Poverty is now one of the most serious problems that every country is facing, even the biggest countries. This issue is caused by a variety of factors including conflict, inequality, lack of infrastructure. However, what is the four main contributory factors to poverty locally and globally?
The answers are illiteracy, disease, no job opportunities, and overpopulation.
Illiteracy
Poor education is one of the leading causes of poverty globally. Receiving high education levels can help students to have enough knowledge and qualifications to get a job to escape from poverty. However, education is not attached to much importance in many parts of the world.
Poor families do not have enough money for their children’s tuition fees so that their kids cannot go to school, then they are not able to get a good job with a stable salary. This phenomenon is like an endless circle that people cannot escape from it, they and future generations can never have a chance to change it.
Moreover, poor families do not see a benefit in education and they tend to think that their children had better have a job straight after secondary or high school so that their kids can support them in making money for the family. However, this is a misconception as it will prevent children from studying at universities to get a qualification and high-paid jobs in the future.
Disease
Another reason that causes poverty is a disease; this is a big problem that several families are now facing. When I worked as a volunteer on a project for the National Institute of Hematology and Blood Transfusion in Hanoi, I saw many families who were in poor condition because of the serious disease that their kids had.
Treatment usually requires a huge amount of money that numerous families have to sell everything they have and borrow money from everyone so that they can have enough to cure their families member’s disease. Even the normal families, if their kids, unfortunately, suffer from a serious disease, may fall into poverty as they have to spend all of their money for the treatment.
Furthermore, many orphan children or children who come from poor families are at great risk of disease because they do not have proper food to eat or enough clothes to wear. When they have an illness, they do not have enough money for medicine and treatments so that they have to suffer from it for a long time. Unless they can recover from the sickness on their own, they will die because of it.
Not only kids but also millions of poor adults die because they cannot afford medicine and treatments. Based on a new study by Gallup and West Health, in the last five years, more than 13% of American adults, or 34 million individuals, said they knew of at least one friend or family member who died as a result of not obtaining the required medical treatment because they couldn’t pay for it.
No Job Opportunities
Because many poor people cannot go to school and receive high education levels, they do not have the qualifications to get a good job in companies. Jobs that young people without high qualifications can get are usually blue-collar work, which cannot provide them with a stable and high salary.
Moreover, the competitiveness between employees in the labor market makes many students just out of university become unemployed, even the students who graduate from top universities. Therefore, without a job or a way to make money, people will face poverty.
At the moment, because of the COVID-19, many people are now unemployed and they cannot make money to maintain their daily lives. Especially people who are blue-collar workers are now in poor condition when they cannot go to work. A few days ago, I watched an interview of an old street vendor, she cried and said that if she stayed at home, then who would go to work and earn money to feed her children?
Overpopulation
One surprising thing is that overpopulation is also one of the main factors that cause poverty. Because of the huge amount of people and the lack of a national budget, the government cannot care for and support all the citizens of their country.
Many people now are not able to afford health insurance, numerous children cannot go to school, a variety of people are homeless, and do not have enough clothes to wear. However, these numbers are too large so that the government cannot help all of the people in need.
Moreover, even though the government has applied family planning and introduced several ways of birth control, many families still have three or more children, especially poor families. However, this phenomenon has resulted in the situation that they do not have enough money to bring up all of their kids and afford their studying, then they become even poorer.
Overpopulation also leads to unemployment in society that the number of workers is much higher than the amount of work. Numerous people nowadays cannot get a job as all the positions in the companies have been filled in.
“When a poor person dies of hunger, it has not happened because God did not take care of him or her. It has happened because neither you nor I wanted to give that person what he or she needed.”
Mother Teresa, Roman Catholic Nun
It is time for us to stand up and help the poor people and children all around the world, it is not only for us but also for humans, for the world. Even when we cannot provide assistance to everyone who needs support, we can still help millions of lives to escape from poverty and death. Let’s make the world better today!
At Project Sprouts, we realize that we can not solve all the problems of poverty in a situation like this. But we can seek to make a difference in the lives of needy children by giving them school supplies and encouraging them to continue their education; we can give them winter coats, boots, and blankets to help them stay warm during the cold winter months.
Project Sprouts would love to have you be a part of our community and help us to help worthy children in North Vietnam. We cannot solve all the world’s problems, but we can do our part to help poor kids grow by giving school supplies, winter coats, boots, and other supplies.
You can find out more about Project Sprouts by clicking here or go to our give now page to donate by clicking here. As we are a grassroots organization, all funds go to help those in need.
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