Poverty\s Victims Essays - Child Poverty, Aid, Humanitarian Aid

Poverty?s Victims By: Natalie Carlyle If we try to explain poverty its simple definition would be as the deprivation of food, money, shelter and basic needs which occur when people would not be able to satisfy their basic needs. More simply we can define it as a lack of money. Poverty is common in most parts of the world today and affects people individually. Poverty leads an individual towards the issues like hunger, illness, deprivation of shelter etc. and results in the form of crime and discrimination. These consequences of poverty affect the people individually and its effects are often interrelated. Children and poverty The most powerless victims of poverty are Children. The share of children affected by poverty is growing bigger and bigger. Children are called powerless victims because they have the least ability and choice to change their condition. As early as 24 months, children in low-income families have been found to show lags in cognitive and behavioral development compared to their peers in higher-income families. Although they are not supposed to help their families but they are forced to do so. usually by the age of 6 they get enrolled in child labor. Poverty?s all possible effects have a strong impact on children?s lives and results in their lack of education, violence at home and outside, malnutrition etc. According to Gunn and Duncan (1997), ?children living below the poverty threshold are 1.3 times as likely as non-poor children to experience learning disabilities and developmental delays. Reliable measures of cognitive ability and school achievement for young children in the Children of the NLS and IHDP data sets have been used in a number of studies to examine the relationship between cognitive ability and poverty in detail.? (p. 61) one of the most adverse effects on child development is to lead them towards an antisocial behavior. Social exclusion and discrimination pushed them to aggressiveness and lack of self-control. As they are forced into child labor they may never gain the skill of positive conflict resolution. As a result when they grow up, these behaviors have established firmly in their personalities and sometimes not considered to others as recoverable. That?s why the importance of improving children?s living conditions as early as possible should be stressed. Women and poverty The second individual victim of poverty is women. There has been an increasing share in global worldwide of women poverty. This term is also known as feminization of poverty. It is another clear effect of poverty. The trend which is leading towards single parent families is only making things worse. As a result women are forced to become more compromising to their environment. They are forced to live in a poverty circle with their children. Almost in every part of the world women are victims of discrimination and have limited access towards education because of political, social and religious reasons. Behind to keep women in this state there are obvious political and social interest. So fighting against poverty is recommended to empower women possibly to solve the great deal of problems. According to Belle (1990), ?The positive association between poverty and mental health problems is one of the best established in all of psychiatric epidemiology. Research has documented consistently that low income and low socioeconomic status is associated with high rates of mental disorder. With the prevalence of poverty itself now on the rise in our country, particularly among women, children and those from minority groups, increased attention must be paid to the mental health risks that accompany poverty.? As being the corner stone of the family women have impacts on income, education and many more of children. The growing number of women in poverty has been a growing problem for society. It shows that there are more women in poverty then men. The social and cultural attitudes against women make sense for this. Women are not allowed any possessions and deprived from education. Moreover most parents prefer investing in boys. That is why women are more affected by unemployment than the men. So as a result poverty is an obvious to violence in women. According to a study by World Bank women violence is considered as a worst effect in poverty. Whether it?s a matter of looking for a