Poverty: A Worldwide Issue
The issue of poverty has been an ongoing problem for decades. However, despite the collective efforts from organizations and the community, this remains a situation that we have yet to overcome.
What is poverty?
Poverty is the state of deprivation from sustainable livelihoods which prevents the person or community from accessing basic human necessities (Chen, 2020). This then results in catastrophic results such as lack of education, permanent homes, and hunger. Growing up, my mother never fails to remind me about the reality of this matter since she herself has experienced it in the past. After watching the documentary, it opened my eyes further to how dreadful poverty really is especially after the COVID-19 Pandemic.
What are the key trends in global poverty and inequality?
Now that we have tackled the overall aspects and definition of poverty, it is time to further expound and correlate this to the inequality in the world. Global poverty similarly refers to the issue at hand, but on a worldwide scale. As the world progresses, the world has made significant differences in comparison to the data collected in the 1990’s. According to World Vision, more than 1.2 billion people were able to overcome extreme poverty since the 1990’s. However, considering the negative effects of the recent pandemic, this progress has been possibly ruled out.
To support this claim, the graph above portrays the recent and projected poverty rate on a global scale. As we can see, the rate was expected to drop in the year 2020 and 2021. However, due to the detrimental effects of the pandemic to the overall economy of countries, the rate of poverty increased rather than the supposed decrease.
Moreover, the documentary highlighted the fact that Manila was continually progressing and had a great economy in the year 2013. At first glance, this news is to be perceived as good. However, the reality of the situation is that despite the progress of the city, the rate of poverty is still increasing and 4 million of the community still reside in slumps. This potrays how the issue does not only rely on the economy, but it digs deeper on to the situation of the communities itself. Just because the economy of the country is increasing, it does not mean that the problem has been eliminated. This greatly shows the topic of “the rich get richer and the poor get poorer”.
Does capitalism eliminate or reinforce inequality?
Capitalism is usually perceived as an economic system in which the production of product and trade and industry revolves around the ownership of private individuals or businesses.
I personally believe that it does reinforce inequality and contributes to the growing percentage of poverty. However, we cannot deny that it still provides more job opportunities for the community. But the problem lies upon the competitions between company or business owners. We have previously tackled this in Module 4. The goal of the companies is to produce the cheapest products at the lowest cost. Therefore, this results in corporate scandals, inequality, market failure, environmental problems. Some opt to go to third world countries for the production of their goods, in which they abuse their power and give them salaries that are lower than the minimum wage.
Has globalization increased, or decreased, global poverty?
Personally, since globalization focuses on the opening of countries’ borders to international trade, then it could be beneficial to the economy of the countries. As a result, it greatly contributes to the growth of the country, which could help the rate of poverty to decrease. However, I further believe that this lies upon the leaders of the countries if they would be intelligent in the handling of funds. What I have observed in the documentary is that they constantly lead to the topic of the government. The female adult in the video even stated that they never rely to the government, instead they have always relied on themselves and their income. However, given the present situation they do not have any choice. I firmly believe that the government have the power to provide effective long-term solutions and policies which could help eliminate the issue of poverty, one step at a time.
References:
Does capitalism cause poverty? (n.d.). World Economic Forum. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2015/08/does-capitalism-cause-poverty/
Global poverty: Facts, FAQs, and how to help. (2020, June 11). World Vision. https://www.worldvision.org/sponsorship-news-stories/global-poverty-facts
The impact of COVID-19 on extreme poverty, by region. (n.d.). Flourish. https://public.flourish.studio/visualisation/4517134/
Poverty. (n.d.). Investopedia. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/poverty.asp
