of political activity by and on behalf of the poor arises. As he argues, “History suggests that major antipoverty victories can be achieved. But they won’t be achieved by good will and smart ideas alone. They’ll be won politically, when people—in poor communities, in advocacy groups, in government, in the academy, and elsewhere—mobilize to advance antipoverty agendas in ways that make politics as usual untenable.”

Antipoverty Programs and Policies

To help reduce poverty, it is essential to help poor parents pay for child care.

Herald Post – Family Child Care – CC BY-NC 2.0.

If a renewed antipoverty effort does occur for whatever reason, what types of programs and policies show promise for effectively reducing poverty? Here a sociological vision is essential. It is easy to understand why the hungry schoolchildren described in the news story that began this chapter might be going without food during a very faltering national economy. Yet a sociological understanding of poverty emphasizes its structural basis in bad times and good times alike. Poverty is rooted in social and economic problems of the larger society rather than in the lack of willpower, laziness, or other moral failings of poor individuals themselves. Individuals born into poverty suffer from a lack of opportunity from their first months up through adulthood, and poverty becomes a self-perpetuating, vicious cycle. To the extent a culture of poverty might exist, it is best seen as a logical and perhaps even inevitable outcome of, and adaptation to, the problem of being poor and not the primary force driving poverty itself.

This sort of understanding suggests that efforts to reduce poverty must address first and foremost the structural basis for poverty while not ignoring certain beliefs and practices of the poor that also make a difference. An extensive literature on poverty policy outlines many types of policies and programs that follow this dual approach (Cancian & Danziger, 2009; Greenberg, et. al., 2007; Iceland, 2006; Lindsey, 2009; Moore et al., 2009; Rank, 2004). If these were fully adopted, funded, and implemented, as they are in many other democracies, they would offer great promise for reducing poverty. As two poverty experts recently wrote, “We are optimistic that poverty can be reduced significantly in the long term if the public and policymakers can muster the political will to pursue a range of promising antipoverty policies” (M. Cancian & S. Danziger, 2009, p. 32). Cancian, M., & Danziger, S. H. (2009). Changing poverty, changing policies . New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation. Although a full discussion of these policies is beyond the scope of this chapter, the following measures are commonly cited as holding strong potential for reducing poverty, and they are found in varying degrees in other Western democracies:

• Adopt a national “full employment” policy for the poor, involving federally funded job training and public works programs, and increase the minimum wage so that individuals working full-time will earn enough to lift their families out of poverty.
• Increase federal aid for the working poor, including higher earned income credits and child-care subsidies for those with children.
• Establish well-funded early childhood intervention programs, including home visitations by trained professionals, for poor families.
• Provide poor families with enough income to enable them to pay for food and housing.
• Increase the supply of affordable housing.
• Improve the schools that poor children attend and the schooling they receive and expand early childhood education programs for poor children.
• Provide better nutrition and health services for poor families with young children.
• Establish universal health insurance.
• Increase Pell Grants and other financial aid for higher education.

Global Poverty

Years of international aid to poor nations have helped them somewhat, but, as this chapter has shown, their situation remains dire. International aid experts acknowledge that efforts to achieve economic growth in poor nations have largely failed, but they disagree why this is so and what alternative strategies may prove more successful (Cohen & Easterly, 2009). Cohen, J., & Easterly, W. (Eds.). (2009). What works in development? Thinking big and thinking small . Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press. One very promising trend has been a switch from macro efforts focusing on infrastructure problems and on social institutions, such as the schools, to micro efforts, such as providing cash payments or small loans directly to poor people in poor nations (a practice called microfinancing ) and giving them bed nets to prevent mosquito bites (Banerjee & Duflo, 2011; Hanlon, Barrientos, & Hulme, 2010; Karlan & Appel, 2011). Banerjee, A. V., & Duflo, E. (2011). Poor economics: A radical rethinking of the way to fight global poverty . New York, NY: PublicAffairs; Hanlon, J., Barrientos, A., & Hulme, D. (2010). Just give money to the poor: The development revolution from the global south . Sterling, VA: Kumarian Press; Karlan, D., & Appel, J. (2011). More than good intentions: How a new economics is helping to solve global poverty . New York, NY: Dutton. However, the evidence on the success of these efforts is mixed (Bennett, 2009; The Economist, 2010). Bennett, D. (2009, September 20). Small change. The Boston Globe . Retrieved from http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2009/09/20/small_change_does_microlending_actually_fight_poverty/ ; The Economist. (2010). A better mattress. The Economist, 394 (8673), 75–76. Much more to help the world’s poor certainly needs to be done.

In this regard, sociology’s structural approach is in line with dependency theory and suggests that global stratification results from the history of colonialism and from continuing exploitation today of poor nations’ resources by wealthy nations and multinational corporations. To the extent such exploitation exists, global poverty will lessen if and only if this exploitation lessens. A sociological approach also emphasizes the role that class, gender, and ethnic inequality play in perpetuating global poverty. For global poverty to be reduced, gender and ethnic inequality must be reduced.

Writers Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn (2010) Kristoff, N. D., & WuDunn, S. (2010). Half the sky: Turning oppression into opportunity for women worldwide . New York, NY: Vintage Books. emphasize the need to focus efforts to reduce global poverty of women. We have already seen one reason this emphasis makes sense: women are much worse off than men in poor nations in many ways, so helping them is crucial for both economic and humanitarian reasons. An additional reason is especially illuminating: When women in poor nations acquire extra money, they typically spend it on food, clothing, and medicine, essentials for their families. However, when men in poor nations acquire extra money, they often spend it on alcohol, tobacco, and gambling. This gender difference might sound like a stereotype, but it does indicate that aid to women will help in many ways, while aid to men might be less effective and often even wasted.

Key Takeaways

• According to some sociologists, a change in thinking about poverty and the poor and political action by and on behalf of the poor are necessary for a renewed effort to help poor Americans.
• Potentially successful antipoverty programs and policies to help the US poor include expanding their employment opportunities and providing them much greater amounts of financial and other aid.
• To help people in poor nations, gender and ethnic inequality must be addressed.

For Your Review

• Write a brief essay summarizing the changes in thinking that some sociologists argue must occur before a renewed effort to reduce poverty can take place.
• Write a brief essay summarizing any four policies or programs that could potentially lower US poverty.

Brady, D. (2009). Rich democracies, poor people: How politics explain poverty . New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Cancian, M., & Danziger, S. H. (2009). Changing poverty, changing policies . New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation.

Greenberg, M., Dutta-Gupta, I., & Minoff, E. (2007). From poverty to prosperity: A national strategy to cut poverty in half . Washington, DC: Center for American Progress.

Iceland, J. (2006). Poverty in America: A handbook . Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Lindsey, D. (2009). Child poverty and inequality: Securing a better future for America’s children . New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Moore, K. A., Redd, Z., Burkhauser, M., Mbawa, K., & Collins, A. (2009). Children in poverty: Trends, consequences, and policy options . Washington, DC: Child Trends. Retrieved from http://www.childtrends.org/Files//Child_Trends-2009_04_07_RB_ChildreninPoverty.pdf .

Rank, M. R. (2004). One nation, underprivileged: Why American poverty affects us all . New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Rank, M. R. (2011). Rethinking American poverty. Contexts, 10 (Spring), 16–21.

Russell, J. W. ( 2011). Double standard: Social policy in Europe and the United States (2nd ed.). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.

Soss, J. (2011). The poverty fight. Contexts, 10 (2), 84.

Soss, J., Hacker, J. S., & Mettler, S. (Eds.). (2007). Remaking America: Democracy and public policy in an age of inequality . New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation.

Wilson, W. J. (2010). More than just race: Being black and poor in the inner city . New York, NY: W. W. Norton.

Social Problems Copyright © 2015 by University of Minnesota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

Poverty Essay for Students and Children

500+ words essay on poverty essay.

“Poverty is the worst form of violence”. – Mahatma Gandhi.

How Poverty is Measured?

For measuring poverty United nations have devised two measures of poverty – Absolute & relative poverty.  Absolute poverty is used to measure poverty in developing countries like India. Relative poverty is used to measure poverty in developed countries like the USA. In absolute poverty, a line based on the minimum level of income has been created & is called a poverty line.  If per day income of a family is below this level, then it is poor or below the poverty line. If per day income of a family is above this level, then it is non-poor or above the poverty line. In India, the new poverty line is  Rs 32 in rural areas and Rs 47 in urban areas.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

Causes of Poverty

According to the Noble prize winner South African leader, Nelson Mandela – “Poverty is not natural, it is manmade”. The above statement is true as the causes of poverty are generally man-made. There are various causes of poverty but the most important is population. Rising population is putting the burden on the resources & budget of countries. Governments are finding difficult to provide food, shelter & employment to the rising population.

