poverty is the main cause of poor health essay

Poverty and Health

Poverty is a major cause of ill health and a barrier to accessing health care when needed. This relationship is financial: the poor cannot afford to purchase those things that are needed for good health, including sufficient quantities of quality food and health care. But, the relationship is also related to other factors related to poverty, such as lack of information on appropriate health-promoting practices or lack of voice needed to make social services work for them.

Ill health, in turn, is a major cause of poverty. This is partly due to the costs of seeking health care, which include not only out-of-pocket spending on care (such as consultations, tests and medicine), but also transportation costs and any informal payments to providers. It is also due to the considerable loss of income associated with illness in developing countries, both of the breadwinner, but also of family members who may be obliged to stop working or attending school to take care of an ill relative. In addition, poor families coping with illness might be forced to sell assets to cover medical expenses, borrow at high interest rates or become indebted to the community.

Strong health systems improve the health status of the whole population, but especially of the poor among whom ill health and poor access to health care tends to be concentrated, as well as protect households from the potentially catastrophic effects of out-of-pocket health care costs. In general, poor health is disproportionately concentrated among the poor.

The World Bank’s work in the area of health equity and financial protection is defined by the 2007 Health, Nutrition and Population Strategy . The strategy identifies “preventing poverty due to illness (by improving financial protection)” as one of its four strategic objectives and commits the Bank’s health team, both through its analytical work and its regional operations, to addressing vulnerability that arises from health shocks.

The strategy also stresses the importance of equity in health outcomes in a second strategic objective to "improve the level and distribution of key health, nutrition and population outcomes... particularly for the poor and the vulnerable".

The Bank supports governments to implement a variety of policies and programs to reduce inequalities in health outcomes and enhance financial protection. Generally, this involves mechanisms that help overcome geographic, social and psychological barriers to accessing care and reducing out-of-pocket cost of treatment. Examples include:

Reducing the direct cost of care at the point of service, e.g. through reducing/abolishing user fees for the poor or expanding health insurance to the poor (including coverage, depth and breadth).
Increasing efficiency of care to reduce total consumption of care, e.g. by limiting “irrational drug prescribing,” strengthening the referral system, or improving the quality of providers (especially at the lower level).
Reducing inequalities in determinants of health status or health care utilization, such as reducing distance (through providing services closer to the poor), subsidizing travel costs, targeted health promotion, conditional cash transfers.
Expanding access to care by using the private sector or public-private partnerships.

The Bank’s health team also promotes the monitoring of equity and financial protection by publishing global statistics on inequalities in health status, access to care and financial protection, as well as training government officials, policymakers and researchers in how to measure and monitor the same.

Examples of how World Bank projects have improved health coverage for the poor and reduced financial vulnerability include:

The Rajasthan Health Systems Development Project resulted in improved access to care for vulnerable Indians. The share of below-poverty line Indians in the overall inpatient and outpatient load at secondary facilities more than doubled between 2006 and 2011, well exceeding targets. In the same period, the share of the vulnerable tribal populations in the overall patient composition tripled.

The Georgia Health Sector Development Project supported the government of Georgia in implementing the Medical Insurance Program for the Poor, effectively increasing the share of the government health expenditure earmarked for the poor from 4% in 2006 to 38% in 2011. It also increased the number of health care visits of both the general population and the poor, but by more for the poor (from 2 per capita per year to 2.6) than for the general population (from 2 to 2.3) over the same time period.

The Mekong Regional Health Support Project helped the government of Vietnam to increase access to (government) health insurance from 29% to 94% among the poor, as well as from 7% to 68% among the near-poor. Hospitalization and consultation rates, at government facilities, also increased among both the poor and near-poor.

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What are the Health Effects of Poverty?

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There is a wealth of evidence to suggest that health is correlated to individuals’ socioeconomic status and lifestyle.

The relationship between socio-economic status and health has Been corroborated by several studies conducted across the world. All studies have confirmed a profound impact of socio-economic status on health; however, the mechanism behind this correlation has been a matter of debate.

Image Credit: perfectlab/Shutterstock.com

What is poverty?

Individuals, families, and communities within a population can be said to be living in poverty when they lack resources to obtain the type of diet, participate in lifestyle activities, and have the living conditions and resources which are customary to the majority of the society in which these individuals, families, and groups belong.

In the UK, receiving income-related welfare benefits has been used as a measure of poverty. This can be job seekers allowance, housing benefits, council tax benefits, or working tax credit and child tax credit.

Objective and subjective measures of material deprivation have also been used as poverty measures; these can include celebrations, clothes appropriate for all weather, the ability to go on holiday, and access to a car.

Poverty in the context of other health-affecting factors

In 2000, the 2013 to 2020 World Health Organisation (WHO) Global Action Plan for the Prevention And Control of Noncommunicable Diseases had targeted seven risk factors.

These include use of alcohol, insufficient physical activity, tobacco use, increased blood pressure, elevated salt or sodium intake, diabetes, and obesity. These are referred to as the 25 x 25 risk factors; through targeting these risk factors, the WHO hoped to reduce early death from non-communicable diseases by 25% by the year 2025.

The Global Burden Of Disease Collaboration, which is the largest study with monitoring health changes globally, has similarly found risk factors that are associated with the burden of disease and injury across 21 world regions.

Among them, poor socio-economic circumstances are one of the strongest predictors of morbidity and premature mortality across the world; However, poverty is not considered to be a modifiable risk factor across both of these important global health strategies.

According to a paper published in The Lancet and coordinated by Imperial College London, socioeconomic status has been found to produce the same impact on health as smoking or a sedentary lifestyle, being associated with a reduced life expectancy of 2.1 years, a figure comparable to being inactive (which is estimated to cause a reduction in life expectancy of 2.4 years).

Socio-economic status refers to the measure of an individual's or family’s economic and social position relative to others in a population. This is assessed on income, education, and occupation. Despite these factors being known to affect health already independently, early studies have not compared the impact of low socioeconomic status with other major risk factors on health. Indeed global health policies do not consider risk factors such as poverty and poor education when predicting health outcomes.

In the study, 1.7 million people across the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Portugal, Italy, The United States, and Australia were surveyed. They compared individuals' socioeconomic status against several risk factors, including tobacco use, unhealthy diet, physical inactivity, and alcohol abuse, as defined by the WHO. Overall, researchers determined that those of low socioeconomic status were 46% more likely to die early compared to wealthier counterparts.

The greatest risk factors as estimated by the number of years lost in expected life were compared to a range of other factors. The factors that contributed to the greatest number of years lost were smoking and diabetes, reducing life expectancy by 4.8 and 3.9 years, respectively. High blood pressure, obesity, and high alcohol consumption were associated with fewer years lost; 1.6, 0.7, and 0.5 years respectively.

The results of this study demonstrated that low socio-economic status should be targeted alongside the conventional health risk factors as part of global and National Health strategies to minimize the risk of premature mortality.

What are the effects of poverty?

Poverty can impact people's health at all stages of life in several ways and impacts overall life expectancy. In England, for example, between 2009 and 2013, the life expectancy for those in the most deprived areas compared to the least deprived areas was 7.9 years greater for men and 5.9 years greater for women.

Moreover, the Kings' Fund found that between 1999 and 2010, the majority of areas in England that showed low life expectancy also showed high proportions of people earning minimal or no wages.

Poverty in childhood

Poverty can impact children before birth. A survey by the Royal College of Pediatrics and Child Health and the Child Poverty Action Group demonstrated that 2/3 of doctors showed that poverty in low-income areas was a significant contributor to the ill-health of children that they worked with.

Poverty and adult life

The prevalence of long-term conditions is greater in adults from lower socio-economic backgrounds. These conditions include diabetes, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, arthritis, and hypertension. In England, for example, 40% of adults between the ages of 45 to 64 living with below-average income have long-term illnesses. This is double the rate of adults of the same age with above-average incomes.

The Mental Health Foundation has also found that 3/4 of people living in the lowest household income bracket have reported experience of poor mental health, compared to six in ten of those in the highest household income bracket. Moreover, poverty, unemployment, and social exclusion are correlated with increased incidents of schizophrenia, and rates of admission to specialist psychiatric care.

Overall, there is a strong need for systematic evidence-based interventions and policies to reduce health inequalities. a strategy that embeds lifestyle interventions in public health policies is one of several ways to improve the overall health of the population, particularly those in the most deprived areas living in poverty.

References:

Wang J, Geng L. (2019) Effects of Socioeconomic Status on Physical and Psychological Health: Lifestyle as a Mediator. Int J Environ Res Public Health. doi:10.3390/ijerph16020281
Murray S. (2006) Poverty and health. CMAJ . doi:0.1503/cmaj.060235.
BMA. Health at a price. Reducing the impact of poverty. Available at: https://www.bma.org.uk/media/2084/health-at-a-price-2017.pdf . Last accessed: October 2021.
Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health & Child Poverty Action Group (2017) Poverty and children’s health: views from the frontline. Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health & Child Poverty Action Group. Available at: https://cpag.org.uk/sites/default/files/files/policypost/pdf%20RCPCH_0.pdf . Last accessed: October 2021.
NHS Digital (2016) Statistics on Obesity, Physical Activity and Diet – England, 2016. NHS Digital. Available at: https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/publications/statistical/statistics-on-obesity-physical-activity-and-diet/statistics-on-obesity-physical-activity-and-diet-england-2016 . Last accessed: October 2021.

Hidaya Aliouche

Hidaya is a science communications enthusiast who has recently graduated and is embarking on a career in the science and medical copywriting. She has a B.Sc. in Biochemistry from The University of Manchester. She is passionate about writing and is particularly interested in microbiology, immunology, and biochemistry.

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poverty is the main cause of poor health essay

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Why Poverty Persists in America

A Pulitzer Prize-winning sociologist offers a new explanation for an intractable problem.

A mother and son living in a Walmart parking lot in North Dakota in 2012. Credit... Eugene Richards

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By Matthew Desmond

Published March 9, 2023 Updated April 3, 2023

In the past 50 years, scientists have mapped the entire human genome and eradicated smallpox. Here in the United States, infant-mortality rates and deaths from heart disease have fallen by roughly 70 percent, and the average American has gained almost a decade of life. Climate change was recognized as an existential threat. The internet was invented.

