Effects of Poverty
People continue to be poor and children are born into poverty, with no hopes of improving their lives. The causes-effects, or factors, that perpetuate poverty in a household are known as the cycle of poverty.
“For enough time that the family includes no surviving ancestors who possess and can transmit the intellectual, social, and cultural capital necessary to stay out of or change their impoverished condition”
Melio, 2015
The vicious cycle of Poverty and Crime
“Poverty is the mother of crime.”
Marcus Aurelius
Crime has this capacity to generate vicious cycles causing unemployment, economic downturns and instability. Poverty and crime combined together leave people with two choices: either take part in criminal activities or try to find legal but quite limited sources of income – when there are any available at all.
Poverty on Children
“Childhood after all, is the first precious coin that poverty steals from a child”
Anthony Horowitz
“A child’s birth circumstances have a large effect on his or her chances in life.” To wit, children who are born into poverty are likely to have lower income as adults, more behavior problems, are more likely to be teen parents, and less likely to attend or graduate from college.
Feminization of Poverty
“It is the women who are the leaders in charge and without their participation poverty can never be removed.”
Ella Bhatt
Women make significant contributions every day, such as bringing an income to households as an employed wage earner, creating jobs as an entrepreneur, or by taking care of families and elders. While both men and women suffer in poverty, gender discrimination means that women have far fewer resources to cope.
The effects of poverty are more than just missing a meal. Families struggle with chronic food insecurity, hunger, and malnutrition. When families don’t have the food that their minds and bodies desire, their health and livelihood falter, trapping them in a vicious cycle of affecting one generation after another. The only way to combat the problem is to break the cycle of poverty and build strong communities. This enables every person to have enough nutritious food to live a healthy and productive life.
Poverty 