The other causes are- lack of education, war, natural disaster, lack of employment, lack of infrastructure, political instability, etc. For instance- lack of employment opportunities makes a person jobless & he is not able to earn enough to fulfill the basic necessities of his family & becomes poor. Lack of education compels a person for less paying jobs & it makes him poorer. Lack of infrastructure means there are no industries, banks, etc. in a country resulting in lack of employment opportunities. Natural disasters like flood, earthquake also contribute to poverty.

In some countries, especially African countries like Somalia, a long period of civil war has made poverty widespread. This is because all the resources & money is being spent in war instead of public welfare. Countries like India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, etc. are prone to natural disasters like cyclone, etc. These disasters occur every year causing poverty to rise.

Ill Effects of Poverty

Poverty affects the life of a poor family. A poor person is not able to take proper food & nutrition &his capacity to work reduces. Reduced capacity to work further reduces his income, making him poorer. Children from poor family never get proper schooling & proper nutrition. They have to work to support their family & this destroys their childhood. Some of them may also involve in crimes like theft, murder, robbery, etc. A poor person remains uneducated & is forced to live under unhygienic conditions in slums. There are no proper sanitation & drinking water facility in slums & he falls ill often &  his health deteriorates. A poor person generally dies an early death. So, all social evils are related to poverty.

Government Schemes to Remove Poverty

The government of India also took several measures to eradicate poverty from India. Some of them are – creating employment opportunities , controlling population, etc. In India, about 60% of the population is still dependent on agriculture for its livelihood. Government has taken certain measures to promote agriculture in India. The government constructed certain dams & canals in our country to provide easy availability of water for irrigation. Government has also taken steps for the cheap availability of seeds & farming equipment to promote agriculture. Government is also promoting farming of cash crops like cotton, instead of food crops. In cities, the government is promoting industrialization to create more jobs. Government has also opened  ‘Ration shops’. Other measures include providing free & compulsory education for children up to 14 years of age, scholarship to deserving students from a poor background, providing subsidized houses to poor people, etc.

Poverty is a social evil, we can also contribute to control it. For example- we can simply donate old clothes to poor people, we can also sponsor the education of a poor child or we can utilize our free time by teaching poor students. Remember before wasting food, somebody is still sleeping hungry.

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Policy@Manchester Articles

Expert insight, analysis and comment on key public policy issues

Why should rich nations help the poor? Because, morally, it is the right thing to do

800 million people went to bed hungry last night and 19,000 children will die today of easily preventable causes. Foreign aid alone isn’t the answer says David Hulme and the fixation with it means we miss more effective ways to promote development.

Over the last few years, UK aid has acted as a lightning rod for criticism as it has risen to meet the international target of 0.7% of Gross National Income (GNI), while other government spending has been subject to significant reductions.

The Daily Mail in particular has aggressively pursued a campaign against the aid budget and mobilised 230,000 supporters to sign a parliamentary petition calling for the 0.7% target to be scrapped as they claim it results in “huge waste and corruption”. The petition was recently debated by a packed room of MPs, the vast majority of whom lined up to defend UK aid spending, highlighting the positive impact it makes around the world.

UK aid is some of the most closely scrutinised in the world, by various parliamentary committees and independent external bodies. The Department for International Development is a leader in aid effectiveness and transparency, which helps drive up the standards of less progressive donors. And while the £12 billion annual aid budget is certainly a significant sum, it represents just 16p in every £10 of government spending. Collectively, we throw away much more in food waste (an estimated £19 billion) than we spend in aid.

However, I’m concerned that the apparent fixation we have on the aid budget in the UK means we’re ignoring even more effective ways to help poorer nations.

Foreign aid doesn’t equal development

The idea that development can be achieved largely through foreign aid alone has been discredited. Countries that have experienced significant improvements in the well-being of their population in recent years have largely achieved this through engaging with markets and international trade, boosted by the end of the Cold War, China’s return to the global economy and favourable commodity prices. The creation and diffusion of relatively simple technical knowledge about health, hygiene, nutrition, organization and technologies has also played an important role.  While effectively given aid, provided in the right context can provide vital assistance to people in need, it cannot ‘create’ development for whole societies.

If the UK and other rich nations are serious about helping to catalyse development across the world, there are five key policy areas that require urgent attention, which I explore in depth in my new book ‘ Should Rich Nations Help the Poor’ :

• Reform international trade policies so that poor countries and poor people can gain a greater share of the benefits derived from trade.
• Recognize international migration as an element of trade policy and a highly effective means of reducing poverty.
• Take action against climate change (mitigation and supporting adaptation) and take responsibility for the historical role of rich nations in creating global warming.
• Reform global finance to stop the siphoning off of income and assets from poor countries to rich countries by corporations and national elites.
• Limit the arms trade to fragile countries and regions and carefully consider support for military action (budgets, technology and even ‘feet on the ground’) in specific cases, such as the successful Operation Palliser in Sierra Leone.

Policy coherence lacking

This holistic approach to global development is the type of response envisaged by the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which the UK signed up to just last September. However a recent report by the cross-party International Development Select Committee of MPs was highly critical of the lack of any sort of joined up thinking across government on key aspects of the 17 goals.

In strident tones, the report highlights “a fundamental absence of commitment to the coherent implementation of the SDGs across government.”  Without a proper cross government strategy, they fear “it is likely that areas of deep incoherence across government policy could develop, and progress made by certain departments could be easily undermined by the policies and actions of others.” A formal mechanism to ensure policy coherence across Whitehall is called for.

Many of the SDGs are inherently political, calling for reductions in inequality, improvements in governance and for gender equality. In many areas, national ownership by citizens and state are vital. However in other issues that go beyond aid, there’s a clear agenda for action by countries of the Global North. But it’s precisely these issues, such as international tax and trade reforms, which will be hampered without clear commitment and coordination across governments like the UK. If we continue to focus on aid alone as a proxy for development, it’s also these issues that won’t receive the attention they deserve from policymakers.

From climate change to spiralling inequality, given the challenges the world faces it’s both morally right and in our own self-interests for rich nations like the UK to help the poor. But if we’re unable to move beyond aid and properly consider the most effective ways we can help poor countries, we’ll leave a world to our children and grandchildren that’s more unstable, less secure and with more people mired in poverty than there needs to be.

About David Hulme

Professor of Development Studies Executive Director, Global Development Institute CEO, Effective States and Inclusive Development Research Centre

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Paragraph on Helping Poor | 100, 150, 200, 250, 300, 400 + Words

Paragraph on helping poor- 100 words.

There are many ways to help the poor . One way is to donate money to charities that help the poor. Another way is to volunteer your time to help the poor. You can also help the poor by donating items that they need, such as clothes, food , and furniture. One way is to volunteer with or donate to organizations that aid the poor. Another way to help is to raise awareness about the issue of poverty and advocate for policies that would help alleviate it. Additionally, people can directly help those in poverty by providing them with food, clothing, or other necessary items. By helping the poor, we can make a difference in their lives and work towards a more just and equitable world.

Paragraph on Helping Poor- 150 Words

It is always better to give than to receive. When we help others, we not only make their lives better, but we also make the world a better place. Helping those in need not only benefits them, but it also benefits us. It feels good to know that we are making a difference in someone’s life. There are many ways that we can help those who are less fortunate than us. We can volunteer our time at a local soup kitchen or food bank. We can donate clothes or food to a local shelter. We can also simply lend a listening ear to someone who needs someone to talk to. We can help the poor, by providing things such as by giving them money, food, clothes, or shelter. Whatever way we choose to help, we should do so with a loving heart. We should also try to help them in other ways, such as by providing them with education or job opportunities. By helping the poor, we not only improve their lives but also make the world a better place.

Paragraph on Helping Poor- 200 Words

There are many ways that people can help those who are less fortunate. One way is to donate money to charities that help the poor. Another way is to volunteer at soup kitchens or food banks. This allows people to directly help those in need by providing them with food and other necessities. People can also advocate for policies that will help the poor, such as increasing funding for social welfare programs. By helping the poor, we can make society a better place for everyone. No matter what our personal circumstances may be, we can all do something to help those who are less fortunate than ourselves. Whether it’s volunteering our time, donating money or simply offering a friendly smile, every act of kindness makes a difference. So let’s make a commitment to helping the poor and needy whenever we can. Not only will it make the world a better place, but it will also enrich our own lives in the process. There are a lot of ways to help the poor, and no one solution is perfect. But if we all work together, we can make a difference. Every little bit helps, whether it’s donating money to charity, volunteering your time at a local soup kitchen, or simply spreading awareness about poverty and its effects on people’s lives. Let’s commit to doing our part to help those in need and make the world a better place for everyone.