On the problem of poverty, though, there has been no real improvement — just a long stasis. As estimated by the federal government’s poverty line, 12.6 percent of the U.S. population was poor in 1970; two decades later, it was 13.5 percent; in 2010, it was 15.1 percent; and in 2019, it was 10.5 percent. To graph the share of Americans living in poverty over the past half-century amounts to drawing a line that resembles gently rolling hills. The line curves slightly up, then slightly down, then back up again over the years, staying steady through Democratic and Republican administrations, rising in recessions and falling in boom years.

What accounts for this lack of progress? It cannot be chalked up to how the poor are counted: Different measures spit out the same embarrassing result. When the government began reporting the Supplemental Poverty Measure in 2011, designed to overcome many of the flaws of the Official Poverty Measure, including not accounting for regional differences in costs of living and government benefits, the United States officially gained three million more poor people. Possible reductions in poverty from counting aid like food stamps and tax benefits were more than offset by recognizing how low-income people were burdened by rising housing and health care costs.

The American poor have access to cheap, mass-produced goods, as every American does. But that doesn’t mean they can access what matters most.

Any fair assessment of poverty must confront the breathtaking march of material progress. But the fact that standards of living have risen across the board doesn’t mean that poverty itself has fallen. Forty years ago, only the rich could afford cellphones. But cellphones have become more affordable over the past few decades, and now most Americans have one, including many poor people. This has led observers like Ron Haskins and Isabel Sawhill, senior fellows at the Brookings Institution, to assert that “access to certain consumer goods,” like TVs, microwave ovens and cellphones, shows that “the poor are not quite so poor after all.”

No, it doesn’t. You can’t eat a cellphone. A cellphone doesn’t grant you stable housing, affordable medical and dental care or adequate child care. In fact, as things like cellphones have become cheaper, the cost of the most necessary of life’s necessities, like health care and rent, has increased. From 2000 to 2022 in the average American city, the cost of fuel and utilities increased by 115 percent. The American poor, living as they do in the center of global capitalism, have access to cheap, mass-produced goods, as every American does. But that doesn’t mean they can access what matters most. As Michael Harrington put it 60 years ago: “It is much easier in the United States to be decently dressed than it is to be decently housed, fed or doctored.”

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Future Perfect

Poverty is a major public health crisis. Let’s treat it like one.

Poverty contributes to hundreds of thousands of American deaths a year, a recent study finds.

by Oshan Jarow

Protesters with signs gather on the Washington, DC, mall with the Washington Memorial obelisk in the background.

“We need a whole new scientific agenda on poverty and mortality,” said David Brady, a professor of public policy at the University of California Riverside, whose recent co-authored study aims to jump-start that agenda by asking just how many Americans die from poverty each year.

It’s well established that poverty is bad for your health . But as a public health issue, the US knows less about the direct link between poverty and death than we know about, say, the link between smoking and death. Current estimates suggest smoking kills 480,000 Americans per year. Obesity kills 280,000 , and drug overdoses claimed 106,000 American lives in 2021. Together, risk factors and their mortality estimates help motivate public health campaigns and government-funded efforts to save lives . But how many Americans does poverty actually kill? The question has received little attention compared to other mortality risks, and meanwhile, poverty remains prevalent across the country .

Brady — alongside sociologist Hui Zheng at Ohio State University and Ulrich Kohler, a professor of empirical social research at the University of Potsdam — published their study in April in the Journal of the American Medical Association . Their results find poverty is America’s fourth-leading risk factor for death , behind only heart disease, cancer, and smoking. A single year of poverty, defined relatively in the study as having less than 50 percent of the US median household income, is associated with 183,000 American deaths per year. Being in “cumulative poverty,” or 10 years or more of uninterrupted poverty, is associated with 295,000 annual deaths.

Amelia Karraker, a health scientist administrator at the National Institute on Aging, explains that research has shown a variety of pathways that connect poverty and mortality. These range from neighborhood amenities and nutrition down to the impacts of stress on the body: “Being poor is really stressful, which we know from NIH-supported research has implications for what’s actually happening in the body at the cellular level, which ultimately impacts health and mortality,” she said.

Crucially, that doesn’t mean you’ll find “poverty” written as the cause on anyone’s death certificate. Risk factors are only correlations that imply an association but not necessarily causation (although new research found that cash transfers to women in low- and middle-income countries cut mortality rates by 20 percent). But proving an association is a necessary step toward deciphering whether poverty might be more than an association. For example, there is an association between the number of Nicolas Cage movies released and the number of people who drown in swimming pools that year. No one is arguing that we should dissuade Cage from releasing films in order to combat drowning. But there is also an association between cigarette smoking and lung cancer . Here, we do believe one causes the other, so we do try and dissuade people from smoking to combat lung cancer deaths.

Arguing that poverty is more like the latter elevates the debate from a statistics squabble to one of literal life and death. “We just let all these people die from poverty each year,” Brady said. “What motivated me to think about it in comparison to homicide or other causes of death in America is that people would have to agree that poverty is important if it’s actually associated with anywhere near this quantity of death.”

Without a number attached to the relationship, presenting poverty as a serious public health risk falls a little flat. “Poverty and mortality are tightly correlated” isn’t exactly as galvanizing a message as “poverty kills nearly 200,000 Americans a year.” But the key question is what it means to “die from poverty.” As a social determinant of health , the government already recognizes a direct line between economic conditions and health outcomes. Physicians are now going a step further, establishing a movement known as anti-poverty medicine that aims not only to identify poverty as a health risk but develop treatments. Attaching a death toll contributes a new data point — perhaps even a rallying point — to illuminate the ties between poverty and death, and just maybe, it will motivate a more urgent anti-poverty agenda on the grounds that it could save lives.

Poverty is more than just another mortality risk

Measured in relative terms, poverty in the US is significantly worse than in similarly wealthy countries . Meanwhile, US citizens face a higher mortality rate at almost every age than residents of peer countries, and that disparity is growing . Even according to the US Census Bureau’s supplemental poverty measure (an approach that tries to blend relative methods with absolute ones, while accounting for government programs like SNAP benefits and tax credits), nearly 26 million Americans remained in poverty in 2021.

Brady, Zheng, and Kohler analyzed data from 1997–2019, drawing from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics and the Cross-National Equivalent File . Since the data ends before the Covid-19 pandemic began, and poverty likely compounded the pandemic’s death toll, they believe their findings are conservative. In 2019, being in poverty was 10 times more of a mortality risk than murder, 4.7 times more than firearms, and 2.6 times as deadly as drug overdoses. And poor people die younger than others. Their mortality rates begin diverging from the rest around age 40, reaching a peak disparity near 70, and converging back with the rest around 90.

The study used a Cox model , a type of statistical analysis commonly used in medical research to isolate the effects of a given variable (often particular drugs, but in this case, poverty) on how long patients survive. But no matter how you analyze it, singling out annual deaths across an entire country from a fuzzy cause like poverty is a statistical nightmare. It’s difficult to imagine how one could untangle all the confounding factors — like the reverse effect of how poor health also affects income — to deliver a plausible number.

One of the few previous efforts came from a group of epidemiologists in 2011, who estimated poverty’s death toll at 133,000 per year. And while few prior studies aimed to directly estimate deaths attributable to social factors, there is a decades-long history of wrangling statistical complexities to frame poverty as an actual cause of death. Brady cited a famous 1995 paper by sociologists Bruce Link and Jo Phelan, making the case that over and above mere risk factors, social conditions like poverty should be seen as “fundamental causes of disease” that put you at risk of more proximate risks, like heart disease.

Link and Phelan’s paper argued that if you break down a fundamental cause of disease into its more tractable causes of death, like breaking the mortality risks of poverty down into a cocktail of heart disease, lung cancer, and drug overdoses, fundamental causes like poverty get ousted from the picture. Treating individual risk factors alone leaves the underlying social condition intact, and it will continue putting people at risk of other risk factors.

Rather than tracing all the different pathways that lead from poverty to mortality and focusing public health-inspired anti-poverty efforts on each one separately, Link and Phelan urged an approach that stays with poverty. “If we wish to alter the effects of these potent determinants of disease, we must do so by directly intervening in ways that change the social conditions themselves,” they write. Nearly three decades later, clinicians are putting these ideas into practice.

Physicians are now prescribing anti-poverty as medicine

While the use of social determinants of health as a framework is gaining significant traction among physicians, companies, and even the WHO , Lucy Marcil, a pediatrician and associate director for economic mobility in the Center for the Urban Child and Healthy Family at Boston Medical Center, feels they don’t go far enough. She helped coin the idea of anti-poverty medicine in 2021. She explained that “anti-poverty medicine is one step further upstream to the root cause. Social determinants of health are important, but getting someone access to a food pantry doesn’t really address why they’re hungry in the first place.”

“I started this work about a decade ago,” Marcil told Vox. “At the time, there was a lot of confusion when I would say that I try to get more people tax credits because it helps their health. Now it’s pretty well established at most major academic medical centers that trying to alleviate economic inequities is an important part of trying to promote health.”

Putting a number on poverty’s death count could help build the case for anti-poverty programs embedded within systems of clinical care (like free tax preparation offered in health care systems that already have the community’s trust, an initiative Marcil pioneered ). “If I’m able to say to a funder or to a health system, ‘Look, it’s been published in a reputable journal that there are X number of deaths in our country every year due to poverty,’ I have a much stronger case for why they should pay for [anti-poverty] programs,” she said.

But physicians can only go so far upstream of poverty. Even before the study positioned long-term poverty as a greater mortality risk than obesity or dementia, public health scholars had been arguing that anti-poverty efforts should play a central role in a national agenda for public health .

A national anti-poverty agenda for public health

Public health campaigns against poverty face a strange and difficult landscape. One thing Americans seem to dislike more than poverty is welfare. Although 82 percent of Americans reported dissatisfaction with efforts to reduce poverty and homelessness in a 2021 Gallup poll, only 40 percent in a 2019 Pew Research Center survey felt the government should provide more aid to those in need.

Even after President Joe Biden’s temporary expansion to the child tax credit (CTC) nearly cut child poverty in half and showed no signs of fostering welfare dependence among recipients, critics were unmoved . The policy expired at the end of 2021, 3.7 million American children fell back into poverty, and we’ve yet to see the program return. Meanwhile, as the Atlantic’s Derek Thompson writes, “a typical American baby is about 1.8 times more likely to die in her first year than the average infant from a group of similarly rich countries,” and child poverty is a major risk factor in all manners of infant mortality .

