The Definition of Poverty (Essay Sample)

Poverty
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Poverty
Poverty is a condition in which an individual or a community lacks the financial resources and necessities to enjoy a minimum standard of life acceptable in society. Such basics include food, water, clothing, shelter, access to health care, and education. Poor citizens decrease the economic status of a country due to their low living standards. The World Bank Organization defines poverty as hunger, insufficient shelter, having an illness, and the inability to access healthcare services (Ngoma & Mayimbo, 2017). Additionally, poor people lack education, and thus, they are deprived of the essential knowledge and skills needed in the labor market. This essay delineates poverty in the field of sociology with a focus on low-income families in the United States.
Poverty in the Field of Sociology
In sociology, poverty is described as a social situation determined by insufficient resources for essential survival to meet the minimum living standards anticipated for an individual. Social scientists accept that survival conditions such as inadequate food, clothing, and shelter best interpret it. Individuals with insufficient basic needs usually starve, lack education, have no access to health services, and are isolated in society. Poverty results from an unequal distribution of physical resources and wealth throughout the world (Sofo & Wicks, 2017). According to Dean et al. (2020), black people are expected to be poorer than whites. Sociologists classify this issue into absolute, relative, income, cyclical, collective, concentrated collective, case, and asset poverty.
By the start of the 21st century, about a billion human beings could neither read a book nor put signs on their names. Every year before 2000, the world used less than one percent of its expenditure on tools required to put kids into learning institutions, but this approach did not do well (Black & Keyes, 2020). It is believed that about a billion youngsters reside in poverty worldwide. Over three billion individuals globally survive on approximately 2.5 dollars and below in a day (Peres et al., 2019). The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the 41 deliberately poor indebted countries (567 million people) is lower than the well-being of the world's seven prosperous individuals put together (Harrington, 2016). Four hundred million children have no access to safe water; six hundred and forty million live with inadequate shelter; two hundred and seventy million cannot get health services (Peres et al., 2019). According to Sofo and Wicks (2017), 10.6 million children passed on before attaining age group 5 in 2003 (approximately 29,000 kids every day). These statistics show that poverty is still a global issue that needs robust interventions to provide necessities that warrant a better living for every individual.