Paragraph on Helping Poor- 300 Words

There are many ways that people can help those who are living in poverty. One way is to donate money to charities that support poor communities. Another way is to volunteer with organizations that provide services to the poor. And finally, people can advocate for policies that help reduce poverty and improve economic opportunity for all.  People can raise awareness about poverty and advocate for policy changes that would help the poor. By doing these things, we can make a difference in the lives of those who are struggling. You can also advocate for policies that will help reduce poverty. Whatever way you choose to help, you can make a difference in the lives of the poor. No one deserves to live in poverty, and yet millions of people around the world do. Poverty is a vicious cycle that can be hard to break out of, but it is possible with some help. There are many ways to help the poor, whether it’s through donating money or time, or even just raising awareness. Any way that you can help make a difference in the fight against poverty is worthwhile. Let’s work together to end poverty once and for all. We should all do our part to try to help those in need. Whether it’s volunteering at a local soup kitchen or donating money to a worthy cause, every little bit helps. We should also be mindful of the way we talk about and treat those who are less fortunate than us; remember that everyone deserves respect and compassion. Let’s work together to make the world a better place for everyone. We should all do our part to help the poor. By helping the poor, we are not only improving their lives, but we are also making the world a better place. Helping poor people is not only the right thing to do, but it can also have a positive impact on our own lives. When we help others, we often find that our own problems become smaller and more manageable. Additionally, helping those in need can make us feel good about ourselves and increase our overall satisfaction with life. If you’re looking for ways to make a difference, consider volunteering your time or donating money to charities that help poverty-stricken individuals and families.

Paragraph on Helping Poor- 400 + Words

Paragraph on Helping Poor

It is often said that charity begins at home. What is meant by this is that a person’s first duty is to help those who are close to him or her – family, friends, neighbours and so on. Only after a person has fulfilled his or her obligations to these people should he or she think of helping others who may be less fortunate.

The current state of poverty

There is no question that the current state of poverty is unacceptable. Over 22% of the world’s population lives in poverty, according to the World Bank. That means over 1.6 billion people are struggling to meet their basic needs on a daily basis. The causes of poverty are complex and multi-dimensional. They include factors like unequal distribution of resources, conflict, and natural disasters. But one of the most important drivers of poverty is simply lack of opportunity. Too many people are trapped in a cycle of poverty because they lack the skills or education to get decent jobs. In order to address poverty, we need to address these underlying causes. We need to create more opportunities for people to get out of poverty and into decent work. This means investing in education and training, promoting economic growth, and tackling inequalities. There are lots of ways we can help reduce poverty. We can donate money to charitable organizations that are working to tackle the issue. We can also lobby our governments to do more to support those living in poverty. But perhaps the most important thing we can do is raise awareness about the issue and show solidarity with those who are affected by it.

How you can help the poor

There are many ways that you can help the poor. You can donate your time, money, or resources to organizations that help the poor. You can also volunteer your time to help with various projects that help the poor. Whatever you do to help the poor, you will be making a difference in their lives.

Why you should help the poor

There are many reasons why you should help the poor. One reason is that it is the right thing to do. When you have more than enough, it is important to share with those who don’t have enough. Another reason to help the poor is that it can actually help to improve the economy. When people have more money, they spend it, which helps businesses and creates jobs. Finally, helping the poor can also make you feel good about yourself. It can give you a sense of purpose and make you feel like you are making a difference in the world. If you are thinking about helping the poor, there are many ways you can do so. You can donate money to charities that help the poor, or you can volunteer your time to work with organizations that help those in need. You can also simply donate items that you no longer need, such as clothes or food. Whatever way you choose to help, know that you are making a difference in the lives of those who need it most.

What are some ways to help the poor?

There are many ways that people can help the poor. Some ways include: 1. Donating money to charities that help the poor. 2. Volunteering at soup kitchens or food pantries. 3. Helping to build homes for families in need through Habitat for Humanity or other organizations. 4. Tutoring children from low-income families. 5. Collecting clothes and other items to donate to shelters or people in need.

The Problem of Poverty

Poverty is a huge problem in the world today. There are billions of people around the globe who live in poverty, and many of them are children. Poverty is not only a problem of money, but also a problem of opportunity. Too often, people in poverty lack the opportunity to improve their lives. They lack access to education, healthcare, and good jobs. There are many ways to help the poor. One way is to donate money to charitable organizations that work to improve the lives of the poor. Another way is to volunteer your time to help those in need. You can also advocate for policies that help the poor, such as increasing access to education and healthcare. No matter what you do, remember that every little bit helps. By working together, we can make a difference in the fight against poverty.

The Causes of Poverty

There are many causes of poverty. Some of the most common include lack of access to education, lack of jobs, and inequality. Lack of access to education is a major cause of poverty. Many children in poverty-stricken areas are unable to attend school due to the high cost of tuition. In addition, many schools in these areas are underfunded and lack the resources needed to provide a quality education. As a result, children in poverty often have little chance of escaping the cycle of poverty. Lack of jobs is another major cause of poverty. In many poor communities, there simply are not enough jobs to go around. This lack of employment opportunities can lead to crime and desperation, which can further perpetuate the cycle of poverty. Inequality is also a major cause of poverty. In many countries, the rich get richer while the poor get poorer. This growing disparity makes it difficult for those in poverty to improve their economic situation. These are just some of the causes of poverty. While there is no one-size-fits-all solution to this complex problem, we must work together to find ways to reduce poverty and improve the lives of those who are struggling.

What Can Be Done to Help the Poor?

There are many ways to help the poor, and it all starts with each individual doing what they can to make a difference. Here are some things you can do to help the poor: 1. Donate money or goods to your local food bank or soup kitchen. 2. Volunteer your time at a local shelter or food bank. 3. Advocate for policies that will help the poor, such as increasing the minimum wage or expanding access to healthcare and education. 4. Educate yourself and others about poverty and its causes. 5. Be a supportive friend or family member to someone who is struggling financially. No one solution will solve poverty, but by working together we can make a difference in the lives of those who are struggling. What will you do to help the poor?

The Government’s Role in Helping the Poor

There is no question that the government has a role to play in helping the poor. There are many programs and initiatives in place that aim to provide financial assistance and other resources to those who need it most. However, some people believe that the government should do more to help the poor. There are a number of ways the government could help the poor more effectively. For example, they could provide more targeted assistance to those who are truly in need, rather than providing blanket assistance that often goes to people who don’t really need it. They could also create more job opportunities for low-income individuals, which would help them escape poverty. Ultimately, it’s up to the government to decide how best to help the poor. But there’s no doubt that they have a responsibility to ensure that everyone has the opportunity to thrive, regardless of their socioeconomic status.

Private Charity and Helping the Poor

When it comes to helping the poor, private charity is always going to be more efficient than government welfare. This is because private charities are able to target their assistance more specifically to those who need it the most, whereas government welfare programs often have much more bureaucratic overhead that can eat up a large portion of their funding. In addition, private charities are also generally better at holding donors accountable for how their money is being used. When you give to a private charity, you can often specify exactly what your donation will be used for, and you can track the results to see if the charity is actually making a difference. With government welfare programs, it can be much harder to track where your tax dollars are going and whether or not they’re actually helping people. If you’re looking to make the biggest impact possible with your charitable donations, then giving to private charities that focus on helping the poor is always going to be your best bet.

It is always better to give than to receive, and this is especially true when it comes to helping those who are less fortunate. There are so many ways that we can help the poor, whether it be through donating money or clothing, or volunteering our time at a local soup kitchen or food bank. Every little bit helps, and we should all do our part to lend a helping hand to those in need.

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Thinking About Poverty Part 3: Helping the Poor — A Critical Analysis of Poverty Policy in Canada

This paper is a critical analysis of formal policies and programs designed to help people who live in poverty. It is really important for readers to understand that this paper does not propose alternatives (that comes in the final essay in this series) nor does it endorse any existing policies. It is simply evaluative. The focus of this essay is on government policies and programs and specifically those that intentionally target the poor. The question we repeatedly ask here is whether government help is really helping. While redistributive programs no doubt bump some households up over the poverty line, which will reduce measured poverty, is that the solution to poverty? Or do we want the same thing for the poor that we want for ourselves? Namely, a strong, independent life and the personal satisfaction that we are contributing, participating members of our community—on both the production and consumption side of the economic equation.

The OAS grant, originally means-tested and provided to low-income seniors over 70, was changed over the years to be a universal demogrant for seniors over 65 but with a clawback at a relatively high income level. Since most of the OAS grant funds go to non-poor seniors, it can no longer be considered as targeted to the poor. However, under the OAS administrative umbrella, we have the Guaranteed Income Supplement (GIS) for seniors and the Spouses Allowance (SPA) for spouses of GIS recipients. These are definitely targeted to low-income seniors based on the previous year’s income tax return. So that part of the OAS program would clearly bump a number of senior households up over the poverty line and thereby reduce measured poverty. But that is only 24 percent of the overall OAS expenditures. The bulk of OAS, the OAS grant itself, mainly goes to non-poor senior households. Regrettably, the data is not there to determine to what extent the OAS grant is predominantly a shuffling of monies between middle-income households.