At the federal level, another reason to quantify poverty’s death toll could be to add mortality estimates to the cost-benefit analyses that groups like the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) use to score policies and their impacts . Telling Americans that the expanded CTC almost single-handedly reduced child poverty by half hasn’t yet proved compelling enough to make the changes permanent. If the CBO were to include in their cost estimates that the expanded CTC would save a certain number of American lives per year, or conversely, that letting it expire would cost a certain number of American deaths, maybe the policy discourse would move more urgently.

Finding strategies to help support policy implementation is crucial because, ultimately, treating poverty as a public health issue will require a stronger welfare state that benefits low-income Americans. “No country in the history of capitalist democracies has ever accomplished sustainably low poverty without an above-average welfare state,” Brady said. “And so until you get serious about expanding the welfare state in all its forms, you’re not serious about reducing poverty.”

Relative to similarly rich countries, the US has high poverty rates , high mortality rates , and a confusing welfare state. It has the second largest welfare state in the world if you include things like subsidies for employer-based health insurance, tax-favored retirement accounts, and homeowner subsidies. These mostly benefit those who are already well-off .

Instead, if you judge the American safety net based on the share of GDP spent on programs that benefit low-income citizens, it falls well below the average among other rich nations.

In other words, poverty is a policy choice , and the US has yet to choose otherwise. As the sociologist Matthew Desmond put it in his recent call for poverty abolitionism , “Ending poverty in America will require both short- and long-term solutions: strategies that stem the bleeding now, alongside more enduring interventions that target the disease and don’t just treat the symptoms.”

For starters, the US could revive the expanded CTC and make it permanent, or even combine it with the earned income tax credit into a universal child allowance that would cut child poverty by 64 percent , and reduce deep child poverty by 70 percent (child poverty is one of the largest contributing factors to overall poverty in America). “The biggest movers in the welfare state are pensions and health care, so invest in those as anti-poverty policy,” Brady recommends. Universal pensions and extending “ catastrophic coverage” health care to all are a few options. The US could also directly provide homes for the more than 1 million Americans who experience homelessness in the course of a year.

If it wanted to go big, it could implement a guaranteed income pegged to the poverty line that would eliminate poverty outright, like the 2021 proposal from scholars at the New School’s Institute on Race and Political Economy. They estimate such a plan would cost $876 billion per year (that’s on par with the annual cost of Medicare, which sat around $900 billion in 2021). Meanwhile, one 2018 estimate places the annual cost of childhood poverty alone at $1.03 trillion per year .

“A federal policy with a universal cash transfer could be relatively adequate on its own if there weren’t barriers to receiving it,” Marcil said. But she’s seen firsthand how the implementation of social policy often means jumping through administrative hoops and abominably complex paperwork, with the result that the aid often fails to reach the most vulnerable populations. In her clinic, they help patients who have just given birth apply for Massachusetts’ paid parental leave program.

Otherwise, Marcil estimates only one-third of those eligible successfully navigate the bureaucratic gauntlet to claim the benefits. Most of those who get left out are low-income Americans on Medicaid who identify as Black or Hispanic. “In my experience,” Marcil said, “most social policies are written in ways that make it challenging for those who have been historically marginalized to access them.”

While big-picture death toll estimates may help bolster the overall motivation for anti-poverty medicine, Marcil argues that data on specific interventions is also crucial to justify the expenditure against the array of alternatives. “Because then you can go to a policymaker and say, ‘Look, someone got paid leave, and they were less likely to show up in the emergency room than this other family who didn’t get paid leave,’” she said. “So it would save Medicaid money to help poor people get access to paid parental leave.”

Objections to a new agenda on poverty and mortality will range from moral (unconditional aid undermines the American work ethic ) to budgetary (how do you choose between giving nurses a raise or funding an on-site food pantry for food-insecure patients?). But as Brady’s new paper helps establish, the scope of the problem is vast, as is the cost — in terms of American lives — of continuing to treat symptoms of poverty while skimping on treatment for the fundamental cause.

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About This Literature Summary

This summary of the literature on Poverty as a social determinant of health is a narrowly defined examination that is not intended to be exhaustive and may not address all dimensions of the issue. Please note: The terminology used in each summary is consistent with the respective references. For additional information on cross-cutting topics, please see the Discrimination , Employment , Housing Instability , and Incarceration literature summaries.

Related Objectives (4)

Here's a snapshot of the objectives related to topics covered in this literature summary. Browse all objectives .

Reduce the proportion of people living in poverty — SDOH‑01
Increase employment in working-age people — SDOH‑02
Increase the proportion of children living with at least 1 parent who works full time — SDOH‑03
Reduce the proportion of families that spend more than 30 percent of income on housing — SDOH‑04

Related Evidence-Based Resources (3)

Here's a snapshot of the evidence-based resources related to topics covered in this literature summary. Browse all evidence-based resources .

Social Determinants of Health: Tenant-Based Housing Voucher Programs
New Perspectives on Creating Jobs: Final Impacts of the Next Generation of Subsidized Employment Programs
Strengthening TANF Outcomes By Developing Two-Generation Approaches To Build Economic Security

Literature Summary

The United States measures poverty based on how an individual’s or family’s income compares to a set federal threshold. 1 For example, in the 2021 definition, people are considered impoverished if their individual income is below $12,880 or their household income is below $26,500 for a family of 4. 2 After 5 consecutive years in decline, the U.S. poverty rate increased to 11.4 percent in 2020, or a total of 37.2 million people. 3

Poverty often occurs in concentrated areas and endures for long periods of time. 1 Some communities, such as certain racial and ethnic groups, people living in rural areas, and people with disabilities, have a higher risk of poverty for a myriad of factors that extend beyond individual control. 1 , 4 – 8 For example, institutional racism and discrimination contribute to unequal social and economic opportunities. 4 Residents of impoverished communities often have reduced access to resources that are needed to support a healthy quality of life, such as stable housing , healthy foods , and safe neighborhoods. 1 , 4 , 9 Poverty can also limit access to educational and employment opportunities, which further contributes to income inequality and perpetuates cyclical effects of poverty. 1

Unmet social needs, environmental factors, and barriers to accessing health care contribute to worse health outcomes for people with lower incomes. 10 , 11 For example, people with limited finances may have more difficulty obtaining health insurance or paying for expensive procedures and medications. 12 In addition, neighborhood factors, such as limited access to healthy foods and higher instances of violence , can affect health by influencing health behaviors and stress. 12

Across the lifespan, residents of impoverished communities are at increased risk for mental illness, chronic disease, higher mortality, and lower life expectancy. 9 , 13 – 17 Children make up the largest age group of those experiencing poverty. 18 , 19 Childhood poverty is associated with developmental delays, toxic stress, chronic illness, and nutritional deficits. 20 – 24 Individuals who experience childhood poverty are more likely to experience poverty into adulthood, which contributes to generational cycles of poverty. 25 In addition to lasting effects of childhood poverty, adults living in poverty are at a higher risk of adverse health effects from obesity, smoking, substance use, and chronic stress. 12 Finally, older adults with lower incomes experience higher rates of disability and mortality. 6 One study found that men and women in the top 1 percent of income were expected to live 14.6 and 10.1 years longer respectively than men and women in the bottom 1 percent. 26

Poverty is a multifaceted issue that will require multipronged approaches to address. Strategies that improve the economic mobility of families may help to alleviate the negative effects of poverty. 27 – 29 For example, tax credits such as the Earned Income Tax Credit and Child Tax Credit alleviate financial burdens for families with lower and middle incomes by reducing the amount of taxes owed. 30 In addition, federal social assistance programs are designed to provide safety net services and specifically benefit individuals and families with lower incomes. 31 Two of the nation’s largest social assistance programs are Medicaid, which provides health coverage, and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which provides food assistance. Medicaid and SNAP serve millions of people each year and have been associated with reductions in poverty along with overall health benefits. 32 , 33 In order to reduce socioeconomic inequality, it may also be important to address factors that are associated with the health status of poor communities. 27 Additional research and interventions are needed to address the effects of poverty on health outcomes and disparities.

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U.S. Department of Agriculture, Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation. (2021, February 1). 2021 Poverty guidelines . https://aspe.hhs.gov/topics/poverty-economic-mobility/poverty-guidelines/prior-hhs-poverty-guidelines-federal-register-references/2021-poverty-guidelines

Shrider, E. A., Kollar, M., Chen, F., & Semega, J. (2021, September 14). Income and poverty in the United States: 2020 . U.S. Census Bureau. https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2021/demo/p60-273.html

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Thompson, T., McQueen, A., Croston, M., Luke, A., Caito, N., Quinn, K., Funaro, J., & Kreuter, M. W. (2019). Social needs and health-related outcomes among Medicaid beneficiaries. Health Education & Behavior: The Official Publication of the Society for Public Health Education, 46 (3), 436–444. https://doi.org/10.1177/1090198118822724

Khullar, D., & Chokshi, D. A. (2018). Health, income, & poverty: Where we are & what could help . Health Affairs Health Policy Brief. https://doi.org/10.1377/hpb20180817.901935

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Belle, D., & Doucet, J. (2003). Poverty, inequality, and discrimination as sources of depression among U.S. women. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 27 (2), 101–113. https://doi.org/10.1111/1471-6402.00090

Caughy, M. O., O’Campo, P. J., & Muntaner, C. (2003). When being alone might be better: Neighborhood poverty, social capital, and child mental health. Social Science & Medicine, 57 (2), 227–237. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0277-9536(02)00342-8

Ward-Smith, P. (2007). The effects of poverty on urologic health. Urologic Nursing, 27 (5), 445–446.

Mode, N. A., Evans, M. K., & Zonderman, A. B. (2016). Race, neighborhood economic status, income inequality and mortality. PLoS ONE, 11 (5), e0154535. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0154535

Kaiser Family Foundation. (n.d.). Poverty rate by age . https://www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/poverty-rate-by-age/

Cellini, S. R., McKernan, S. M., & Ratcliffe, C. (2008). The dynamics of poverty in the United States: A review of data, methods, and findings. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 27 (3), 577–605. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/pam.20337

Eamon, M. K. (2001). The effects of poverty on children’s socioemotional development: An ecological systems analysis. Social Work, 46 (3), 256–266.

