The Epidemic  of Poverty

By Abigail N.

 

Does 10% of our world using one dollar and 50 cents to live off of a day sound okay to you? You might ask, what is poverty? Poverty is the lack of income and resources needed to live your life. Poverty includes hunger, lack of proper nutrition, little education availability, and the need for any service.  Unfortunately, our world suffers from a catastrophic amount of poverty. We need to understand why this is and then act upon it.

          When the Covid-19 virus hit it alarmingly made the epidemic of poverty worse. According to the United Nations, “The COVID-19 pandemic could increase global poverty by as much as half a billion people.” That is not a state we want the world to experience. Before the pandemic, the poverty rate was around 15%, and it lowered to 12% in the month of March. In April, when the pandemic hit, it would have been at 19.4% in the U.S., but due to the CARES (Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security) Act, it lowered to 13.9%. The Coronavirus has clearly affected poverty, and we need to recognize that it has.

Do you think having 11 million children in poverty is a good state for our world to be in? That is 1 in 7 kids! That unthinkable amount is why we need to focus our attention towards this crisis. “More than 4 in 10 children live in a household struggling to meet basic expenses, and between 7 million and 11 million children live in households in which they are unable to eat enough because of the cost.” Children make up one third of the people in poverty. CAP also stated that, “Since April 2020, the share of children with at least one unemployed parent has consistently remained above reported rates during the peak of the Great Recession.” If our future generations can’t have an environment that has basic essentials, then people will die.

When you wake up in the morning, does it please you to know that 43,959,934 people are in poverty in the U.S. and we can help fix it by just understanding that it is there?  The U.S. has a poverty rate of 17.80%. The Center for American Progress (CAP) asserts that, “This number should be unimaginable in one of the world’s wealthiest countries.” A person needs basic necessities to stay alive, and we are not spending money on those basic necessities.

Poverty has not just harmed the U.S., but many other places in the world. The U.N. stated that, “In 2015, more than 736 million people lived below the international poverty line.” That altitudinous amount is why our world is in destructive danger. 42% of Sub-Saharan Africa still has a disastrous amount of poverty. 10% of the world is in substandard poverty. We can all help our world before this gets worse. South Sudan has a 82.30% poverty rate. This epidemic is why we as a country need to change our ways and be concerned with the rest of the world's poverty.

If we don’t want our future generations to live in this dreadful mess, we need to be aware of our actions. That is why we should try to inform the world about these problems. We should create jobs and ways to get money to those who need it to make our world have a future where everyone can have basic necessities. We can turn this issue around and alleviate the epidemic of poverty.