One concern with the GIS and SPA is the extent to which they affect the savings rate for employed persons, especially those with average or below average incomes. Within a range of incomes, there may be little incentive to save for retirement if the GIS/SPA component of OAS will make up the difference in any case. In general, while some kind of insurance is needed in case the worst happens, there is the question as to whether this is the most efficient and effective way to accomplish that.

During the 1970s, government officials in Canada declared that housing is a basic “right” for all Canadians and they got involved in helping lower-income households obtain affordable housing. Since that time, we have had persistent shortages of subsidized housing and a chronic lack of affordable housing—both for owner-occupied and rental housing. Indeed, there is a case to be made that, in the area of affordable housing, government “help” may actually be making the problem worse. Social housing has become synonymous with many of the pathologies of urban life—crime, drug abuse, violence, unstable families, and despondency. As well, there are unacceptably long waiting lists for these rent-geared-to-income units. An Ontario auditor report states that the Province does a poor job of transitioning public housing recipients into employment and market housing. The way the system is structured, the auditor argues, provides little incentive for recipients to become self reliant. The biggest problem in the area of housing is on the supply side, as various government restrictions and regulations prevent new housing from being constructed where it is most needed.

Social assistance (or welfare) is regarded as the quintessential example of government helping the poor. The main concern of economists is that the way the welfare system is structured, employment (at least for modest wage jobs) is not an attractive alternative. So financial dependency is identified as a critical problem. More than that, however, is the longer-term damage done to people’s sense of self-worth and of being contributing members of society. As one prominent US social scientist has noted, “The black family, which had survived centuries of slavery and discrimination, began rapidly disintegrating in the liberal welfare state that subsidized unwed pregnancy and changed welfare from an emergency rescue to a way of life.” Review after review (including Auditor reports) have stressed that “pathways to employment” be the centrepiece of a reformed system of helping the poor. Many observers remain pessimistic that systems will change because of the strong vested interests in maintaining the status quo. Many politicians, activists, and especially, well paid bureaucrats benefit from the prevailing structures.

For all of their emphasis, in recent years, on the importance of participation, dignity, and inclusion for poor people, the social justice community seems to have seriously misunderstood what these terms really mean. By focussing solely on people’s role as consumers they have fundamentally shortchanged the poor. How inclusive is it when almost everyone around you is employed (is a producer) and you are not? How does enduring dependency foster self-esteem and dignity of the person? Real participation in society involves making a contribution to the economic production of a society—something that many ignore or even discourage.

The poor are not well-served by policies and programs that disregard the critical role that employment plays in their long-term well-being. The prevailing welfare system in Canada is simply not helpful. The challenge is to find creative alternatives that reward work and help disadvantaged people become real participants in their communities. The real solution to poverty is, then, not merely finding ways to bump people over the line but rather to help people become self-sustaining so that they can pull themselves out of poverty. More on that in the next essay.

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Should Rich Nations Help the Poor? They Should...and So Should Emerging Powers

Issued on 04 December 2020

By Professor David Hulme, Global Development Institute

Despite the Covid-19 setback we live in an affluent world. We produce enough food to feed the entire planet and we have the resources to meet everyone’s basic needs. Reallocating just 1% of global wealth would eradicate extreme poverty at a stroke. Yet 3 billion people are deprived of at least one basic human need – food, potable water, sanitation, primary education, shelter, and others.  Almost 700 million people went to bed hungry last night and 19,000 children will die today of easily preventable causes.

As economic growth has slowed down, nationalism has been on the rise in many countries, and helping the distant poor has slid down the international agenda. This must be stopped. It is time to go back to basics and ask ‘should rich and rising nations help the poor…and, what are the best ways?’

This means looking beyond foreign aid and charity at the broader ways in which better-off countries can raise the prospects of poor people: trade, finance, climate change mitigation, migration, and others.

There are two main reasons for this. First, it is the right thing to do – the moral argument. Our common humanity means that those of us who are doing well should help those whose basic needs are not met.

Second, the ‘better-off’ would be foolish not to help the poor and their national governments. This argument is about ‘mutual benefit’. If we want a prosperous, environmentally sustainable, politically stable, and healthy world for ourselves (and our children and grandchildren), then we must help poor people wherever they happen to live. Issues such as new diseases, extreme weather events, international migration, organized crime and terrorism have transnational causes. They must be dealt with through global action built on multilateral cooperation. No country can solve these problems ‘by itself’.

The Covid-19 crisis provides an obvious example. This threatens the lives and livelihoods of people around the world.

While its worst impacts have been on the poor (uncounted deaths, hunger, disability, curtailed education) it also impacts on the better-off. Their business’s growth rates have slowed down, their children are in lockdown in universities in Australia, Europe and the US and their foreign travel plans are cancelled.

Worse could come: if the coronavirus mutates. As the UN’s World Health Organization advises, all countries need to work together to reduce disease transmission, create and internationally share a Covid-19 vaccine and be better prepared for the next pandemic. There will be one: new strains of Avian flu, Ebola, Lassa fever or the Zika virus.

So, how can rich and rising nations help the world’s poor and help themselves?

In the ‘West’, the orthodox answer has been through government-to-government foreign aid and charity. What has this achieved? We know that aid can work. Aid-financed campaigns have eradicated smallpox globally and polio is close to eradication; insecticide-treated bed-nets have driven down infant mortality rates in Africa; and millions of AIDS sufferers are alive and well today because of aid-financed antiretroviral medicines. But, it does not work all the time and critically, foreign aid has not created inclusive and sustainable development for recipients.

Looking beyond aid there is a growing consensus that economic structural transformation in poorer countries requires action by both the state and businesses. The state has an important role to play in technologically upgrading economic activity, providing infrastructure and public services (health, education, and social protection).  Commercial firms need to be dynamic and successfully compete in a globalized economy.

As I argue in my newly translated book ( Should Rich Nations Help the Poor? ), if high income and economically rising nations are serious about helping the world’s poor, they need to go beyond aid and adopt ‘joined-up’ policies for international development. First, reform international trade policies so that poor countries and poor people can gain a greater share of the benefits derived from trade. Second, take national and multilateral action against climate change through mitigation and supporting adaptation. Third, reform global finance to stop the illicit and illegal extraction of income from poor countries to rich countries by corporations and corrupt elites. Fourth, recognize international migration as a highly effective means of reducing poverty, achieving inclusive growth alongside meeting the needs of ageing populations, in Europe and east Asia.

Continuing with existing policies is not a viable policy option for two reasons.

Most obvious is climate change . The material foundation of humanity’s improved living standards over the last two centuries was achieved by carbon profligate economic processes. This cannot continue as global warming has set off disastrous environmental changes.  Globally, we must move to an environmentally sustainable economic model through the Paris Climate Agreement. But, that needs leadership. China could step forward and the US could collaborate.

Less obvious, but just as important, the rise in economic and social inequality in countries must be stopped. Contemporary global economic processes and social norms generate income and wealth inequalities on a previously unimaginable scale. The richest 1% of humanity (most of them living in China, Europe and the US) will soon own as much wealth as the remaining 99%. High levels of inequality hamper growth, undermine education and health services, exacerbate poverty and may lead to political decline – as seen in the UK and US.

This analysis sets a challenging agenda. We need an all-out war of ideas to raise levels of public understanding of why rich and rising nations must help poor people and poor countries.

We live in ‘one world’, and if we want good lives for ourselves and future generations, then environmental sustainability and global social justice must be pursued.

Multilateral action by rich and rising nations can systematically tackle the big issues for international development: trade, climate change, access to finance/technology, migration, and inequality. This may seem unlikely, but so did abolishing slavery, winning votes for women, establishing international humanitarian law and, the Paris Climate Agreement.

About The Author

David Hulme is Professor of Development Studies at the University of Manchester’s Global Development Institute and Global Agriculture, China Agricultural University, Beijing. He is also Chief Executive Officer of the Effective States and Inclusive Development Research Centre. 

First published in China Daily (Global Edition), 13 November 2020.

Image by Angela Yuriko Smith from Pixabay

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Essay on How to Help Poor and Needy People

Leaving a life that is meaningful is something that everyone needs. However, it is not something going into a spiritual quest. All the spiritual quests are going away from life. Unfortunately, you cannot find the meaning of life by going away from life.

In fact, it can be found only in finding the meaning here in life, not going to some lonely place to meditate. You can find the real essence of life only when you help others because you are living with others and your relationship matters.

Why should you help others?

You are living in this world because there are other people. Can you imagine living on this huge earth alone? Undoubtedly, you will go crazy if you find yourself alone in this world.