Evans, G. W., & Kim, P. (2013). Childhood poverty, chronic stress, self-regulation, and coping. Child Development Perspectives, 7 (1), 43–48. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdep.12013

Shaw, D. S., & Shelleby, E. C. (2014). Early-starting conduct problems: Intersection of conduct problems and poverty. Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, 10 (1), 503–528. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-clinpsy-032813-153650

Justice, L. M., Jiang, H., Purtell, K. M., Schmeer, K., Boone, K., Bates, R., & Salsberry, P. J. (2019). Conditions of poverty, parent-child interactions, and toddlers’ early language skills in low-income families. Maternal and Child Health Journal, 23 (7), 971–978. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10995-018-02726-9

Council on Community Pediatrics, Gitterman, B. A., Flanagan, P. J., Cotton, W. H., Dilley, K. J., Duffee, J. H., Green, A. E., Keane, V. A., Krugman, S. D., Linton, J. M., McKelvey, C. D., & Nelson, J. L. (2016). Poverty and child health in the United States. Pediatrics, 137 (4), e20160339. https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2016-0339

Wagmiller Jr, R. L., & Adelman, R. M. (2009). Childhood and intergenerational poverty: The long-term consequences of growing up poor . National Center for Children in Poverty. https://www.nccp.org/publication/childhood-and-intergenerational-poverty/

Chetty, R., Stepner, M., Abraham, S., Lin, S., Scuderi, B., Turner, N., Bergeron, A., & Cutler, D. (2016). The association between income and life expectancy in the United States, 2001–2014. JAMA, 315 (16), 1750–1766. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2016.4226

Yoshikawa, H., Aber, J. L., & Beardslee, W. R. (2012). The effects of poverty on the mental, emotional, and behavioral health of children and youth: Implications for prevention. The American Psychologist, 67 (4), 272–284. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0028015

Riccio, J. A., Dechausay, N., Greenberg, D. M., Miller, C., Rucks, Z., & Verma, N. (2010). Toward reduced poverty across generations: Early findings from New York City’s conditional cash transfer program . MDRC.

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Keith-Jennings, B., Llobrera, J., & Dean, S. (2019). Links of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program with food insecurity, poverty, and health: Evidence and potential. American Journal of Public Health, 109 (12), 1636–1640. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2019.305325

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Front Public Health

The Intertwined Relationship Between Malnutrition and Poverty

Faareha siddiqui.

1 Division of Women and Child Health, Aga Khan University, Karachi, Pakistan

Rehana A. Salam

Zohra s. lassi.

2 Robinson Research Institute, Adelaide Medical School, University of Adelaide, Adelaide, SA, Australia

Despite social and economic development, the burden of malnutrition across the globe remains unacceptably high. A vital relationship exists between nutritional status, human capital, and economic standing. Malnutrition adversely affects the physiological and mental capacity of individuals; which in turn hampers productivity levels, making them and their respective countries more susceptible to poverty. A two-way link exists between malnutrition and poverty, creating a vicious cycle with each fueling the other. Malnutrition produces conditions of poverty by reducing the economic potential of the population and likewise, poverty reinforces malnutrition by increasing the risk of food insecurity. The aim of the paper is to describe the interconnection between malnutrition and poverty, and to highlight how both serve as the cause and consequence of each other. The paper also discusses ways to move ahead to tackle these issues in a parallel manner rather than in separate silos.

Introduction

Malnutrition relates to a deficiency, excess, or imbalance of energy and other macro and micro-nutrients. It comprises of varying degrees of under- or over- nutrition, which leads to changes in body composition, body function, and clinical outcomes. In other words, malnutrition is an all-inclusive term that represents all manifestations of poor nutrition and ranges from extreme hunger and undernutrition to obesity ( 1 , 2 ). Despite social and economic development, the burden of malnutrition across the globe remains unacceptably high ( 2 ), recent data suggests that ~800 million people are undernourished, out of which 780 million reside in low-to-middle income countries, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia ( 2 ). In 2015, inadequate food intake and poor dietary quality were responsible directly or indirectly for causing ill-health with six of the top 11 global risk factors being associated with dietary imbalances ( 2 ) and in 2017, 11 million deaths and 255 million disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) were attributable to dietary risk factors ( 3 ). Children under the age of 5 years are highly vulnerable to malnutrition with estimates suggesting that in 2019, globally 144 million children under the age of five were stunted (short for his/her age), 47 million wasted (thin for his/her height) and 38 million overweight (abnormal or excess bodyweight) ( 4 ). In adults, obesity is becoming more prevalent worldwide with ~38.9% of the adult population being either overweight or obese ( 5 ). Paradoxically, even though women have a higher prevalence (15.1%) of obesity than men (11%) ( 5 ); millions of women around the world are still underweight and one-third of women of reproductive age are estimated to have anemia ( 5 ).

Malnutrition has long been linked to poverty as higher rates of malnutrition are found in areas with chronic poverty ( 6 ). The impact of poverty on individuals can be seen through multiple manifestations and includes poor nutritional status, food insecurity, vulnerability to disease, reduced productivity levels, and compromised physical and intellectual development. Additionally, people living in poverty are unable to access necessities including nutritious food, hygienic environment, appropriate shelter, and adequate health care ( 7 ). Therefore, it would not be incorrect to suggest that even though malnutrition is a global phenomenon, those living in poverty face a higher burden. The question that now arises is whether malnutrition is a cause or consequence of poverty. The relationship between the nutritional status and economic standing has been further explored through the course of this paper.

The World Bank has set the International Poverty Line at $1.90 per person per day using 2011 Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) conversion factors ( 8 ). Therefore, households with a per capita income or expenditure less than the standard poverty line are defined as being poor ( 9 ). This makes income level the prime indicator for poverty, however with the passage of time, the need for re-conceptualizing poverty is becoming more evident as poverty is complex and multifaceted. Therefore, the conceptualization of poverty should not be limited to average income and wealth only but should encompass various other deprivations that are often experienced by people living in poverty. The global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) is an international measure of acute poverty covering over 100 developing countries; created by the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in 2010 ( 10 ). The global MPI steps away from the traditional view of poverty being solely limited to average income and wealth; to a more holistic view that highlights the need for using multiple indicators to account for various issues faced by people as a consequence of poverty ( 10 ). Through this index, poverty is portrayed to be a deprivation of basic amenities that restricts individuals from leading a good and healthy life ( 11 ) and takes into account the systemic disparities within a country and stretches the boundaries of poverty beyond the shortage of material assets to a concept that encompasses multiple deprivations, including but not limited to: assets, living standards, education, sanitation and hygiene, health and nutrition ( 10 ).

Since the 1990s, it is estimated that the proportion of the world's population living in extreme poverty has declined by more than a half ( 8 ). In 2015, 10% of the world's population lived under the poverty line; compared to nearly 36% in 1990 ( 8 ). Unfortunately, despite the overall decline in global poverty, progress has been uneven and disproportionate with the majority of the world's poor residing predominantly in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia ( 8 ). In 2015, 736 million people lived in extreme conditions of poverty with half of them i.e., 368 million residing only in five countries of India, Nigeria, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, and Bangladesh ( 8 ). This illustrates that certain countries especially those afflicted by conflict, poor governance, and natural disasters continue to experience a skewed burden of poverty.

To analyze the vital linkages between poverty and malnutrition; it is important to highlight the growing evidence that health outcomes including malnutrition are driven by social determinants of health i.e., the conditions and circumstances in which people live, learn, work, and even play have a significant impact on their health ( 12 ). This interconnection between people's conditions and circumstances and their health can be displayed using the concept of poverty and food insecurity. The term “food insecurity” refers to a situation in which people do not have adequate physical, social or economic access to sufficient and nutritious food ( 13 ). Broadly, food insecurity is assessed using four dimensions i.e., food availability, access to food, stability of supply and safe, and healthy food utilization ( 14 ). Food insecurity may occur at various levels including regional, national, household, or individual. Poverty and food insecurity are deeply related, as poverty may adversely affect the social determinants of health and may create unfavorable conditions in which people might experience unreliable food supply ( 13 ). Food is a major household expenditure for the poor households ( 15 ). Data from African countries indicate that close to half of household income is spent on food: Nigeria (56.4%) ( 16 ); Kenya (46.7%), Cameroon (45.6%), Algeria (42.5%) ( 17 ). Similarly, within high-income countries, low-income households spend a significant proportion of their income on food: Ireland (14–33%), USA (28.8–42.6%) ( 17 , 18 ). In comparison, the wealthiest households in the USA spend a much lower 6.5–9.2% of household income on food ( 17 ). Despite spending a large proportion of their household income on food, many poor households continue to remain food insecure because of their insufficient, irregular, and fluctuating incomes ( 2 , 13 ).

Poverty, Food Insecurity and Double Burden of Malnutrition

A vital relationship exists between malnutrition and poverty. Poverty creates unstable and unfavorable conditions that may contribute to fueling the problem of malnutrition ( 7 ). People living in poverty often face financial limitations, which hinders their ability to access safe, sufficient, and nutritious food ( 7 ). Food insecurity compromises people's ability to acquire the amount of food needed to fulfill the bodily requirement of calories and without sufficient calorie intake, an individual may not be able to build up energy or strength to carry out everyday life activities and this also hampers the capacity and productivity to earn ( 19 ). While people living in poverty may require a greater quantity of food than they cursrently have, it is important to take into consideration that appropriate intake of nutrients and quality of food is equally important ( 19 ). Poverty can contribute to worsening malnutrition by compromising the quality of food intake and bolstering hidden hunger which is the deficiency of essential vitamins and minerals. The burden of obesity has extended beyond wealthier, developed nations and has now also become a feature of the developing world ( 16 ). Poverty leads to financial constraints that in turn lead to the consumption of cheap, high-energy staple foods, primarily carbohydrates, and fats rather than nutritionally dense food. Through the consumption of carbohydrates and fats, energy levels spike; but nutritional quality becomes compromised. The consequence of this is reduced nutritional quality and nutrient deficiencies. Poverty plays a significant role in regulating access and preference of foods ( 13 , 16 ), and this is evident in studies that showcase that when people living in poverty get a chance to spend relatively more on food; they often prefer to buy better tasting food, rather than good quality food ( 19 ).

