Consequences of Poverty
The consequences of poverty encompass a wide range of social, economic, and health-related impacts. These may include limited access to education and healthcare, higher rates of crime and violence, and increased vulnerability to environmental and natural disasters. Poverty can also perpetuate intergenerational cycles of disadvantage, affecting individuals, families, and communities.
5 Key excerpts on "Consequences of Poverty"
- Donna Couchenour, J. Kent Chrisman(Authors)
- 2016(Publication Date)
- SAGE Publications, Inc(Publisher)
...Poverty Effects Poverty Effects Heather Biggar Tomlinson Heather Biggar Tomlinson Tomlinson, Heather Biggar 1040 1048 Poverty Effects Poverty reflects not only lack of material assets, but also a lack of social capital—a sense of belonging, cultural identity, respect, dignity, and access to information and education. Of approximately 2.2 billion children in the world, one billion live in poverty. Poverty among children is not confined to children in the developing world; some economically advanced countries also have high numbers of poor children. Among economically advanced countries, the United has the second highest percentage of children (22% of all children and 25% of children under 6 are poor; Romania has the highest percentage). Regardless of geography, the effects of poverty generally remain the same: higher mortality rates and detrimental child outcomes. Yet children do not necessarily experience the effects of poverty in the same ways or to the same degree; the effects depend on exposure to risks, individual variation, and exposure to protective factors. This entry examines some of the factors that determine whether poverty will impact a child and if so, to what extent. In addition, this entry examines the many short- and long-term effects that poverty can have on a child, including but not limited to physical, emotional, and cognitive impacts. Factors Influencing the Effects of Poverty The effects of poverty are difficult to determine and occur at both neural and behavioral levels. Moreover, the breadth, depth, and longevity of the effects are not the same for all children. However, it is clear that poverty is harmful to children, affecting both immediate and future functioning negatively across all domains of development and measures of achievement. There are a number of factors in a child’s constellation of poverty. Cumulative Risks The more risk factors to which a child is exposed, the more the child’s development is compromised...
eBook - ePubSocial Work with Children and Families
Developing Advanced Practice
- Penelope Welbourne(Author)
- 2012(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...From a structural theoretical perspective, poverty is linked to the cycle of market fluctuations and market-related factors such as low wages, low unemployment benefits, unemployment, etc. There are also structural barriers to escaping poverty including poor education, poor health services and low access to credit, among other things. These different theoretical perspectives suggest different policy approaches to the problem of poverty: attempting to change the attitudes and skills of poor individuals – ‘individual’ theories; challenging the ‘culture of poverty’ through changing social norms and values; and lastly through changing the economic and political structures that affect the kind of life choices poorer people can make and maximising their ability to be socially mobile while protecting the income of those who are unable to earn enough for themselves. Poverty is not a straightforward concept. The title of this chapter reflects both the complexity of the idea of poverty in a post-industrial and global context, and the complexity of the relationship between social work and poverty, given the high proportion of its clients who are poor. Poverty may be defined in different ways, bringing different numbers of people into the definition depending upon its reference points. The UN Definition of Poverty is set out below. It highlights the wide-ranging effects of poverty, which go beyond their immediate physical consequences, such as hunger and untreated illness. Fundamentally, poverty is a denial of choices and opportunities, a violation of human dignity. It means lack of basic capacity to participate effectively in society. It means not having enough to feed and clothe a family, not having a school or clinic to go to, not having the land on which to grow one’s food or a job to earn one’s living, not having access to credit. It means insecurity, powerlessness and exclusion of individuals, households and communities...