Life takes place in relation to others. Whether it’s someone from India or someone from Russia, that does not really matter, it is the same human being. Your idea of separate human is just an idea; otherwise, you all are inter-related and inter-connected.

Hence, by helping the poor, you can make this world a better place to live. People would love to be around you and people will bless you. Blessing never comes from the gods, in fat. It can only come from living beings. Hence, you must help people if you want a blessed life.

How can you help poor people?

If you look at the world closely, then you will see that there is inequality. Governments and other organizations are trying to fix this gap but it will make sense only when you find a way to contribute to the world.

There are many people who even don’t not have food to eat. Now, that is something sad because it is a basic thing that every living being must-have. But humans have become the only creatures that are starving. No other animals and birds are starving.

You would also find kids without education. A world that is not educated would slowly drift away to a bad state. If you want the growth of the world, then you should and must educate poor kids who do not have money to have a good education.

There are people who are also struggling to have shelter and clothes; the world is an utterly depressing place to live now. You must find some way to give shelters to poor people. You might not be able to build a home but you can contribute to the community center to feed and give shelter to the people who live differently in the community.

How should you approach?

• You can help people in many ways. For instance, you can take part in cultural exchange programs or you can simply join awareness campaigns to educate poor people
• You can help someone having medical treatment and medicines thus giving someone life. There is nothing better than giving life to people
• You can see help from NGOs and other organizations that are working towards the betterment of the poor community

In fact, there are a number of ways and means to help poor people. All you need to have is the compassionate heart and a loving mind.

It is time to understand the essence of life by finding the ways to help people because you can only find spiritual satisfaction by h going the people. Poor people might have been born poor but they have all the right to live a rich and beautiful life. You should be instrumental.

If you are interested in social works then donate for  Get Do Help Portal . This portal is dedicated for social works and all earning by this portal like earning by AdSense or advertisement, use only for help needy and poor people. So you can share you hand with us by advertise at our website or by donate few cent to us. Get do help portal is managing by  RS Seo Solution  and Bit Web Soft. We are giving our about 10% every month to help people who is requesting us for help through Get Do Help. So if you have any question then please feel free to contact us or you can contact me “Suraj Anjaana” also through EzineArticles profile.

Article Source:  https://EzineArticles.com/expert/Suraj_Anjaana/186602

Syllad | The Rising Meghalaya

Syllad is a fully digital news portal from Meghalaya. With tagline “Syllad-The Rising Meghalaya” Syllad brings voices of Meghalaya to the rest of the world.

November 14, 2020 at 10:43 PM

December 26, 2020 at 11:07 PM

Sir a m a farmer from Tanzania seeking for financial aid worth 100,000 $ to buy farm equipment to work in my country

April 21, 2021 at 12:43 AM

Hi Sir. Can you please help.. I am struggling you a lot for food and medical expenses… I had met with major car accident and lost my walking sence due to spinal cod injury now I am paralized below neck level.. I lost my job also… My mother was only support after my accident.. She also passed away seeing my condition… No I am struggling a lot for food and medical treatment… Can you please help me… You can cross check my medical reports and after that if you wish you can help me… This is my watsapp number +918489421139

September 23, 2022 at 1:22 AM

There are a number of ways and means to help poor people. All you need to have is a compassionate heart and a loving mind. people like Mr. Tej Kohli and Dr. Ruit are helping poor people as per their capacity. We should do our bit as well.

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Maria Mitchell, a Scientist in the Struggle for Women's Rights

Technosols: tailor-made soils, openmind books, scientific anniversaries, global sand crisis fuels mafias and ecological crimes, featured author, latest book, ethics and poverty, the argument for an obligation to assist.

Suppose that on your way to have lunch with a friend you pass a shallow ornamental pond, and notice that a small child has fallen in and is in danger of drowning. Should you wade in and pull the child out? This will mean getting your clothes muddy, ruining your shoes—you do not have time to take them off—and missing your lunch; but compared with the avoidable death of a child none of these things are significant.

A plausible principle that would support the judgment that you ought to pull the child out is this: if it is in our power to prevent something very bad happening, without thereby sacrificing anything of comparable moral significance, we ought to do it. This principle seems uncontroversial. It will obviously win the assent of consequentialists (those who think we ought to do whatever would have the best consequences); but non-consequentialists should accept it too, because the injunction to prevent what is bad applies only when nothing comparably significant is at stake. Thus the principle cannot lead to the kinds of actions of which non-consequentialists strongly disapprove— serious violations of individual rights, injustice, broken promises, and so on. If non-consequentialists regard any of these as comparable in moral significance to the bad thing that is to be prevented, they will automatically regard the principle as not applying in those cases in which the bad thing can only be prevented by violating rights, doing injustice, breaking promises, or whatever else is at stake. Most non-consequentialists hold that we ought to prevent what is bad and promote what is good. Their dispute with consequentialists lies in their insistence that this is not the sole ultimate ethical principle: that it is an ethical principle is not denied by any plausible ethical theory.

Nevertheless the uncontroversial appearance of the principle that we ought to prevent what is bad when we can do so without sacrificing anything of comparable moral significance is deceptive. If it were taken seriously and acted upon, our lives and our world would be fundamentally changed. For the principle applies, not just to rare situations in which one can save a child from a pond, but to the everyday situation in which we can assist those living in extreme poverty. In saying this I assume that extreme poverty, with its hunger and malnutrition, lack of shelter, illiteracy, disease, high infant mortality and low life expectancy, is a bad thing. And I assume that it is within the power of the affluent to reduce such poverty, without sacrificing anything of comparable moral significance. If these two assumptions and the principle we have been discussing are correct, we have an obligation to help those in absolute poverty that is no less strong than our obligation to rescue a drowning child from a pond. Not to help would be wrong, whether or not it is intrinsically equivalent to killing. Helping is not, as conventionally thought, a charitable act that it is praiseworthy to do, but not wrong to omit. It is something that everyone ought to do.

This is the argument for an obligation to assist. Set out more formally, it would look like this.

First premise: If we can prevent something bad without sacrificing anything of comparable significance, we ought to do it. Second premise: Extreme poverty is bad. Third premise: There is some extreme poverty we can prevent without sacrificing anything of comparable moral significance. Conclusion: We ought to prevent some extreme poverty.

The first premise is the substantive moral premise on which the argument rests, and I have tried to show that it can be accepted by people who hold a variety of ethical positions.

The second premise is unlikely to be challenged. It would be hard to find a plausible ethical view that did not regard extreme poverty, with the suffering and deaths of both adults and children that it causes, not to mention the lack of education, sense of hopelessness, powerlessness and humiliation that are also its effects, as a bad thing.

If we can prevent something bad without sacrificing anything of comparable significance, we ought to do it.

The third premise is more controversial, even though it is cautiously framed. It claims only that some extreme poverty can be prevented without the sacrifice of anything of comparable moral significance. It thus avoids the objection that any aid I can give is just “a drop in the ocean” for the point is not whether my personal contribution will make any noticeable impression on world poverty as a whole (of course it won’t) but whether it will prevent some poverty. This is all the argument needs to sustain its conclusion, since the second premise says that any extreme poverty is bad, and not merely the total amount of extreme poverty. If without sacrificing anything of comparable moral significance we can provide just one family with the means to raise itself out of extreme poverty, the third premise is vindicated.

I have left the notion of moral significance unexamined in order to show that the argument does not depend on any specific values or ethical principles. I think the third premise is true for most people living in industrialized nations, on any defensible view of what is morally significant. Our affluence means that we have income we can dispose of without giving up the basic necessities of life, and we can use this income to reduce extreme poverty. Just how much we will think ourselves obliged to give up will depend on what we consider to be of comparable moral significance to the poverty we could prevent: stylish clothes, expensive dinners, a sophisticated stereo system, exotic holidays, a luxury car, a larger house, private schools for our children . . . For a utilitarian, none of these is likely to be of comparable significance to the reduction of extreme poverty; and those who are not utilitarians surely must, if they subscribe to the principle of universalizability, accept that at least some of these things are of far less moral significance than the extreme poverty that could be prevented by the money they cost. So the third premise seems to be true on any plausible ethical view—although the precise amount of extreme poverty that can be prevented before anything of moral significance is sacrificed will vary according to the ethical view one accepts.

I will now consider three objections to this argument.

Does aid really do any good?

Some argue that we can’t have any confidence that our donations to an aid organization will save a life, or will help people to lift themselves out of extreme poverty. Often these arguments are based on demonstrably false beliefs, such as the idea that aid organizations use most of the money given to them for administrative costs, so that only a small fraction gets through to the people who need it, or that corrupt governments in developing nations will take the money. In fact, the major aid organizations use no more than 20% of the funds they raise for administrative purposes (and often considerably less than that), leaving at least 80% for the programs that directly help the poor, and they do not donate to governments, but work directly with the poor, or with grassroots organizations in developing countries that have a good record of helping the poor.