The deficiency of micronutrients or “hidden hunger” is an important component of malnutrition ( 13 ). Micronutrient deficiencies can exists in all age groups and in any socioeconomic bracket. Iron, folate, vitamin A, iodine, and zinc deficiencies are among the most common and widespread micronutrient deficiencies among women and children in low- and middle- income countries and many of these micronutrient deficiencies co-exist. Assessing the relationship between malnutrition and poverty, requires consideration of micronutrient deficiencies. While macro- and micro- nutrient deficiencies may cause suboptimal mental and physical development, recurrent infections and growth retardation ( 20 , 21 ); micro-nutrient deficiencies may also result in adverse birth outcomes including low birth weight babies ( 22 , 23 ). To date, ~20 million babies are born with low birth weight each year and there is growing evidence of the connections between slow growth in height early in life and impaired health and educational and economic performance later in life ( 5 , 24 ). Low birth weight in babies can contribute to the vicious cycle of malnutrition since maternal nutrition status especially maternal stature has been reported to be inversely associated with offspring mortality, underweight, and stunting in infancy and childhood ( 22 , 23 ). Moreover, the importance of adequate intake of micronutrients can be noted in children born to mothers with sufficient amounts of iodine during pregnancy ( 19 ), as these children tend to complete one-third or one-half a year more schooling than children born to mothers with inadequate amount of iodine during pregnancy ( 19 ). It has been suggested that if every mother took iodine capsules during pregnancy then this could improve educational attainment among children in Central and Southern Africa ( 19 ).

Briefly put, the double burden of malnutrition and the importance of micro-nutrients should be recognized when analyzing the malnutrition-poverty cycle. There is a growing need to reimagine the concept of malnutrition and development experts and policy makers should make strides to account for the inherent complexities of both concepts in order to develop successful and sustainable nutritional strategies ( 19 ).

Malnutrition: Cause or Consequence of Poverty?

The question that now arises is whether malnutrition is a cause or consequence of poverty and vice versa? To elaborate upon this, it is important to highlight the relationship of human capital with nutrition and poverty.

Human capital is an integral asset of any country and the process of developing human capital begins from infancy and continues throughout the course of an individual's life ( 25 ). Nutritional status has a profound impact on human capital. The reasoning is simple, improved nutritional status is vital for escaping poverty, as good health is needed to increase productivity levels, contribute to economic growth, and improve a country's overall welfare ( 6 ). Without adequate nutrition, human capital starts to decline. This is because malnutrition negatively impacts physical and mental development, intellectual capacity, productivity, and the economic potential of an individual ( 25 ). As a consequence, economic stability is threatened, making a country more vulnerable to poverty. Poverty contributes to the problem of food insecurity which is referred to as a “resourced-constrained” or “poverty related” condition. Although the populations affected by poverty and food insecurity overlap; it is important to note that not all people living in poverty are food insecure and that this problem also exists in people living above the poverty line. Moreover, poverty also contributes in creating conditions of micro-nutrient deficiencies and hidden hunger. These factors exacerbate the issue of malnutrition and makes individuals more vulnerable to other health concerns. Irregular and unstable food supply along with low quality of food due to insufficient or inadequate nutrient intake can compromise immunity and make individuals more susceptible to infections. Additionally, if infected, matters tend to become worse because infections may further reduce nutritional and health status, thereby aggravating malnutrition and reinforcing its cycle with poverty ( 25 , 26 ).

A vicious cycle exists through which both poverty and malnutrition fuel and reinforce each other ( 25 ). Globally, the poorest countries are the countries bearing the highest burden of malnutrition. Nutritional imbalances reduce work capacity and human capital; and this makes countries more susceptible to poverty. Furthermore, malnutrition is also a consequence of poverty, as poverty increases food insecurity and hidden hunger; which contributes to the problem of malnutrition. This makes both these elements a cause and a consequence of each other. Establishing a linear relationship between the two would overlook the complexities and nuances that exist within the framework of this topic.

What Will be the Next Steps?

In order to progress socially and economically, there is an urgent need to recognize the burden of poverty and malnutrition and to take immediate steps to break the ongoing cycle. To achieve this target, it is important to understand what factors feed and reinforce it.

The cycle of poverty and malnutrition appears to be intergenerational. Evidence suggests that malnourished women are at a higher risk of having malnourished children and this creates an intergenerational effect ( 6 ). It is imperative to intervene early in life in order to maximize the effectiveness of interventions and break the cycle. The Lancet Nutrition Series ( 27 ) modeled the effect of 10 evidence based nutrition specific interventions on lives saved in the 34 countries that have 90% of the world's children with stunted growth. The series also examined the effect of various delivery platforms and delivery options using community health workers to engage poor populations and promote behavior change, access to and uptake of these interventions. Findings suggest that the current total of deaths in children younger than 5 years can be reduced by 15% if populations can access these 10 evidence-based nutrition interventions at 90% coverage. These nutrition specific interventions included salt iodization, multiple micronutrient supplementation in pregnancy (includes iron-folate), calcium supplementation in pregnancy, energy-protein supplementation in pregnancy, vitamin A supplementation in childhood, zinc supplementation in childhood, breastfeeding promotion, complementary feeding education, complementary food supplementation, and management of severe acute malnutrition in children. The findings also support the use of various community engagement and delivery strategies that can help reach poor segments of the population at greatest risk in order to make a difference ( 27 ). In other words, the interventions need to reach the poorest of the poor to break the cycle of malnutrition and poverty and should also incorporate disease and infection prevention as a part of their strategy ( 25 ).

Considering the inter-linkages described above between malnutrition and poverty, nutrition specific interventions need to be augmented with nutrition sensitive interventions in order to accelerate the progress of reducing malnutrition. Nutrition sensitive interventions are those that address intermediate and underlying causes of malnutrition and help to improve access to nutritious food, clean water and sanitation, education and employment, and health care etc. Large scale nutrition programs focusing on evidence based nutrition interventions should also target key underlying determinants of nutrition including poverty in order to enhance the coverage and effectiveness of nutrition-specific interventions. These include interventions in the sectors of agriculture, social safety nets, early child development, education, and women's empowerment. Women's empowerment is instrumental in not only improving malnutrition but general well-being ( 28 ). Hence, a parallel focus on nutrition sensitive and nutrition specific interventions has the potential to greatly accelerate progress in not only the areas of nutrition but also break the intergenerational cycle of malnutrition and poverty ( 29 ). More recently, bio-fortification and agricultural biodiversity are also considered to have the potential to cater to the issues of poverty and malnutrition in a parallel manner ( 30 ). In developing countries, bio-fortification could focus on improving quality of coarse cereals, as well as fodders along with community participatory approaches to enhance agricultural biodiversity. This approach not only could contribute to a reduction in malnutrition and poverty, but reduce food insecurity and improve sustainability ( 31 , 32 ), though further research is needed in the domain ( 30 , 31 ). Income disparity is also a factor that allows the malnutrition-poverty cycle to persist. In fact, a country may experience economic growth, but still have widespread poverty and high levels of malnutrition. This is because income inequality translates as health inequality; as the income gap grows, so does health disparity ( 7 , 13 , 25 ). Furthermore, gender inequities have also been associated with both poverty and malnutrition as a result of lower opportunities for women in the fields of education and employment. A recent analysis based on data from 49 low- and middle-income countries assessing the relationship between gender equity and malnutrition and health suggests that gender equity in education and employment decreases child malnutrition and is an important determinant in nutrition and access to health care ( 33 ). Therefore, any attempt to improve global nutritional status and to achieve the targets set by the “2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development” requires a focus on alleviating poverty and simultaneously focusing on agriculture, social safety nets, early child development, education, and strengthening women's position in society ( 34 – 37 ).

Nutritional interventions should be designed in an all-rounded, holistic manner. It would be fruitful to involve multiple stakeholders including health, education, agriculture, water, sanitation and hygiene, gender and economics. To ensure sustainability, nutritional interventions should be context-specific and should also be cost-effective since these issues concern low and middle income countries.

Ending poverty in all its forms is the first of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals and ending hunger, reducing food insecurity and improved nutrition and agriculture is the second goal. Furthermore, at least 12 of the 17 goals contain indicators that are highly relevant to nutrition. Poverty and malnutrition are deeply interrelated, with each fuelling the other and hence it is imperative to tackle both issues simultaneously rather than in parallel silos. A two-way link exists, with both elements being the cause and consequence of each other. This vicious cycle remains a prime public health concern and immediate strides need to be made against it. For a sustainable improvement in nutritional outcomes, the battle against poverty and malnutrition has to be fought on all fronts, to achieve a healthier and more equitable society.

Author Contributions

All authors contributed to the study and the write-up.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

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The top 11 causes of poverty around the world

Feb 3, 2022

Approximately 10% of the world’s population lives in extreme poverty. But why? Updated for 2022, we look at 11 of the top causes of poverty around the world.

For most of us, living on less than $2 a day seems far removed from reality. But it is the reality for roughly 800 million people around the globe. Approximately 10% of the global population lives in extreme poverty, meaning that they're living below the poverty line of $1.90 per day.

There is some good news: In 1990, that figure was 1.8 billion people. We've made progress. But in the last few years we've also begun to move backwards — in 2019, estimates were closer to 600 million people living in extreme poverty. Climate change and conflict have both hindered progress. The global economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic only made matters worse.

There’s no one single solution to poverty . There isn't a single cause of poverty, either. In fact, most cases of poverty in 2022 are the result of a combination of factors. Understanding what these factors are and how they work together is a critical step to sustainably ending poverty.

Learn more about the causes of poverty — and how we're solving them

1. inequality.

Let's start with something both simple and complex: Inequality is easy enough to understand as a concept. When one group has fewer rights and resources based on an aspect of their identity compared to others in a community, that's inequality. This marginalization could be based on caste, ability, age, health, social status or — most common and most pervasive — gender.

How inequality functions as a cause of poverty, however, is a bit more multifaceted. When people are given fewer rights or assets based on their ethnicity or tribal affiliation, that means they have fewer opportunities to move ahead in life. We see this often in gender inequality , especially when women have fewer rights around their health and economic power. In this case, equality isn't even relative. It doesn't matter that someone has more. What matters is that someone else doesn't have enough.

This is especially harmful when inequality is combined with risk — which is the basic formula we use at Concern to understand the cycle of poverty . A widow raising a family of five won't have the same resources available to her husband. If she lives in an area vulnerable to the effects of climate change, that puts pressure on what few resources she has. In some countries, this is the rule rather than the exception.

To address inequality, we must consider all groups in a community. What's more, to build equality we have to consider equality of results, as opposed to equality of resources.

2. Conflict

If poverty is caused by inequality multiplied by risk, let's talk about risks. At the top of the list of risks for poverty is conflict . Large-scale, protracted crises, such as the decade of civil war in Syria , can grind an otherwise thriving economy to a halt. As fighting continues in Syria, for example, millions have fled their homes (often with nothing but the clothes on their backs). Public infrastructure has been destroyed. Prior to 2011, as few as 10% of Syrians lived below the poverty line. Ten years later, more than 80% of Syrians now live below the poverty line.