eBook - ePubPoverty, the Bible, and Africa
Contextual Foundations for Helping the Poor
- Isaac Boaheng(Author)
- 2020(Publication Date)
- HippoBooks(Publisher)
...Large class sizes also make monitoring and evaluation of student progress ineffective. Other Socioeconomic Problems There are a number of other socioeconomic challenges associated with poverty in Africa. Writing about the effect of poverty on the social life of the youth, D. C. Ononogbu avers that poverty makes the youths “hang on for some time, just whiling away the time but when they get tired of merely sitting on the wall, they tend to implode and fall into all sorts of anti-social behaviours and habits that the society may never be able to help them again”. [101] This statement makes the point that most deviant behavior among the youth in Africa may be the result of their experience of poverty. “Child streetism” is one of such problems. Some poor parents send their children onto the street to search for money to supplement the family’s income. Others are born on the street from teenage pregnancies and because they have no home, they live on the street. Still, some children move from rural areas to cities to look for greener pastures and end up becoming children of the street as porters and hawkers. Another socioeconomic challenge of poverty is the high incidence of internet fraud. [102] This may take place anywhere, whether in the city or rural areas. Some youth also engage in the act of using juju (black powers) to mislead wealthy people (usually foreigners on the Internet) to send them huge sums of money...
eBook - ePubHandbook of Individual Differences in Reading
Reader, Text, and Context
- Peter Afflerbach, Peter Afflerbach(Authors)
- 2015(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Poverty generates psychological distress among adults within a household due to financial hardships, limited family resources, and familial responsibilities, which then interferes with their ability to provide adequate emotional support, sufficient parent–child interactions, and consistent involvement in their children’s readiness to learn (Dubow & Ippolito, 1994; Evans & Kim, 2013). The economic pressure of poverty can lead to conflict between children and parents and impairs parent–child interactions because of parental irritability and depressive symptom, which in turn results in lower school grades for poor children (Duncan & Brooks-Gunn, 2000). According to Bradley and his colleagues (2001), parents who experience economic hardship often display little verbal and physical affection, use more harsh punishment, and rarely monitor their children’s behavior and growth. Thus, children who lack strong support systems, relationships, and role models tend to have a hard time overcoming the burden of poverty, and consequently their academic progress, including reading performances, are adversely affected by poverty (Payne, 2005). Conversely, parents who are able to provide supportive parenting by incorporating rich language and learning experiences in the home, despite economic hardships, tend to promote cognitive readiness for poor children (Hilferty et al., 2010). Although parents’ characteristics such as depression, irritability, and detachment affect children’s educational development as a result of poverty, research findings indicate that children’s characteristics also affect their development due to poverty. For example, children who are temperamentally difficult tend to exacerbate symptoms of depression and detachment amongst poor parents, thereby adversely affecting parents’ ability to provide responsive caregiving and positive interactions...
eBook - ePubQuality of Life
Concept, Policy and Practice
- David Phillips(Author)
- 2006(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...They state first that social exclusion can be narrowly defined as a component of poverty where a person is so poor as to be unable to participate in society: in other words, a person who falls below the citizenship definition of poverty will automatically suffer from social exclusion because they will, by definition, be unable to participate in social activities because they are too poor. They will therefore automatically be socially excluded entirely and completely because they are poor. Second, social exclusion can be broadly defined as subsuming poverty by becoming in effect a multi-dimensional version of poverty: ‘material poverty can be seen as a particular form of social exclusion in that social exclusion refers to processes of impoverishment’ (ibid.: 12). A somewhat similar approach is taken by da Costa (1997) who sees merit in both constructs, but only so far as they are defined as being complementary. He defines poverty as being ‘a situation of deprivation due to lack of resources’. Such a level of deprivation because of lack of resources, as in Gore and Figueirdo’s analysis, leads inexorably to exclusion from basic societal, economic, financial and cultural systems. It may lead to exclusion from neighbourhood and family social networks, and in extreme cases the poverty may be so great as to lead to loss of identity, selfesteem and personal autonomy. These three levels of potential exclusion caused by poverty closely match Wessels and Miedema’s three levels of exclusion. Da Costa (1997:114) does not argue that all exclusion is caused by poverty but claims that ‘social exclusion includes poverty … as well as other forms of exclusion that are not related to resources’. Both of these approaches identify two facets of social exclusion: a narrow facet, caused by poverty, and a broader one which both subsumes poverty and also includes forms of exclusion which are not related to poverty...
