Poverty is a social evil that exposes the contradictions between government policies and the national economy’s weakness. Poverty has many factors, many of which are fundamental. They include overpopulation, a situation of having a large number of individuals when there are insufficient resources, and also insufficient space. The finite resources and the limited space will not accommodate the vast population, resulting in a lack of certain basics. Population growth also benefits from these cans. Poverty is famine. Poverty means inadequate shelter. Poverty is being ill and not being able to see a physician. Poverty is not learning how to read and not getting access to classes. Poverty is not about getting a salary, it’s about the uncertainty of the future, about living one day at a time. Poverty is the loss of a child to sickness caused by unclean water. Poverty is impotence, loss of representation, and liberty. In this essay, I will examine how poverty affects different people around the world and how we together as a society can overcome this worldwide issue.

“The Top 10 solutions to Cut Poverty and Grow the Middle Class” by Rebecca Vallas and Melissa Boteach. Rebecca Vallas is a senior fellow at American Progress, where she has spent the past five years helping to develop and lead the Welfare to Prosperity Initiative of CAP in a number of positions, including as the managing director and vice president of the program, and along the way, helping to launch the criminal justice reform and disability justice work of the organization. In order to ensure that both women and families have the income and resources they need to succeed, Melissa Boteach, Vice President for Income Protection and Child Care / Early Learning, oversees the advocacy, strategy, and public education initiatives of NWLC. In this text, the authors give insight into how we as a society can put a stop to poverty. “The best pathway out of poverty is a well-paying job. To get back to pre-recession employment levels, we must create 5.6 million new jobs.” Both authors support their claims by providing us with factual information and how we can overcome the problem of poverty. The purpose of this article is to make readers aware of the fact that even though we can’t stop poverty entirely there are ways we can lower the number of people in poverty. In the article, the authors set a serious tone to showcase that poverty is an urgent issue that has news to be dealt with. 

Rebecca Vallas and Melissa Boteach article “The Top 10 solutions to Cut Poverty and Grow the Middle Class” written on September 14, 2014, asserts that poverty is an issue that can be resolved by providing ways we can overcome poverty and providing factual information on each way of how we can overcome poverty. By supplying the reader with information about poverty and how we can overcome it, Vallas and Boteach build their claims about poverty to ensure that the problem should be dealt with as quickly as possible. Vallas and Boteach wish to convey to readers the importance of eradicating poverty in order to show people that it can be solved if they follow some of the steps provided. The author’s audience is mostly adults who can assist in poverty, as well as recognizing the problem, people who may have lived through it, and experienced the situation. As well as teenagers who are also much more conscious than younger kids of this particular global issue. Since we all have a say and can put injustice to justice, this age group can really make a difference. 

The United Nations uploaded an article about Ending poverty, that argues about what poverty is and how it can come to an end. The author supports this claim by giving factual information on how many people are affected by poverty and also by reviewing the number of people of a different gender who faces poverty. The author adopts a serious tone for the audience, the readers of Ending poverty, and others interested in the topic of poverty in general. In the text Ending poverty, the author asserts that poverty is a major issue and we have to take global action for it to come to an end. The author backs up by doing the following: first, the author defines what poverty is and who is mainly affected by it; next, the author uses facts and statistics to back up her claim; last, the author gives solutions to the problem. The author appears to write in hopes of educating the people about poverty and also how we can overcome poverty in order for readers to know that it’s possible. Due to the author’s serious tone, it seems as if the author writes for adults and teenagers because Together, we will make improvements to support people who live in poverty. Adults can assist in poverty, as well as recognizing the problem, people who may have lived through it and experienced the situation. Teenagers are also much more conscious than younger kids of this particular global issue. Since we all have a say and can put injustice to justice, this age group can really make a difference.

In the book Poverty by Karen Steinman, she combines the issue stated in most of these articles. For instance, she goes from explaining what poverty is to talk about why people are poor to is poverty a worldwide solution to how poverty affects daily life to do poverty affects health to can people escape poverty to can we end poverty worldwide. Overall, Steinman covers up all parts of poverty, and in her book, she has most of what other articles have said. In the book, she states, “ Today we have the knowledge and technology to overcome the worst aspects of poverty. As we have seen, the world already produces more than enough food to feed everybody. Even the poorest country has the potential to deliver basic necessities such as clean water, good sanitation, and electrical power.” (pg 74) Steinman goes on to explain how we as a society have grown so much overtime that poverty isn’t that big of a deal to overcome as long as everyone within their community is willing to help each other. 

Max Roser and Esteban-Ospina also explain how we are overcoming poverty throughout the years. “There is absolutely no reason to be complacent about poverty today – it remains one of the world’s very worst problems. But it is clear that the world has made progress against it. What this chart shows is that, no matter what global poverty line you choose, the share of people below that poverty line has declined.” They also state, “Global poverty is one of the very worst problems that the world faces today. The poorest in the world are often hungry, have much less access to education, regularly have no light at night, and suffer from much poorer health. Making progress against poverty is therefore one of the most urgent global goals.” Roser and Ospina examine how poverty can be cured and they do that by first having research on how many people around the world live in extreme poverty and after they show possible ways for each country to overcome poverty using different strategies based on the number of people living in extreme poverty.

