Understanding Poverty: Its Causes, Effects, And Government Responses

Advantages and Disadvantages of Being Poor

Discuss about the Poverty for Cultural Contributions to Poverty.

Poverty is the state where a human being lack a socially acceptable amount of money. When a person lacks enough material possession and financial possession he is termed to be poor man. The term poverty includes the lack of money where the people cannot satisfy the basic needs for himself and his family. Poverty is usually associated with poor health and also the low level of education. Poverty is divided into certain criterion. The first would include the people who lives under the borderline of starvation of death. The other would include the people who to suffer from nutrition, housing and clothing (Landes 2015).

Like any other thing there are certain advantages as well as disadvantages of being poor. If a person is poor he receives some amount of help from the government and other community who offer donations to the people who belong to the poverty level. Those people receive help from the community as well as the friends and neighbors. There are many social workers who help the people who belong to the poverty level. In the developed countries and also in the developing nations the government has set up few plans and policies that has been designed to assist the poor people. The assistant include the financial assistance as well as the assistance in receiving proper education. Apart from the assistance from the member of the church and the neighbors. This happens when a person becomes poor not because of his own reason. The examples of this are the poor medical condition or if the house of a person is suddenly burned down or during natural disaster the person suffer from any loss. In such cases the poverty comes in the form of cash and also in the form of other assistance like food, transportation and others. On the other hand there are many disadvantages of being poor. The person who is poor is dependent on others for help. In many societies the poor people are marginalized and they are looked upon by the people of the society. The poor people are unable to have good food or they are unable to receive proper nutrition. This results in sickness and sometimes due to lack of proper treatment people even die. Their life is always at risk. The children belonging to the poverty level are denied from receiving best education. It lowers the morale of the person and the person always feel unworthy (Lewis 2017).

Measuring Poverty and Theories of Poverty

The government measures the status of poverty by comparing the pre-tax cash against a threshold that is set at three times the cost of a minimum food diet. The government of different countries adopt different measures like conducting the census survey to keep a track of the number of people suffering from poverty. With the help of statistics the company measures the number of poverty people in the country and the government also identifies the area in which the poverty is more concentrated (Ravallion 2017).

The theories that have been consideration in order to understand the cause of poverty are the theory of Marxist and the new theory of right. According to the Marxist theory the poverty has a relationship with capitalism and the human rights. Poverty in this is considered to be a process or a relationship in which the people are involved. A parallel can be between poverty and human rights. This idea has been contradicted by the people holding a conservative vision. According to them there is no relation between the poverty and the human rights. The people holding the idea of liberal approach argues the fact that human rights is related to poverty.  The liberal theory holds the fact that the civil and the political rights helps in eliminating poverty and the negative aspects that resides all over the world. The radical version holds the fact that the human rights and the poverty are antagonistic. In simple words it can be said that the modern state is based on the capitalism and neoliberalism. These are contrary to the demands of human rights. The Marxists view is in line with the radical view. It considers the fact that the very understanding of the right is complicit in the production of poverty (Meyer 2015).

The new right approach of poverty believes that the capitalist system is capable of providing stability and wealth for all. According to this theory one of the prime cause of poverty is single parenthood. This approach made extensive research on this and they stated the fact that single mothers have increased in number and they are dependent on the state and the illegitimacy rates that have risen rapidly. The fathers who do not pay for their children and for the mothers have given rise to the poor mothers and poorer children. According to this theory there are too many young people who are dependent on the welfare state (Da Costa and Dias 2015).

Government Actions to Address Poverty

he government in different countries tackle the issue of poverty in a different way. The example of the UK government can be taken into account. The government makes effort to support the families into work by improving the living standards and by raising the educational attainment that are fundamental aim in setting the poverty strategy of the government. In order to decrease the level of poverty the government is taking measures to redistribute the wealth. The government has made efforts to reduce the income gap by hiking the federal minimum wage and it took the initiative to increase the rate of tax. The government has instituted many programs (Lynch and Boggess 2016). There is a drawback in this method. This method will redistribute the wealth and it would actually alleviate the poverty. The government made the wages high and they have arranged the federal anti-poverty programs. The government have formed few policies in order to reduce policy. The government has offered means-tested welfare benefits to the poorest in the society. This include the housing benefits, giving benefits to the employees. The government has offered free education to the ones who cannot afford education along with free meal. The policies are:

Education- the government considers the fact that the greater spending on education and training can enable higher skilled workforce.

Foreign aid- this includes the aids that are received from the developed countries that can be used to invest in developing better health care and education. However this is a temporary process as it is increases the dependency on the foreign government. At one moment the aid might stop and during that period the government might run short of funds.

Diversification of economy- this involves the diversification of the economy away from the agriculture to the manufacturing. This enables greater economic development but this might be difficult to do without the right skills and the infrastructure (Clark 2015).

Poverty plays a major role in affecting the life chances of the people. Being poor means being categorized by the other people of the society. It has a negative impact on the life chances of the individuals. It would add limitations to the choices and the options in the society. A person finds himself more miserable and more unworthy while he belongs to the status of poverty. It largely affects the life of the persons. Poverty in maximum times lead to many crimes and illegal activities like smuggling, murder, kidnapping and even theft. The people who indulges himself in theft does so because of the poor financial condition. A person is in dire need of money and this is the reason in order to earn money and fulfill the needs of his family indulges in the short cut way of earning money. This is the similar case for the ones who indulged himself into the illegal activities. The poor people cannot afford costly cloths and they cannot buy cloths frequently compared to the richer ones. Sometimes they cannot pay their bills. The people staying in rent are more likely to be poor than the owners who belong to the class of rich. The poor people are more likely to be in depth than the ones who are rich. Even the children who belong to the category of poor are unable to attain remarkable achievements in the field of education. As a result they lag behind in the world and they cannot make progress compared to the ones who are rich. They are the victims of burglary. They suffer from the mental health more than the ones who are rich (Duran 2017).