Measuring the effectiveness of an aid organization by the extent to which it can reduce its administrative costs is, however, a common mistake. Administrative costs include the salaries of experienced people who can ensure that your donation will fund projects that really help the poor in a sustainable, long-term way. An organization that does not employ such people may have lower administrative costs than one that does, but it will still achieve less with your donation. It is very important to give to charities that are effective in reducing extreme poverty, and its consequences. Fortunately there are now other organizations, specializing in the evaluation of organizations working to reduce extreme poverty, and they can help us find out which charities are truly effective.

There may still be some people who regard global poverty as a kind of black hole, into which we pour money. But we are making progress.

GiveWell is one such organization. It has, for example, compared the cost per life saved of various organizations which work to combat the diseases that kill many of the 8.1 million children who die each year from poverty-related causes. According to GiveWell, there are several organizations that can save a life for somewhere in the range of US$600–US$1200, and on the GiveWell website (www.givewell.org), you can see which it ranks most highly. Since you can give to one of the top-ranked organizations, it seems clear that the third premise of the argument is true for people who spend at least a few hundred dollars a year on things they do not really need. They can save a life, or prevent some extreme poverty, without sacrificing anything of comparable moral significance.

There may still be some people who regard global poverty as a kind of black hole, into which we pour money, and never make any progress. But we are making progress. That estimate I just mentioned, that about 8.1 million children under 5 die every year from avoidable, poverty-related causes, comes from UNICEF, the United Nations Children’s Fund. That figure is shocking—it’s about 22,000 children dying every day—but fortunately it has been dropping. If you pick up the 2010 paperback edition of my book, The Life You Can Save, the figure it gives is 8.8 million. In the 2009 hardcover edition, the figure was almost a million more. In fact, going right back to the 1960s, the figure was as many as 20 million children a year. When you consider that the world’s population in the 1960s was only about half of what it is today, we have made encouraging progress. As a percentage of the world’s population, the number of children who die before they reach the age of 5 from poverty-related causes is below a quarter of what it was fifty years ago. So this is not an insoluble problem; it’s not a black hole that we just pour money into without seeing any results. We do see results, but we are still in a situation where far too many children are dying each day because of this preventable poverty. This is something that we could do something about. We know what to do. We’re immunizing more children against measles. We’re providing safe drinking water for more villages. We’re providing local health clinics with very simple treatments for diarrhoea. We’re providing more people with bed nets so their children don’t get malaria, another major killer of children.

Is there a conflict between reducing poverty and protecting the environment?

Concern for the poor appears to be in tension with the need to protect our environment. Is there any point in saving lives if the people whose lives are saved will continue to have more children than they can feed, so that in another generation there will be even more hungry people seeking assistance? Don’t rising populations in developing countries increase the pressure on forests and other ecosystems, often the last refuge of endangered species of plants and animals? It is undeniable that saving innocent human lives is good, but how do we balance that good against the loss of extinction? Then there is climate change. How would the world cope if everyone were to become affluent and seek a lifestyle that consumes as much energy, per capita, as those who are affluent today?

Part of the answer—the easy part—is that poverty reduction and environmental values often point in the same direction. It is simplistic to assume that helping more children to survive to reproductive age is bound to increase population in poor countries. One important reason why poor people have large families is that they need to be sure that one or two of their children will survive to take care of them in their old age. As parents grow more confident that their children will live to adulthood, they have fewer children. If they no longer need child labor to grow food, that removes another reason for having children. Most important of all, if reducing poverty makes it possible for families to send their children— especially their daughters—to school, all the evidence indicates that their children will have smaller families than they otherwise would. That tendency will be reinforced if women have opportunities to work outside the home. Obviously, access to family planning helps too. So in several different ways, what reduces poverty and promotes development also reduces population growth. If we look at what has happened to population growth in developed countries, this shouldn’t come as a surprise.

This has consequences for preserving forests in developing countries. In the long run, aid for schools and local health clinics will often be the most effective way to reduce the population pressures that lead to turning forests into fields. But we shouldn’t pretend that there is bound to be this kind of harmony between economic development and environmentalism. Some development projects provide employment opportunities for the poor, but at a high environmental cost. From Indonesia to Brazil, vast areas of tropical rainforest have been cleared to grow palm oil, or soybeans, or to graze cattle. The destruction of forests destroys ecosystems, and releases huge quantities of carbon, thus accelerating climate change.

In tropical Africa, logging roads through jungles offer new opportunities to impoverished villagers, who may get work with the logging companies, or may find it easier to get their local products to markets. Among these local products, however, is “bushmeat”—a general term that covers meat from any wild animal, and includes the flesh of chimpanzees and gorillas. Improved access to hitherto remote jungles and the incentive of cash payment has led to widespread hunting that has slashed the numbers of many of the hunted species.

What should we do? Sometimes we should choose to protect the environment, and the nonhuman animals that depend on it, even if that denies economic opportunities to some people living in extreme poverty. Areas rich in unique biodiversity are part of the world’s heritage, and ought to be protected. We should, of course, try to find alternative environmentally sustainable opportunities for those living in or near these areas. If protecting a world heritage benefits all of us, it is unreasonable to expect local residents to bear the full cost—in terms of economic opportunities foregone—of that protection.

We should help today’s global poor, but not at the expense of tomorrow’s global poor. To preserve the options available to future generations, we should aim at development that does not do further damage to wilderness or to endangered species—and will eventually, I hope, lead to greater respect for the interests of all other sentient beings, who should also count in their own right. We should also seek development that brings us closer to a demographic transition that in turn stabilizes global population at a sustainable level.

It is clear, though, that the planet cannot sustain 6 billion people at the level of the most affluent billion in the world today, consuming the resources and emitting the greenhouse gases that we are emitting. Climate change is a dire threat to all the progress we have made in reducing global poverty.

The failure of the major industrialized nations to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions to a level that will not cause serious adverse effects to others is moral wrongdoing on a scale that exceeds even the wrongdoing of the great imperial powers during the era of colonialism. Even those who think that we have no obligations to help anyone beyond our borders will, I hope, agree that we have obligations not to harm them—and harming them is exactly what we are doing. According to the World Health Organization, the rise in temperature that occurred between the 1970s and 2004 is causing an additional 140,000 deaths every year (roughly equivalent to causing, every week, as many deaths as occurred in the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001). The major killers are climate- sensitive diseases such a malaria, dengue, and diarrhoea, which is more common when there is a lack of safe water. Malnutrition resulting from crops that fail because of high temperatures or low rainfall is also responsible for many deaths. Fertile, densely settled delta regions in Egypt, Bangladesh, India and Vietnam are at risk from rising sea levels.

In 2007 the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the scientific body established by the United Nations Environment Program and the World Meteorological Association, found that a temperature rise, by 2080, in the range of 2.0–2.4°C would put stress on water resources used by 1.2 billion people. Rising sea levels would expose, each year, an additional 16 million people to coastal flooding. A temperature rise limited to 2.0°C by 2080 now seems about the best we can hope for, and recently there have been alarming indications that sea level rises could be much greater than the Fourth Assessment Report anticipated. Perhaps a technological miracle is just around the corner, one that will enable everyone in the world to consume energy at something like the levels at which we consume it, without bringing about disaster for everyone. It isn’t ethically defensible, however, to do nothing while hoping for a miracle, given that it will be others, not us, who suffer the gravest consequences if that miracle never occurs.

Climate change is a dire threat to all the progress we have made in reducing global poverty.

There is a strong moral case for saying that rich nations should cut back on their “luxury emissions” before poor nations have to cut back on “subsistence emissions.” India still has more than 450 million people living in extreme poverty, and China over 200 million. No one with any concern for human welfare could ask the world’s poor to refrain from increasing their greenhouse gas emissions in order to put more food on the table for their families, when we think little of flying down to the tropics for a winter vacation, emitting more greenhouse gases in a week than the typical family in a developing country does in a year. Needs should always take precedence over luxuries.

So all of us living comfortably in industrialized nations should be prepared to change our lifestyles in order to protect the environment and reduce the chances that climate-related catastrophes will harm ourselves and others. We should use more energy from sources other than fossil fuels, use less air-conditioning and less heat, fly and drive less, and eat less meat, for meat production is a major source of greenhouse gas emissions. Those are things that we ought to start doing now, for our own sake, for the sake of the global poor, and for the sake of future generations everywhere.

How demanding can our obligations be?

There is a different kind of objection to my argument for aid that must also be taken seriously. This is that to set so high a standard is likely to be counterproductive. If we argue that people are obliged to give to the point at which by giving more we sacrifice something of comparable moral significance, many will just throw up their hands and say “If that is what morality demands, too bad for morality.”