But the nature of conflict has changed in the last few decades, and violence has become more localized. This also has a huge impact on communities, especially those that were already struggling. In some ways, it's even harder to cope as these crises go ignored in headlines and primetime news. Fighting can stretch out for years, if not decades, and leave families in a permanent state of alert. This makes it hard to plan for the long-term around family businesses, farms, or education.

A Syrian refugee woman shows the torn plastic covers of her tent in the village of Shir Hmyrin, in Akkar.

3. Hunger, malnutrition, and stunting

You might think that poverty causes hunger (and you would be right!). But hunger is also a cause — and maintainer — of poverty . If a person doesn’t get enough food, they’ll lack the strength and energy needed to work. Or their immune system will weaken from malnutrition and leave them more susceptible to illness that prevents them from getting to work.

In Ethiopia, stunting contributes to GDP losses as high as 16%.

This can lead to a vicious cycle, especially for children. From womb to world, the first 1,000 days of a child’s life are key to ensuring their future health. For children born into low-income families, health is also a key asset to their breaking the cycle of poverty. However, if a mother is malnourished during pregnancy, that can be passed on to her children. The costs of malnutrition may be felt over a lifetime: Adults who were stunted as children earn, on average, 22% less than those who weren't stunted. In Ethiopia, stunting contributes to GDP losses as high as 16%.

Workitt Kassaw Ali, who, along with her husband, Ketamaw, joined Concern Ethiopia’s ReGrade program in 2017.

4. Poor healthcare systems — especially for mothers and children

As we saw above with the effects of hunger, extreme poverty and poor health go hand-in-hand. In countries with weakened health systems, easily-preventable and treatable illnesses like malaria , diarrhea, and respiratory infections can be fatal. Especially for young children.

When people must travel far distances to clinics or pay for medicine, it drains already vulnerable households of money and assets. This can tip a family from poverty into extreme poverty. For women in particular, pregnancy and childbirth can be a death sentence. Maternal health is often one of the most overlooked areas of healthcare in countries that are still built around patriarchal structures. New mothers and mothers-to-be are often barred from seeking care without their father's or husband's permission. Adolescent girls who are pregnant (especially out of wedlock) face even greater inequities and discrimination.

5. Little (or zero) access to clean water, sanitation, and hygiene

Currently, more than 2 billion people don’t have access to clean water at home. This means that people collectively spend 200 million hours every day walking long distances to fetch water. That’s precious time that could be used working, or getting an education to help secure a job later in life. And if you guessed that most of these 200 million hours are shouldered by women and girls… you're correct. Water is a women's issue as well as a cause of poverty.

Contaminated water can also lead to a host of waterborne diseases, ranging from the chronic to the life-threatening. Poor water infrastructure — such as sanitation and hygiene facilities — can compound this. It can also create other barriers to escaping poverty, such as preventing girls from going to school during their cycles.

Concern Community workers Justin Mwihire Bulunga and Anita Kalamo help construct a hand washing station

6. Climate change

Climate change causes poverty , working as an interdependent link between not only extreme poverty but also many of the other causes on this list — including hunger , conflict, inequality, and a lack of education (see below). One report from the World Bank estimates that the climate crisis has the power to push more than 100 million people into poverty over the next decade.

Many of the world’s poorest populations rely on farming or hunting and gathering to eat and earn a living. Malawi, as an example, is 80% agrarian. They often have only just enough food and assets to last through the next season, and not enough reserves to fall back on in the event of a poor harvest. So when climate change or natural disasters (including the widespread droughts caused by El Niño ) leave millions of people without food, it pushes them further into poverty, and can make recovery even more difficult.

How climate change keeps people in poverty

By 2030, climate change could force more than 100 million people into extreme poverty.

7. Lack of education

Not every person without an education is living in extreme poverty. But most adults living in extreme poverty did not receive a quality education. And, if they have children, they're likely passing that on to them. There are many barriers to education around the world , including a lack of money for uniforms and books or a cultural bias against girls’ education .

But education is often referred to as the great equalizer. That's because it can open the door to jobs and other resources and skills that a family needs to not just survive, but thrive. UNESCO estimates that 171 million people could be lifted out of extreme poverty if they left school with basic reading skills. Poverty threatens education, but education can also help end poverty .

Classmates following a class 6 lesson at the Muslim Brotherhood School in Masakong

8. Poor public works and infrastructure

What if you have to go to work, but there are no roads to get you there? Or what if heavy rains have flooded your route and made it impossible to travel? We're used to similar roadblocks (so to speak) in the United States. But usually we can rely on our local governments to step in.

A lack of infrastructure — from roads, bridges, and wells, to cables for light, cell phones, and internet — can isolate communities living in rural areas. Living off the grid often means living without the ability to go to school, work, or the market to buy and sell goods. Traveling further distances to access basic services not only takes time, it costs money, keeping families in poverty.

As we've found in the last two years, isolation limits opportunity. Without opportunity, many find it difficult, if not impossible, to escape extreme poverty.

9. Global health crises including epidemics and pandemics

Speaking of things we've learned over the last two years… A poor healthcare system that affects individuals, or even whole communities, is one cause of poverty. But a large-scale epidemic or pandemic merits its own spot on this list. COVID-19 isn't the first time a public health crisis has fueled the cycle of poverty. More localized epidemics like Ebola in West Africa (and, later, in the DRC ), cholera in Haiti or the DRC, or malaria in Sierra Leone have demonstrated how local and national governments can grind to a halt while working to stop the spread of a disease, provide resources to frontline workers and centers, and come up with contingency plans as day-to-day life is disrupted.

All of this comes, naturally, at a cost. In Guinea, Liberia , and Sierra Leone — the three countries hit hardest by the 2014-16 West African Ebola epidemic — an estimated $2.2 billion was lost across all three countries' GDPs in 2015 as a direct result of the epidemic. This included losses in the private sector, agricultural production, and international trade.

The crisis in Kenya: Climate, COVID, and hunger

The worst drought in four decades, the worst locust invasion in seven, plus the domino effects of a global pandemic have northern Kenyans living out an underreported crisis and facing an uncertain future.

10. Lack of social support systems

In the United States, we're familiar with social welfare programs that people can access if they need healthcare or food assistance. We also pay into insurances against unemployment and fund social security through our paychecks. Theses systems ensure that we have a safety net to fall back on if we lose our job or retire.

But not every government can provide this type of help to its citizens. Without that safety net, there’s nothing to stop vulnerable families from backsliding further into extreme poverty. Especially in the face of the unexpected.

11. Lack of personal safety nets

If a family or community has reserves in place, they can weather some risk. They can fall back on savings accounts or even a low-interest loan in the case of a health scare or an unexpected layoff, even if the government doesn't have support systems to cover them. Proper food storage systems can help stretch a previous harvest if a drought or natural disaster ruins the next one.

At its core, poverty is a lack of basic assets or a lack on return from what assets a person has.

People living in extreme poverty can't rely on these safety nets, however. At its core, poverty is a lack of basic assets or a lack on return from what assets a person has. This leads to negative coping mechanisms, including pulling children out of school to work (or even marry ), and selling off assets to buy food. That can help a family make it through one bad season, but not another. For communities constantly facing climate extremes or prolonged conflict, the repeated shocks can send a family reeling into extreme poverty and prevent them from ever recovering.

Solutions to Poverty to Get Us To 2030

What would Zero Poverty look like for the world in 2030? Here are a few starting points.

How can you help?

At Concern, we believe that zero poverty is possible, especially when we work with communities to address both inequalities and risks. Last year, we reached 36.9 million people with programs designed to address the specific causes of extreme poverty in countries, communities, and families.

Pictured in the banner image for this story is one of those people, Adrenise Lusa. Born 60 years ago in the DRC's Manono Territory, Adrenise joined Concern's Graduation program in 2019 and participated in trainings on income generation and entrepreneurship, which gave her ideas on how to increase her production and income. With monthly cash transfers as part of Graduation and a loan from her community Village Savings and Loans Association, she invested in a few income-generating activities including goat rearing and trading oil, maize, and cassava. Prior to joining Graduation, she had the ideas. But, as she explains, "I didn’t start these businesses because I just didn’t have enough money."

Since launching her new ventures, Adrenise has increased her income from approximately 30,000 francs per month to anywhere between 100–400,000 francs per month, depending on the season. She's used her additional income to buy a plot of land and build a new house, feed her family with more nutritious food, and send her son and daughter to university.

You can make your own impact by supporting our efforts working with the world’s poorest communities. Learn more about the other ways you can help the fight against poverty.

More about the causes of poverty

Extreme Poverty and Hunger: A Vicious Cycle

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Home — Essay Samples — Social Issues — Poverty in America — Causes And Effects Of Poverty

Causes and Effects of Poverty

Categories: Child Poverty Poverty in America

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Published: Jun 13, 2024

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Underlying causes of poverty, effects on individuals and communities, breaking the cycle.

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What is Poverty? The Causes, Facts, and Ways to Take Action

In 2022, the World Bank estimated that about 8% of the world’s population (which is almost 650 million people) lived on less than $2.15 per day. This state is known as “extreme poverty.” While extreme poverty is the most urgent issue, 47% of the world’s population is still struggling with less than $6.85 per day. What is poverty exactly?

In this article, we’ll provide a thorough definition alongside key facts everyone should know and the best ways to take action.

Poverty occurs when individuals and communities don’t have enough money or resources for a basic standard of living. That includes good housing, food, clean water, healthcare, and much more. COVID-19 stalled years of progress on ending poverty, which makes solutions like improved gender equity, universal health coverage, and taxes on the world’s richest all the more essential.

What is poverty?

Poverty happens when someone lacks the income and resources necessary to maintain a good standard of living. That includes safe housing, medical care, food, clean water, and so on. The UN emphasizes that it’s also “more than a lack of income.” There are varying socioeconomic factors at play such as race, sexuality, ethnicity, gender, the ability to access services, and opportunities for decent work. Poverty also drives many social issues like poor education, child labor, forced labor, poor health, violence, and more.