Of course, poverty is far from equally spread across the United States, and Americans are far less or much more likely to live in poverty, depending on the ethnicity, gender, occupation, and social status of an individual. Certain classes are more than twice as likely as the average American to experience poverty. Poverty can result from both personal responsibility and systemic forces, and experts often argue that it affects poverty more. But some factors outside the individual’s control, like being a woman, black, Hispanic, a boy, or a person with a disability, are an indication that one is more likely to live in poverty. The United States Bureau has written an article on how poverty is connected to race and how overtime these races have begun to grow out of it. For example, poverty has mostly affected blacks and Hispanics. As stated, “The historically low poverty rates for Blacks and Hispanics in 2019 reflect gains for race and Hispanic origin groups that have traditionally been disadvantaged compared to other groups over time.” The article also indicates, “The figure shows that for Blacks, the poverty rate of 18.8% in 2019 was the lowest rate observed since poverty estimates were first produced for this group for 1959. The previous low for this group was 20.8% in 2018. Poverty rates in 2019 were also the lowest ever observed for Hispanics (15.7%), compared to the prior low of 17.6% in 2018. Poverty statistics for Hispanics date back to 1972.”  However, even with these improvements, in contrast to their inclusion in the total population, Blacks and Hispanics appear to be over-represented in the population in poverty. 

Some may ask the question, How may Covid-19 cause many of us to go into poverty in the current time period. The World Bank has written how COVID-19 added as Many as 150 Million people to Extreme Poverty by 2021. As stated in the text, “The COVID-19 pandemic is estimated to push an additional 88 million to 115 million people into extreme poverty this year, with the total rising to as many as 150 million by 2021, depending on the severity of the economic contraction.” Furthermore, “In addition to the $1.90-per-day international poverty line, the World Bank measures poverty lines of $3.20 and $5.50, reflecting national poverty lines in lower-middle-income and upper-middle-income countries. The report further measures poverty across a multidimensional spectrum that includes access to education and basic infrastructure.” The economy’s recovery is too late to mitigate these benefits. Owing to rising layoffs, increasing cases of coronavirus, and a lack of progress in stimulus talks, the economy is showing more signs of contraction. Due to the effect on the sectors they often employ, minority groups, including Black and Latino people, are most affected.

A baseline of poverty figures made in late 2019 is shown in the first row of Table 1. In 2019, a total of 650 million people were thought to be in extreme poverty and poverty was on a road of a steady reduction in most countries, as well as in the aggregate, given possible growth trajectories. Poverty in 2020 could grow by 120 million people compared to 2019. The figure for 2020 is 144 million more people, relative to the baseline road to poverty. As economies start to recover in 2021, some of this will be reversed, but the longer-term outlook indicates that half of the poverty increase may be permanent. Poverty estimates will still be higher than the baseline of 60 million people by 2030.

“Initial US Policy Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic’s Economic Effects Is Projected to Blunt the Rise in Annual Poverty”, similar to the previous article it talks about how poverty connects with covid- 19 and how it is being resolved. As indicated, “Between February 2020 and May 2020, an estimated 14 percent of working Americans lost their jobs because of the economic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic. The unemployment rate increased from 3.5 percent in February to over 19 percent in April when adjusted for potential reporting errors. In the final week of April, almost half of all adults age 18 or older lived in a household that experienced a loss of employment income, and those losses disproportionately occurred among Hispanic people and people with lower incomes (Acs and Karpman 2020).” The federal government has adopted several measures in response to the economic downturn that is intended to Support both corporations as well as people. The article concentrates on three main policies in this study that provide Financial support for people: Economic Impact Payments, Enhanced Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, and lastly Expanded unemployment insurance. This article also gives insight as to how new policies have helped blacks and Hispanics. As stated, “The COVID-19 pandemic response policies reduced poverty for all racial and ethnic groups. For Black non-Hispanic people, the annual poverty rate is estimated to be 15.2 percent with the policies in place, but it would have reached 20.5 percent without them. For Hispanic people, the annual poverty rate is projected to be 13.7 percent with the policies and 18.2 percent without. Among white non-Hispanic people, the projected rates are 6.6 percent with the policies and place and 9.0 percent without.” This corresponds to the article, “Inequalities Persist Despite Decline in Poverty For All Major Race and Hispanic Origin Groups’ ‘ because It talks about how new policies and laws that have helped the black and Hispanic during the pandemic. If it weren’t for these policies then the rates of poverty for black and Hispanics would have increased greatly. 

Owing to the injustice and unfairness they bear, the wealthy cause poverty. The country is blamed for the actions of governments and nations. It is also possible to blame people for suffering because of the population, but some can not help it. The poverty threshold, the population, and the number of people living in poverty are influenced by this. With the support of organizations, the government or the president, and happy volunteers who will be able to do a lot for these individuals, poverty can be overcome. Poverty is a well-known problem, and for centuries it has been around.

 

Works cited

1. Max Roser and Esteban Ortiz-Ospina (2013) – “Global Extreme Poverty”. Published online at OurWorldInData.org. Retrieved from: ‘https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-poverty’ [Online Resource]

2. The Top 10 Solutions to Cut Poverty and Grow the Middle Class By Rebecca Vallas and Melissa Boteach  September 17, 2014, 9:01 am

3. Inequalities Persist Despite Decline in Poverty For All Major Race and Hispanic Origin Groups JOHN CREAMER  |  SEPTEMBER 15, 2020

4. Critical World Issues: Poverty Karen Steinman Published by Mason Crest, 2016

5. Inequalities Persist Despite Decline in Poverty For All Major Race and Hispanic Origin Groups  JOHN CREAMER  |  SEPTEMBER 15, 2020

6. PRESS RELEASE OCTOBER 7, 2020

COVID-19 to Add as Many as 150 Million Extreme Poor by 2021

1. Linda Giannarelli, Laura Wheaton, and Gregory Acs July 2020

2020 Poverty Projections Initial US Policy Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic’s Economic Effects Is Projected to Blunt the Rise in Annual Poverty