Is it true that the standard set by our argument is so high as to be counterproductive? There is not much evidence to go by, but discussions of the argument with students and others have led me to think it might be. On the other hand the conventionally accepted standard—a few coins in a collection tin when one is waved under your nose—is obviously far too low. What level should we advocate? In my book The Life You Can Save — and on the corresponding website, www.thelifeyoucansave.com—I have suggested a progressive scale, like a tax scale. It begins at just 1% of income, and for 90% of taxpayers, it does not require giving more than 5%. This is therefore an entirely realistic amount, and one that people could easily give with no sacrifice—and indeed, often with a personal gain, since there are many psychological studies showing that those who give are happier than those who do not. I do not really know if the scale I propose is the one that will, if widely advocated, achieve the greatest total amount donated. But I calculated that if everyone in the affluent world gave according to that scale, it would raise US$1.5 trillion dollars each year—which is eight times what the United Nations task force headed by the economist Jeffrey Sachs calculated would be needed to meet the Millennium Development Goals, set by the leaders of all the world’s nations when they met at the UN Millennium Development Summit in 2000. Those goals included reducing by half the proportion of the world’s people living in extreme poverty, and the proportion of people who suffer from hunger, as well as reducing by two-thirds the death toll among children under 5—thus saving more than 5 million lives every year—and enabling children everywhere to have a full course of primary schooling.

If everyone with abundance were to contribute to the effort to reduce extreme poverty and all that goes with it, the amount each of us would need to give would be quite modest.

This surprising outcome—that if everyone with abundance were to contribute to the effort to reduce extreme poverty and all that goes with it, the amount each of us would need to give would be quite modest— shows that the argument with which this essay began is demanding only because so few of those with the ability to help the poor are doing anything significant to help them. We do not need to transfer half, or a quarter, or even a tenth, of the wealth of the rich to the poor. If few are helping, those few have to cut very deep before they get to the point at which giving more would involve sacrificing something of comparable moral significance to the life saved by their gift. But if we all, or even most of us, gave according to the scale I have suggested, none of us would have to give up much. That is why this is a suitable standard for public advocacy. What we need to do is change our public ethics so that for anyone who can afford to buy luxuries—and even a bottle of water is a luxury if there is safe drinking water available free—giving something significant to those in extreme poverty becomes an elementary part of what it is to live an ethical life.

Why don’t people give more?

If the arguments for doing more to reduce extreme poverty are so clear, why aren’t we doing that already? There are many reasons for that. Some of these are psychological reasons rather than ethical issues. But a lot of the things that people think of as somehow making a difference, I would say only make a psychological difference, not a real ethical difference. So, for instance, you all agreed that we should help the child in the pond, and probably you all would help the child in the pond if you were to find yourself in that situation. Why don’t you all then help people elsewhere in the world? Part of the psychological problem is that they’re not here in front of you, and you’re not in a one-to-one situation where you can see that you can make a difference. Psychologists have studied a variety of different phenomena that are relevant to when a person will help a stranger. I’ve come to realize in looking at this literature that, when I came up with that example of the child drowning in the pond, I had unconsciously produced an example that is really well suited to drawing emotional responses, much better suited in fact than the global poverty issue is. So, for example, there is an identifiable victim that you’re helping. This makes a huge difference.

Here’s an example of the kind of study that shows it does. Psychologists ask students to come in for an experiment and offer them US$15. When the students come in for this experiment; they’re told, “Here’s a questionnaire. Please fill it in. Hand it in. We’ll pay you your US$15.” So they fill in the questionnaire, which of course has nothing to do with the experiment. They hand in the questionnaire at the end, and they’re given US$15 in cash in small bills, and they’re told, “By the way, each month our department supports a charity. Here’s some information about the charity we’re supporting this month. I wonder if you’d like to give some of your earnings to the charity.” Then, randomly selected, half of the students get a piece of information which has a picture of a 7-year-old African girl, and it says, “This is Rokia; she’s 7 years old; she lives in Malawi; she goes to bed hungry at night because her family can’t provide enough food for her. You can help her.” The other half are given a piece of information that has no photo, and says, “In Malawi, thousands of children go to bed hungry at night. You can help them.” Sounds like pretty similar information you’re being given, isn’t it? Except that in one case there’s an identifiable person. But surely nobody thinks, “Oh, yes, the money that I give and that everybody else here this month gives, is all going to Rokia.” That would be a bit odd, wouldn’t it, for the department just to collect for Rokia this month. That would mean that she would become quite wealthy by Malawian standards. So the students can’t really think that. Yet, by quite a significant amount, more people give when they’re given the information about Rokia than when they’re given the general information.

So the fact that we’re talking about anonymous masses of people, millions of people even, makes us less likely to respond. That’s one important factor. Another factor is, in the example of the pond there was only you, remember; it was up to you to save the child. It’s not up to you to save even Rokia, even if you’re given a name, it’s not up to you alone. Everybody’s being given this information. We know there are other people in the world who could help at least as well as we could. In fact, obviously there are some people who could help much better than we could. What about Bill Gates? Why isn’t he helping? Actually he is helping. No doubt there are other very wealthy people who aren’t helping that much. So that’s another phenomenon that psychologists have studied, the diffusion of responsibility. Again, you can show quite easily, if you stage an accident in which there’s a victim who needs help, and there’s only one person there who can help the accident victim, that person’s very likely to help.

On the other hand, if that person is only one of half a dozen, and the other half dozen are all the experimenter’s stooges who have been told not to go and help the accident victim then the person who is the naïve subject, as psychologists call them, the one who doesn’t know that this has all been rigged, is much less likely to go and help. In other words, basically, we’re sheep. We follow the leader; we don’t often stand up and think for ourselves.

We need to try and change these variables. We need to change the cultural standard so that giving becomes more normal. That’s one of the things I’m trying to do with the website I mentioned earlier, www.thelifeyoucansave.com. I’ve invited people to go there and pledge to give a certain percentage of their income to help the global poor. I hope that this will make it easier for others to go on and pledge, because they can see they are not alone in doing this. Some of them also have contributed photos of themselves and a line or two as to why this is significant and why it makes a difference. That’s an attempt to change our culture so that instead of thinking that all you have to do to live a good life, an ethical life, is to obey the “thou shalt not” types of commandment—not cheat, steal, lie, attack others, and so on—, we come to see that we have some positive obligations to help those in need where we can relatively easily do so. That would be a really important change in our world today. That would make a really significant difference.

Where do our real interests lie?

We are very much focused on thinking about our interests in terms of how much money we have. But when we stop and think about it, none of us would really say that the most important thing in life is to have a big bank balance. We would probably say, “Well, yes, you know it’s nice to have a big bank balance, but that’s because then you can do a variety of things and you’ll be happier.” But what has become clear is that people who are involved in causes larger than themselves, and who contribute to charity of various kinds, say that they are more satisfied with their lives than people who don’t. That finding comes out again and again in the general well-being surveys that have been taken for many years in a large number of different countries.

We’re even starting to understand the mechanisms of this because we now have the ability to take real-time images of what happens in people’s brains when they do various kinds of things. This has been done (admittedly the study I am about to cite was a small one, and it would be good to have it replicated) with people who have been given some money and asked if they want to make a donation to a charity. Now, whether they say “yes” or “no” to that is not something the experimenter knows; it’s done anonymously. So the reaction that I’m about to talk about is not related to the subjects knowing that they are enhancing their public reputation, as some cynics might say. Yet, with those people who do decide to give, we can see a spike in activity in the reward centers of the brain, the same areas of the brain that are active when we’re doing things that we enjoy, whether it’s a particular kind of food that we find delicious or sexual activity that we’re enjoying or whatever else it might be. It seems that they reward us for being generous as well as doing those other pleasant things. Exactly why is an interesting question. No doubt it has something to do with the circumstance in which we evolved in societies where giving was something that enhanced our survival value in a community that required some sort of cooperation. I’m arguing that we should extend that beyond the immediate face-to-face community, to the world as a whole. It seems that the same mechanisms are there.

In terms of the way we live our lives, we are likely to find involvement in these larger causes is actually rewarding and fulfilling, something that enables us to feel that our lives are more meaningful than they are if we are simply living for ourselves and thinking only about our own narrower self interest. So while giving to help the global poor may involve some financial sacrifice, we should not think of it as involving any sacrifice of our real interests, properly understood. On this issue of global poverty, therefore, ethics and self-interest are not as much at odds as one might at first imagine. There is, on the contrary, a considerable degree of harmony between them.

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• Integrated Reporting for a Global World

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America Looks at Poverty All Wrong

P overty in America has, for decades, been framed as an issue of “them” rather than “us.” The poverty stricken are routinely thought to reside far outside of mainstream America. Central to this understanding is the belief that the poor haven’t worked hard enough to pull themselves up by their bootstraps—or that they’ve made bad decisions and choices throughout their lives, resulting in poverty.

