The effects of poverty may also be causes, as listed above, thus creating a "poverty cycle" operating across multiple levels, individual, local, national and global.
Health
Hunger, disease, and less education describe a person in poverty. One third of deaths - some 18 million people a year or 50,000 per day - are due to poverty-related causes: in total 270 million people, most of them women and children, have died as a result of poverty since 1990. Those living in poverty suffer disproportionately from hunger or even starvation and disease.Those living in poverty suffer lower life expectancy. According to the World Health Organization, hunger and malnutrition are the single gravest threats to the world's public health and malnutrition is by far the biggest contributor to child mortality, present in half of all cases.
Every year nearly 11 million children living in poverty die before their fifth birthday. 1.02 billion people go to bed hungry every night. Poverty increases the risk of homelessness. There are over 100 million street children worldwide. Increased risk of drug abuse may also be associated with poverty.
According to the Global Hunger Index, South Asia has the highest child malnutrition rate of world's regions. Nearly half of all Indian children are undernourished, one of the highest rates in the world and nearly double the rate of Sub-Saharan Africa. Every year, more than half a million women die in pregnancy or childbirth. Almost 90% of maternal deaths occur in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, compared to less than 1% in the developed world.
Women who have children born in poverty, cannot nourish the children efficiently with the right prenatal care. They may also suffer from disease that may be passed down to the child through birth. Asthma is a common problem children acquire when born into poverty.
Education
Research has found that there is a high risk of educational underachievement for children who are from low-income housing circumstances. This often is a process that begins in primary school for some less fortunate children. In the US educational system, these children are at a higher risk than other children for retention in their grade, special placements during the school’s hours and even not completing their high school education. There are indeed many explanations for why students tend to drop out of school. For children with low resources, the risk factors are similar to excuses such as juvenile delinquency rates, higher levels of teenage pregnancy, and the economic dependency upon their low income parent or parents.
Families and society who submit low levels of investment in the education and development of less fortunate children end up with less favorable results for the children who see a life of parental employment reduction and low wages. Higher rates of early childbearing with all the connected risks to family, health and well-being are majorly important issues to address since education from preschool to high school are both identifiably meaningful in a life.
Poverty often drastically affects children’s success in school. A child’s “home activities, preferences, mannerisms” must align with the world and in the cases that they do not these students are at a disadvantage in the school and most importantly the classroom. Therefore, it is safe to state that children who live at or below the poverty level will have far less success educationally than children who live above the poverty line. Poor children have a great deal less healthcare and this ultimately results in many absences from the academic year. Additionally, poor children are much more likely to suffer from hunger, fatigue, irritability, headaches, ear infections, flu, and colds. These illnesses could potentially restrict a child or student’s focus and concentration.
Housing
Slum-dwellers, who make up a third of the world's urban population, live in a poverty no better, if not worse, than rural people, who are the traditional focus of the poverty in the developing world, according to a report by the United Nations.
Most of the children living in institutions around the world have a surviving parent or close relative, and they most commonly entered orphanages because of poverty. Experts and child advocates maintain that orphanages are expensive and often harm children’s development by separating them from their families. It is speculated that, flush with money, orphanages are increasing and push for children to join even though demographic data show that even the poorest extended families usually take in children whose parents have died.
Violence
According to a UN report on modern slavery, the most common form of human trafficking is for prostitution, which is largely fueled by poverty. In Zimbabwe, a number of girls are turning to prostitution for food to survive because of the increasing poverty. In one survey, 67% of children from disadvantaged inner cities said they had witnessed a serious assault, and 33% reported witnessing a homicide. 51% of fifth graders from New Orleans (median income for a household: $27,133) have been found to be victims of violence, compared to 32% in Washington, DC (mean income for a household: $40,127).
Drug abuse
Unemployment and distance from rural areas are where most drug abuse occurs. Drug abuse can result in a community shouldering the impact of many nefarious acts such as stealing, killing, theft, sexual assault, and prostitution. Drug abuse is synonymous with poor performance in school & work, and a general malaise of intra-personal intelligence. People who have abused drugs and have spent all of their money buying substances—i.e. heroin, alcohol, methamphetamines etc.—become addicts. This induces a downward spiral in the functionality of most addicts, as the drugs and poverty can be cyclical. When an addict has no other way to support their addiction they result to illegal measures to obtain income. This is where a community becomes affected by drug abuse. The urge—or “Jonesin”—for many different substances begins to take over an addict’s life.
(from: wikipedia.com)
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