For years, extreme poverty – which affects the poorest people on Earth – referred to living on less than $1.90 a day. In 2022, the World Bank updated its line to $2.15. It was changed to reflect cost increases for basic food, clothing, and shelter in low-income countries between 2011 and 2017 relative to the rest of the world. $2.15 in 2017 prices is equal to $1.90 in 2011 prices. Before COVID-19, the world was doing a decent job reducing extreme poverty. According to the World Bank’s Poverty and Shared Prosperity report, 1 billion people escaped extreme poverty over 30 years. Then, COVID hit. In 2020, 70 million fell below the extreme poverty line. Based on estimates, about 7% of the world (most in Africa) will still be in extreme poverty by 2030. There’s also the matter of those vulnerable to poverty . These are people living on $2-$5 per day. There are 1.3 billion in this group. One financial setback like an illness, injury, job loss, or other crisis would be enough to push them into extreme poverty.

What causes poverty?

Many factors drive poverty, which is one of the reasons why it’s so difficult to eliminate. Here are five causes:

A lack of good education

Education is key to breaking long poverty cycles. Without a good education, it’s very difficult for people to get better-paying jobs that help them afford necessities and build wealth. A 2017 report from UNESCO and the Global Education Monitoring Report found that if all adults finished secondary school, the global poverty rate could be cut in half. Unfortunately, for those who are already in poverty, completing school is often difficult or impossible. Governments and NGOs need to step in to ensure students get as much education as possible.

Conflict and war

Conflict and poverty have a close, reinforcing relationship . Poverty fuels conflict. Conflict can then make poverty worse. The most obvious reason is that conflict disrupts people’s lives and destroys infrastructure. Those displaced by violence – especially women, children, disabled people, and the elderly – are much more likely to fall into poverty. Even when a conflict has ended, recovery can take a long time and fail to support the most harmed.

Environmental disasters and climate change

Like conflict, environmental disasters disrupt communities and destroy infrastructure. Climate change is quickly becoming a persistent source of disasters worldwide. While the world’s poorest contribute the least to climate change, they’re impacted the most. This is because poor people depend on agriculture, which climate change disrupts through floods, famines, hurricanes, and more. If significant changes aren’t made, climate change could push 130 million people into extreme poverty over the next decade.

Inaccessible healthcare

Poor healthcare is both a cause and a consequence of poverty. Cost is a big reason why. One expensive emergency can tip people into poverty and keep them there. Poverty also increases the risk of health issues that quickly drain a person’s wallet. There are issues beyond pure cost, however. Disenfranchised groups aren’t given equal access to information, services, nutritious food, and other resources necessary for good health. Even if healthcare were more affordable, there would be other steps needed to make it truly accessible.

Social injustice

There’s an established link between poverty and social injustices like racism and gender inequality. Take the United States. According to research from sociologist Regina Baker , Black populations living in southern states with a “strong historical racial regime” experience worse poverty. There’s also a wider poverty gap between Black and white populations in these states. Worldwide, gender inequality and poverty are deeply linked. If everyone received equal rights and opportunities, it would eliminate a lot of poverty.

What are the main facts about poverty?

There’s a lot to know about poverty, but here are three main facts everyone should remember:

#1. Around 1 billion children live in poverty

Children are deeply affected by poverty. According to UNICEF , 1 billion kids don’t have access to education, housing, nutrition, water, sanitation, or healthcare. Around 356 of those kids are living in extreme poverty. As a result, kids from the poorest households die at twice the rate of kids who aren’t as poor. The kids that do survive continue to face difficulties like poor nutrition, chronic disease, mental health problems, and hindered emotional development. Childhood poverty could even cause long-term effects on the brain , though environmental factors affect behavior, too.

#2. Poverty is concentrated in a few areas

According to data from the World Bank , South Sudan has the highest poverty rate at 82.30%. Equatorial Guinea is next at 76.80%. This is followed by Madagascar (70.70%), Guinea-Bissau (69.30%), and Eritrea (69.30%). In Burundi , which is a small country in East Africa with 12.1 million people, 70% of the population is poor. 52% of kids under 5 have stunted growth and high levels of malnutrition. In terms of GDP per capita, Burundi is the poorest country in the world.

#3. It’s not just poverty; it’s wealth inequality

Wealth inequality refers to differences in income, as well as the value of stocks, investments, houses, personal possessions, and so on. According to the World Bank Gini Index , South Africa has the highest rate of wealth inequality: 63%. That’s followed by Namibia (59.1%) and Suriname (57.9%). The United States, which has the largest economy in the world, also has issues. 2021 data showed that income at the top of the income distribution was 13.53 times higher than income at the bottom. Inequality is a global problem; in the past ten years, the world’s richest 1% have gotten almost 50% of all new wealth.

How can the world eliminate poverty?

The world was making great progress on ending poverty until COVID-19. Things need to improve quickly if we’re going to achieve SDG Goal #1 by 2030. Because poverty is such a complex, large-scale issue, it’s hard for individuals to make much of a difference on their own. However, people can educate themselves on the best solutions and pressure those in power to take action. Here are three solutions to learn more about:

#1. Focus on gender equity

As we mentioned before, poverty and gender inequality are deeply linked. It’s impossible to eliminate poverty without gender equality. According to the World Bank , about 2.4 billion women of working age aren’t getting equal economic opportunities. 95 countries don’t mandate equal pay for equal work. Improving equity would lift a huge number of women and their families out of poverty. What can individuals do to help? Support organizations that focus on women and children. Advocate for better policies at your workplace, like more paid family leave, more flexible hours, and an end to gender pay gaps.

#2. Advocate for universal health coverage

According to the WHO , universal healthcare is the assurance that everyone has “access to the full range of quality health services they need, when and where they need them, without financial hardship.” It’s a key part of eliminating poverty. While there was progress before COVID-19, 2 billion people are facing what the WHO calls “catastrophic or impoverishing health spending.” Individuals can support universal health coverage by donating to organizations and pressuring leaders to pass legislation.

#3. Tax the rich

According to an Oxfam report called Survival of the Richest , the fortunes of billionaires are rising by $2.7 billion a day. Meanwhile, 1.7 billion workers live in countries where inflation is rising faster than wages. In 2022, 95 food and energy corporations more than doubled their profits, which were passed on to billionaire shareholders. These massive corporate profits also drove half of the inflation in the US, UK, and Australia. If the world wants to end poverty, these excesses need to be addressed. According to the Oxfam report, a tax of up to 5% on the world’s richest could raise $1.7 trillion a year. That’s enough to help 2 billion people escape poverty.

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About the author, emmaline soken-huberty.

Emmaline Soken-Huberty is a freelance writer based in Portland, Oregon. She started to become interested in human rights while attending college, eventually getting a concentration in human rights and humanitarianism. LGBTQ+ rights, women’s rights, and climate change are of special concern to her. In her spare time, she can be found reading or enjoying Oregon’s natural beauty with her husband and dog.

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Introduction

Cyclical poverty

Collective poverty, concentrated collective poverty, case poverty.

view archival footage of the impoverished American population in the aftermath of the stock market crash of 1929

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Table Of Contents

poverty , the state of one who lacks a usual or socially acceptable amount of money or material possessions. Poverty is said to exist when people lack the means to satisfy their basic needs. In this context , the identification of poor people first requires a determination of what constitutes basic needs. These may be defined as narrowly as “those necessary for survival” or as broadly as “those reflecting the prevailing standard of living in the community.” The first criterion would cover only those people near the borderline of starvation or death from exposure; the second would extend to people whose nutrition, housing, and clothing, though adequate to preserve life, do not measure up to those of the population as a whole. The problem of definition is further compounded by the noneconomic connotations that the word poverty has acquired. Poverty has been associated, for example, with poor health, low levels of education or skills, an inability or an unwillingness to work, high rates of disruptive or disorderly behaviour, and improvidence. While these attributes have often been found to exist with poverty, their inclusion in a definition of poverty would tend to obscure the relation between them and the inability to provide for one’s basic needs. Whatever definition one uses, authorities and laypersons alike commonly assume that the effects of poverty are harmful to both individuals and society.

Although poverty is a phenomenon as old as human history, its significance has changed over time. Under traditional (i.e., nonindustrialized) modes of economic production, widespread poverty had been accepted as inevitable. The total output of goods and services, even if equally distributed, would still have been insufficient to give the entire population a comfortable standard of living by prevailing standards. With the economic productivity that resulted from industrialization , however, this ceased to be the case—especially in the world’s most industrialized countries , where national outputs were sufficient to raise the entire population to a comfortable level if the necessary redistribution could be arranged without adversely affecting output.

Groups of depositors in front of the closed American Union Bank, New York City. April 26, 1932. Great Depression run on bank crowd

Several types of poverty may be distinguished depending on such factors as time or duration (long- or short-term or cyclical) and distribution (widespread, concentrated, individual).

(Read Indira Gandhi’s 1975 Britannica essay on global underprivilege.)

Cyclical poverty refers to poverty that may be widespread throughout a population, but the occurrence itself is of limited duration. In nonindustrial societies (present and past), this sort of inability to provide for one’s basic needs rests mainly upon temporary food shortages caused by natural phenomena or poor agricultural planning. Prices would rise because of scarcities of food, which brought widespread, albeit temporary, misery.

In industrialized societies the chief cyclical cause of poverty is fluctuations in the business cycle , with mass unemployment during periods of depression or serious recession . Throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, the industrialized nations of the world experienced business panics and recessions that temporarily enlarged the numbers of the poor. The United States’ experience in the Great Depression of the 1930s, though unique in some of its features, exemplifies this kind of poverty. And until the Great Depression, poverty resulting from business fluctuations was accepted as an inevitable consequence of a natural process of market regulation . Relief was granted to the unemployed to tide them over until the business cycle again entered an upswing. The experiences of the Great Depression inspired a generation of economists such as John Maynard Keynes , who sought solutions to the problems caused by extreme swings in the business cycle. Since the Great Depression, governments in nearly all advanced industrial societies have adopted economic policies that attempt to limit the ill effects of economic fluctuation. In this sense, governments play an active role in poverty alleviation by increasing spending as a means of stimulating the economy. Part of this spending comes in the form of direct assistance to the unemployed, either through unemployment compensation , welfare, and other subsidies or by employment on public-works projects. Although business depressions affect all segments of society, the impact is most severe on people of the lowest socioeconomic strata because they have fewer marginal resources than those of a higher strata.

In contrast to cyclical poverty, which is temporary, widespread or “ collective ” poverty involves a relatively permanent insufficiency of means to secure basic needs—a condition that may be so general as to describe the average level of life in a society or that may be concentrated in relatively large groups in an otherwise prosperous society. Both generalized and concentrated collective poverty may be transmitted from generation to generation, parents passing their poverty on to their children.