There is also a strong racial component to this perception. Poverty is typically portrayed as a Black or Brown problem rather than an American problem. Furthermore, the poor are depicted as largely confined to inner cities with high crime rates and other pathological conditions, mired in poverty for generations.

Would it surprise you, then, to learn that between the ages of 20 and 75, 75 % of all Americans will spend at least one year in or near poverty? Or that only 10% of the poor live in high poverty neighborhoods? Or that, according the U.S. Census Bureau, two thirds of the poor classify themselves as White? Or that most individuals in poverty remain poor for only one or two years? All of these facts describe the actual realities of poverty, rather than the myths.

It turns out that the reach of poverty is incredibly wide. Most Americans will at some point in their lives encounter poverty. The reason for this is that during the course of a lifetime, many unanticipated events can and do occur: losing a job, families splitting up, getting sick, or even experiencing a pandemic. When such events strike, there is very little in the form of a social safety net to protect people from falling into poverty in this country. The U.S. devotes far fewer of its resources to preventing poverty than most other industrialized countries. The result is that we have the highest rates of poverty and inequality among the group of wealthy nations. In America, the poverty-stricken can be found down nearly any street, within any demographic or racial group, and across the entire political and ideological spectrum.

Read More: Nobody Cares About Homeless People Until They Die

As a society, we each pay a hefty price for having such high rates of poverty in our midst, particularly among children. As researchers of poverty and inequality, my colleague Michael McLaughlin and I estimated the annual economic cost of childhood poverty in the United States. We relied on the latest government data and social science research in making our cost estimates. In particular, we examined the effect that childhood poverty has upon future economic productivity, health care, and criminal justice costs, as well as increased outlays as a result of child homelessness and maltreatment. Adding up these expenses resulted in an eye-opening estimate that childhood poverty was costing the U.S. slightly over $1 trillion dollars a year. This represented 28% of the entire federal budget, a jarring estimate.

Impoverished children grow up possessing fewer skills and are thus less able to contribute to the productivity of the economy. They are also more likely to experience frequent health care problems and to engage in crime. These costs are borne by the children themselves, but ultimately by the wider society, as well. In this sense, the economic costs of poverty becomes an issue of “us,” rather than “them.”

Most of us are familiar with the saying, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” It turns out that this is particularly true in the case of poverty. It is not a question of paying or not paying. Rather, it is a question of how we pay, which then affects the amount we end up spending. In making an investment up front to alleviate poverty, the evidence suggests we will be repaid many times over by lowering the enormous costs associated with a host of interrelated problems.

Shifting our understanding of poverty from a perception of “them” to one of “us” can begin to awaken Americans’ understanding of this deeply rooted economic and social problem. If poverty is no longer confined to strangers, we can’t comfortably sit back and believe that we’re unaffected. The reality is that, in one way or another, each of us are harmed by this scourge upon our landscape—either directly through experiencing poverty at some point in our lives or by sending our tax dollars to pay for the high cost of poverty. Such an understanding is essential to motivate both the general public and policy makers into confronting poverty.

Poverty can and must be reduced. But it starts with the simple recognition that each of us are harmed by the high rates of U.S. impoverishment. For, as Benjamin Franklin wisely pointed out at the signing of the Declaration of Independence, “We must, indeed, all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately.”

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College Does Help the Poor

By Tim Bartik and Brad Hershbein

• May 23, 2018

Does college pay off for the poor?

Yes. But college by itself cannot fix income inequality. Other policies are also needed.

In our research , we find that people from low-income backgrounds who complete college, compared to those who complete only high school, increase their career earnings by 71 percent. That is a hefty return.

To put that 71 percent return in dollar terms: For the average college graduate from a low-income background (those who grow up with family earnings below 185 percent of the poverty line), lifetime earnings are about $810,000. But for the average person from a low-income background with just a high school diploma, average lifetime earnings are about $475,000.

That boost of $335,000 vastly exceeds tuition costs and any foregone earnings from attending college instead of immediately working full-time after high school.

College pays off even more for people from higher-income backgrounds. In this group, who grow up with family income above 185 percent of the poverty line, the lifetime earnings of those with a four-year college degree average $1.6 million, compared to $661,000 for those with just a high school diploma — a difference of $901,000, or 136 percent.

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How counselling can help with poor executive functioning skills

Problems with time management, emotional regulation or procrastination? Here’s how counselling can help.

Life can feel overwhelming when you're constantly balancing responsibilities, meeting deadlines, and trying to keep up with everything. Executive functioning skills – like emotional regulation, time management, and organisation – are key to handling these demands. But when these skills are lacking, it can create a cycle of stress, frustration, and inefficiency. Sometimes people who have ADHD or those who suffer from anxiety, stress, depression or addiction can struggle with these skills.

This struggle can also affect how others perceive you, leading to feelings of being disorganised or unreliable, which can damage your self-esteem . The good news is, you don’t have to face this alone. Counselling can offer the support and strategies you need to regain control and rebuild your confidence.

Understanding executive functioning skills

Executive functioning encompasses a set of cognitive processes that are vital for planning, organising, problem-solving, and impulse control. These mental tools help you navigate daily life, from managing work tasks to handling personal responsibilities. When executive functioning skills are impaired, you may face challenges such as:

• Emotional regulation : Difficulty managing and responding to emotions in a healthy way, leading to mood swings, impulsive decisions, or trouble coping with stress.
• Time management : Struggles with organising and prioritising tasks, often resulting in missed deadlines, procrastination, and feeling perpetually overwhelmed.
• Organisation and planning : Challenges in keeping track of tasks, responsibilities, and schedules, leading to clutter, forgotten appointments, and a sense of chaos.
• Task initiation and completion : Difficulty starting tasks promptly and seeing them through, often resulting in procrastination and incomplete projects.
• Working memory : Trouble holding information in mind to complete tasks, which can cause you to forget important details or steps.

When these skills are compromised, everyday life can feel overwhelming. Simple tasks may require immense effort, leading to frustration and a decline in self-esteem.

How executive functioning impacts your life

The challenges of poor executive functioning can ripple through every aspect of your life:

• Work: You might struggle to meet deadlines, manage tasks, or stay on top of your workload, leading to stress, job dissatisfaction, and potential conflicts with colleagues.
• Personal life : Disorganisation and poor time management can affect your relationships, household responsibilities, and ability to pursue hobbies or interests.
• Emotional well-being : The constant sense of falling behind or being overwhelmed can take a toll on your mental health, leading to increased anxiety, depression, or feelings of inadequacy.

How counselling can help

Counselling provides a supportive environment to address these challenges and develop effective strategies. Here’s how it can help improve your executive functioning:

• Identifying underlying issues : A counsellor can help uncover the root causes of your executive functioning difficulties, whether they’re related to ADHD, anxiety, depression, addiction or other factors. Understanding these causes is the first step toward targeted solutions.
• Developing emotional regulation techniques : Counselling can equip you with tools to manage your emotions more effectively, such as mindfulness practices, cognitive-behavioural techniques, or exploring emotional triggers. Better emotional regulation allows you to approach tasks with a clearer, calmer mind.
• Enhancing time management skills : A counsellor can help you develop practical time management strategies, like breaking tasks into smaller steps, setting realistic goals, and establishing routines. These strategies can reduce procrastination and help you manage your time more effectively.
• Improving organisation and planning : Counselling can support you in building better organisational habits, from decluttering your space to creating systems that keep you on track. Improved organisation and planning can lead to increased productivity and reduced chaos.
• Strengthening task initiation and completion : If procrastination or task completion is an issue, a counsellor can help you develop strategies to overcome these barriers. This might include breaking tasks into manageable chunks, setting deadlines, and rewarding yourself for progress.
• Providing support and accountability : One of the key benefits of counselling is the ongoing support and accountability it offers. Your counsellor can provide encouragement, help you stay focused, and offer a judgment-free space to discuss your challenges.

Taking the first step towards improvement

Executive functioning skills are crucial for managing life’s demands. When these skills are compromised, it can lead to significant challenges in both your personal and professional life. Issues with emotional regulation, time management, organisation, and task completion can create a cycle of stress and frustration, but with the right support, these obstacles can be overcome. Counselling can offer the tools, strategies, and support you need to enhance your executive functioning and regain control over your life.

If you’re ready to make a change, consider reaching out to a counsellor. Together, you can create a personalised plan to address your unique challenges and move toward a more organised, balanced, and fulfilling life.

Useful resources

The National Autistic Society The NAS has a directory of support groups available on their website as well as much more information about Autism. ADHD Foundation - The Neurodiversity Charity There’s lots of information on this website with links to many resources.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author. All articles published on Counselling Directory are reviewed by our editorial team .

I am a Pluralistic Counsellor working in Surrey. I help adults with many problems including addiction, anxiety, ADHD, depression, bereavement & loss, self-harm, self-esteem issues amongst others. I work face to face on a long or short term basis.

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