The World and I
Asti's musings on the (non)functioning world
Poverty does not only exist in LEDCs...(1)
I have just returned from a trip to the United States,
morespecifically in North Carolina, and I heard the shocking
statisticthat every 5th child in this state suffers from
undernourishment -and this in one of the most developed countries
in the world!
Thus I decided to research this subject a bit further and found the shocking statistic that in 2006 36.5 million people were living in poverty (12.3%) and as can be expected the majority of the people living in poverty are from African American and Hispanic families (see US Census Bureau Statistics). Therefore the questions arises, how, in one of the most developed countries in the world, can poverty be so rampant (especially when we all know how much is being spent in Iraq every day since 2003)? I did a bit of reading on the internet and found that many author's agree that it is very much the institutional base that "locks-in"poverty. This includes healthcare, or lack thereof due the insurance system. Healthcare is special since the absolute poorest do get access to the so-called Medicaid. However, the families that fall through the cracks are the poor families that are not poor enough according to a threshold and thus do not qualify for Medicaid. Furthermore, education can exacerbate the problem. America, like other countries, is divided into school districts which means that depending on your postcode, you are allowed to only attend certain public schools. Schools get more funding the better they do. The obvious problem with this is that if a school is located in a disadvantaged district it is going to find itself in a viscous cycle as it will find it difficult to obtain funding for improvements. Poverty in America is cyclical (i.e. there are more poor people in the time of recessions), and with the current soar in fuel prices, there is the fear that even more households will be thrown into poverty (as households in America are very fuel dependent).
It does make you sit back and wonder, we always look far intodeveloping countries and perhaps naievly think that poverty onlyexists there but we would only need to look on our own doorstepsto see that it is in fact prevalent in our very owncountries.
Thus I decided to research this subject a bit further and found the shocking statistic that in 2006 36.5 million people were living in poverty (12.3%) and as can be expected the majority of the people living in poverty are from African American and Hispanic families (see US Census Bureau Statistics). Therefore the questions arises, how, in one of the most developed countries in the world, can poverty be so rampant (especially when we all know how much is being spent in Iraq every day since 2003)? I did a bit of reading on the internet and found that many author's agree that it is very much the institutional base that "locks-in"poverty. This includes healthcare, or lack thereof due the insurance system. Healthcare is special since the absolute poorest do get access to the so-called Medicaid. However, the families that fall through the cracks are the poor families that are not poor enough according to a threshold and thus do not qualify for Medicaid. Furthermore, education can exacerbate the problem. America, like other countries, is divided into school districts which means that depending on your postcode, you are allowed to only attend certain public schools. Schools get more funding the better they do. The obvious problem with this is that if a school is located in a disadvantaged district it is going to find itself in a viscous cycle as it will find it difficult to obtain funding for improvements. Poverty in America is cyclical (i.e. there are more poor people in the time of recessions), and with the current soar in fuel prices, there is the fear that even more households will be thrown into poverty (as households in America are very fuel dependent).
It does make you sit back and wonder, we always look far intodeveloping countries and perhaps naievly think that poverty onlyexists there but we would only need to look on our own doorstepsto see that it is in fact prevalent in our very owncountries.
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