Impact of Poverty on Life Chances

Poverty can be seen more clearly from through the housing well-being. In order to consider this area the history of the housing in UK has been taken into account. During the industrial revolution there was a huge growth of the inner cities. There was a huge influx of the people from villages to cities. There was a difficulty in accommodation. The occupations was built by private enterprise and they were often squalid, with large factory populations that came into the small area. This lead to the slums. The slums consists of two rooms, one was located in the upstairs and the other was located in the down-stairs. The water came from a communal cast-iron pump. With outdoor lavatories. The First World War brought about huge change in the social, economic and the political system. One of the remarkable change was the 1915 Rent Act (Lundahl 2015). This act limited the amount the private landlords could raise rents on the tenants. The workers faced long hours and rising rents. This is the reason they protested against this made the government to intervene. In the medieval period, England witnessed great amount of poverty. There were many beggars and they were provided shelter by the churches. The church also ran the hospitals in the Middle ages. In the 16^th century there was a rise in population and at the same time it was difficult to find jobs in the country (Madden and Marcuse 2017). The homelessness increased in UK in the past years. There were many people in England who were left without any homes. Their primary occupation was to beg and to sleep in the footpaths in the road itself. This was more evident after the Second World War (Clarkson and Coleman 2015). The other thing that was noticed was the growth in home ownership. The house-building boom continued when the conservatives returned to power in the year 1951. The emphasis shifted at the end of the decade towards the clearance of the slum. Many people who lived in slums were uprooted from their homes. Poverty was the real cause of this. The people who were removed from the houses were poor and they were treated badly by the society. Their existence were not given any importance and they were banished from their residences. Their life was always at risk and had no stability. This was the impact of the poverty (Davis and Sanchez-Martinez 2015).

Poverty through the Housing Well-being

The Homelessness Reduction Bill received Royal Assent and therefore it became an Act of Parliament on 27^th April, 2017. It would place new legal duties on the English Councils in order to assist the ones who are left homeless and they are living at a risk of being homelessness. The Act draws on the work of an independent panel of experts established by Crisis in the year 2015 (Powell 2015). The aim of the panel of the experts was to identify the strengths and the weaknesses of the current legislation that affect single homeless people in England. It further aims at proposing the improvements to the legal framework to prevent and to tackle single homelessness more effectively in England. Under the new act the period an individual has been threatened with homelessness has extended from 28 days to 56 days (Been et al. 2016). The objective of the extension is to encourage the housing authorities to act quickly and in a proactive manner and it should allow the housing authorities with more times do the work done for preventing this. Under the act, the housing authorities can take certain actions if an applicant deliberately and unreasonably refuses to cooperate with the key steps in their personalized housing plan. It enables the effective prevention and the relief of homelessness that requires the public body to work together in order to help address the multiple factors that cause the homelessness of an individual (Best and Kleven 2017).  

The, ‘plan for the no second night out’, policy is owned by the ministerial working group. The plan was created in order to help prevent homelessness and it was framed to support the people who suffered from the threat of homelessness (Figueroa et al. 2017). In this policy the local government group and the government were to work together in order to develop a proposal for the use of community based budgets for the ones who are homeless. The weakness in this is that the government should pass on responsibility to other departments for tackling this problem. There was lack of enthusiasm in the other departments to tackle this responsibility. This can be said that there was lack of communication between the government and the other departments. This is the reason this was a failure. A huge investment was required in this which was not possible all the time by the government (Pavlakis, Goff and Miller 2017).

The welfare reforms are the biggest reason of homelessness in England. The welfare reforms include the reforms such as the bedroom tax, sanctions and housing benefit cuts that acts as fuel to the homelessness crisis in England. They acts as a pressure on the vulnerable households. UK has always remained a center of homelessness. It is because of the shortage of housing and high rents (Flatau et al. 2016). The welfare removes the poor people from the inner city to the neighborhoods that are cheaper. The official studies showed that the homelessness increased with the passing years and no policy till date has successfully eradicated the same. They are left with some or the other pitfalls (Shinn, Brown and Gubits 2017).

References

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Best, M.C. and Kleven, H.J., 2017. Housing market responses to transaction taxes: Evidence from notches and stimulus in the UK. The Review of Economic Studies, 85(1), pp.157-193.

Clark, N., 2015. The Cultural Contributions to Poverty: A Life History Study of Welfare Recipients.

Clarkson, P.J. and Coleman, R., 2015. History of Inclusive Design in the UK. Applied ergonomics, 46, pp.235-247.

Da Costa, L.P. and Dias, J.G., 2015. What do Europeans believe to be the causes of poverty? A multilevel analysis of heterogeneity within and between countries. Social Indicators Research, 122(1), pp.1-20.

Davis, E.P. and Sanchez-Martinez, M., 2015. Economic theories of poverty. Joseph Rowntree Foundation.

Duran, A., 2017. The Alleviation of Slum Poverty in the Philippines: A Critical Examination of Poverty Reduction Programs.

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Ravallion, M., 2017. Poverty comparisons. Routledge.

Shinn, M., Brown, S.R. and Gubits, D., 2017. Can Housing and Service Interventions Reduce Family Separations for Families Who Experience Homelessness?. American journal of community psychology, 60(1-2), pp.79-90.