Collective poverty is relatively general and lasting in parts of Asia, the Middle East , most of Africa, and parts of South America and Central America . Life for the bulk of the population in these regions is at a minimal level. Nutritional deficiencies cause disease seldom seen by doctors in the highly developed countries. Low life expectancy , high levels of infant mortality, and poor health characterize life in these societies.

Collective poverty is usually related to economic underdevelopment. The total resources of many developing nations in Africa, Asia, and South and Central America would be insufficient to support the population adequately even if they were equally divided among all of the citizens. Proposed remedies are twofold: (1) expansion of the gross national product (GNP) through improved agriculture or industrialization, or both, and (2) population limitation. Thus far, both population control and induced economic development in many countries have proved difficult, controversial, and at times inconclusive or disappointing in their results.

An increase of the GNP does not necessarily lead to an improved standard of living for the population at large, for a number of reasons. The most important reason is that, in many developing countries, the population grows even faster than the economy does, with no net reduction in poverty as a result. This increased population growth stems primarily from lowered infant mortality rates made possible by improved sanitary and disease-control measures. Unless such lowered rates eventually result in women bearing fewer children, the result is a sharp acceleration in population growth. To reduce birth rates, some developing countries have undertaken nationally administered family-planning programs, with varying results. Many developing nations are also characterized by a long-standing system of unequal distribution of wealth —a system likely to continue despite marked increases in the GNP. Some authorities have observed the tendency for a large portion of any increase to be siphoned off by persons who are already wealthy, while others claim that increases in GNP will always trickle down to the part of the population living at the subsistence level.

In many industrialized, relatively affluent countries, particular demographic groups are vulnerable to long-term poverty. In city ghettos , in regions bypassed or abandoned by industry, and in areas where agriculture or industry is inefficient and cannot compete profitably, there are found victims of concentrated collective poverty. These people, like those afflicted with generalized poverty, have higher mortality rates, poor health, low educational levels, and so forth when compared with the more affluent segments of society. Their chief economic traits are unemployment and underemployment, unskilled occupations, and job instability. Efforts at amelioration focus on ways to bring the deprived groups into the mainstream of economic life by attracting new industry, promoting small business, introducing improved agricultural methods, and raising the level of skills of the employable members of the society.

Similar to collective poverty in relative permanence but different from it in terms of distribution, case poverty refers to the inability of an individual or family to secure basic needs even in social surroundings of general prosperity. This inability is generally related to the lack of some basic attribute that would permit the individual to maintain himself or herself. Such persons may, for example, be blind, physically or emotionally disabled , or chronically ill. Physical and mental handicaps are usually regarded sympathetically, as being beyond the control of the people who suffer from them. Efforts to ameliorate poverty due to physical causes focus on education, sheltered employment, and, if needed, economic maintenance.

Poverty Essay for Students and Children

500+ words essay on poverty essay.

“Poverty is the worst form of violence”. – Mahatma Gandhi.

How Poverty is Measured?

For measuring poverty United nations have devised two measures of poverty – Absolute & relative poverty. Absolute poverty is used to measure poverty in developing countries like India. Relative poverty is used to measure poverty in developed countries like the USA. In absolute poverty, a line based on the minimum level of income has been created & is called a poverty line. If per day income of a family is below this level, then it is poor or below the poverty line. If per day income of a family is above this level, then it is non-poor or above the poverty line. In India, the new poverty line is Rs 32 in rural areas and Rs 47 in urban areas.

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Causes of Poverty

According to the Noble prize winner South African leader, Nelson Mandela – “Poverty is not natural, it is manmade”. The above statement is true as the causes of poverty are generally man-made. There are various causes of poverty but the most important is population. Rising population is putting the burden on the resources & budget of countries. Governments are finding difficult to provide food, shelter & employment to the rising population.

The other causes are- lack of education, war, natural disaster, lack of employment, lack of infrastructure, political instability, etc. For instance- lack of employment opportunities makes a person jobless & he is not able to earn enough to fulfill the basic necessities of his family & becomes poor. Lack of education compels a person for less paying jobs & it makes him poorer. Lack of infrastructure means there are no industries, banks, etc. in a country resulting in lack of employment opportunities. Natural disasters like flood, earthquake also contribute to poverty.

In some countries, especially African countries like Somalia, a long period of civil war has made poverty widespread. This is because all the resources & money is being spent in war instead of public welfare. Countries like India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, etc. are prone to natural disasters like cyclone, etc. These disasters occur every year causing poverty to rise.

Ill Effects of Poverty

Poverty affects the life of a poor family. A poor person is not able to take proper food & nutrition &his capacity to work reduces. Reduced capacity to work further reduces his income, making him poorer. Children from poor family never get proper schooling & proper nutrition. They have to work to support their family & this destroys their childhood. Some of them may also involve in crimes like theft, murder, robbery, etc. A poor person remains uneducated & is forced to live under unhygienic conditions in slums. There are no proper sanitation & drinking water facility in slums & he falls ill often & his health deteriorates. A poor person generally dies an early death. So, all social evils are related to poverty.

Government Schemes to Remove Poverty

The government of India also took several measures to eradicate poverty from India. Some of them are – creating employment opportunities , controlling population, etc. In India, about 60% of the population is still dependent on agriculture for its livelihood. Government has taken certain measures to promote agriculture in India. The government constructed certain dams & canals in our country to provide easy availability of water for irrigation. Government has also taken steps for the cheap availability of seeds & farming equipment to promote agriculture. Government is also promoting farming of cash crops like cotton, instead of food crops. In cities, the government is promoting industrialization to create more jobs. Government has also opened ‘Ration shops’. Other measures include providing free & compulsory education for children up to 14 years of age, scholarship to deserving students from a poor background, providing subsidized houses to poor people, etc.

Poverty is a social evil, we can also contribute to control it. For example- we can simply donate old clothes to poor people, we can also sponsor the education of a poor child or we can utilize our free time by teaching poor students. Remember before wasting food, somebody is still sleeping hungry.

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Poverty and Diseases Essay

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It is believed that poverty and poor health are correlated, especially in developing countries. Due to various circumstances, marginalized social groups are affected by unhygienic living conditions, thus allowing infections to spread. Moreover, poor people are often stripped of the information or availability of healthcare facilities that would provide proper care to prevent or treat any illness. A usual line of reasoning would be that low income is the main cause of health-related problems among vulnerable individuals. A low standard of living creates conditions that facilitate the spreading of different diseases and prevents underprivileged groups from receiving sufficient access to treatment or prevention methods. In short, poverty plays a significant role in developing harmful conditions that enable viruses to spread.

Several researchers see strong evidence that higher income is deeply connected with better health. There are some factors that influence health, which poor people lack, and they are food, clean water, hygiene, and vaccinations. The absence of those elements weakens immunity, allowing infectious diseases like HIV, tuberculosis to kill people. For example, according to Mendenhall, Kohrt, Norris, Ndetei, and Prabhakaran (2017), about 22-30% of the low-income population in South Africa suffers from HIV. In comparison, tuberculosis is present among 1–5.5% of the low-income population (Mendenhall et al., 2017). Therefore, poverty contributes to the spreading of infectious diseases.

Moreover, aside from infectious diseases, underprivileged people also suffer from non-communicable diseases that are mostly related to an inadequate diet. Malnutrition is a leading reason for the fragile immune system; that is why, according to Marquis et al. (2015), a microcredit program was integrated in Ghana. It was supposed to incorporate nutrition education in order to influence the situation on children’s starvation. A small but significant protective effect on childhood malnutrition was identified; however, “it could not overcome an overall reduction in child weight and BMI due to a prevailing drought” (Marquis et al., 2015, p. 342).

In addition, poor diet causes diabetes and, as reported by Mendenhall et al., diabetes is present among 4.8-10% of the low-income urban population in South Africa (Mendenhall et al., 2017). As with any other non-communicable disease, it has risk factors that lead to the rise of comorbidities, especially among poor, marginalized groups on a global scale.

Regarding mental illnesses, it cannot be denied that poverty greatly impacts the mental state. The research conducted by Ljungqvist et al. (2016) investigates potential relationships between symptoms and the level of income of those who live with serious mental illnesses in Sweden. The age of the research participants varied between 18 and 65. At some point, therapists diagnosed all of them as having a severe mental disorder, including schizophrenia, bipolar and anxiety disorder, depression, or neuropsychiatric syndromes like autism spectrum disorders. The other common trait among participants was their low income.

As the study progressed, the researchers found out that “temporary financial improvements do not constitute a general solution for problems confronted by mentally ill persons but can for some of them offer a starting point for reintroducing themselves into social contexts and wider fields of action, which will, in turn, affect their mental state” (Ljungqvist et al., 2016, p. 848). Such results that the relationship between mental health and poverty is, in fact, straightforward.

In conclusion, it would appear that poverty is much more than just money deprivation. In regards to health, it is also a capability deprivation. Due to the lack of opportunities to access proper healthcare, those who are affected by poverty are most likely to be subject to different diseases as well. Poverty, being both a cause and a result of health problems, creates a vicious circle. Nevertheless, it is possible to break the cycle with the help of volunteer work, financial help, and education.

Ljungqvist, I., Topor, A., Forssell, H., Svensson, I., & Davidson, L. (2016). Money and mental illness: A study of the relationship between poverty and serious psychological problems. Community mental health journal, 52(7), 842-850.

Marquis, G. S., Colecraft, E. K., Sakyi-Dawson, O., Lartey, A., Ahunu, B. K., Birks, K. A., Huff-Lonergan, E. (2015). An integrated microcredit, entrepreneurial training, and nutrition education intervention is associated with better growth among preschool-aged children in rural Ghana. The Journal of nutrition, 145(2), 335-343.

Mendenhall, E., Kohrt, B. A., Norris, S. A., Ndetei, D., & Prabhakaran, D. (2017). Non-communicable disease syndemics: poverty, depression, and diabetes among low-income populations. The Lancet, 389(10072), 951-963.

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Poverty and Health

What are the Health Effects of Poverty?

What is poverty?

Poverty in the context of other health-affecting factors

What are the effects of poverty?

Poverty in childhood

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Poverty and adult life

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The Intertwined Relationship Between Malnutrition and Poverty

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What is Poverty? The Causes, Facts, and Ways to Take Action

What is poverty?

What causes poverty?

A lack of good education

Conflict and war

Environmental disasters and climate change

Inaccessible healthcare

Social injustice

What are the main facts about poverty?

#1. Around 1 billion children live in poverty

#2. Poverty is concentrated in a few areas