Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO): Will Poverty be Solved?

Will Poverty Be Solved?
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Will Poverty Be Solved?
It’s the end of the day again. Your stomach is churning. Having only eaten stale bread and drank a few drops of water yet, you have no choice but you have to sleep it off. Tomorrow might give you a hot good meal but you can only dream as you do not have a penny on your pocket. Some good-hearted soul might come to your rescue, but you just shrugged it off, only tomorrow knows. On top of this, the weather is cold. You only have one a thin blanket and one leather jacket not enough to provide warmth. At least you also still have battered shoes and wooly old socks which could at least add to the little warmth you desperately need a lot. Your bed of the night is at least three layers of carton you diligently have picked up from the trash and nestled at your usual spot under the bridge. At least the bridge would cover you from any drizzle that might come in the middle of the autumn night. You just hope the cold would not be too harsh to give you a frostbite because that would hurt big time. As you do not have money, having a frostbite would be a big problem as doctor’s fee and hospital bills are expensive. Good thing your buddy Sam who also had lain his bed cartons a few feet near yours had a little fire going. He might have been luckier than you in begging money to be able to light a fire this evening. At least he shares that warmth so frostbite might not be a problem tonight. The noise from the passing vehicles above had minimized. The night is deepening. It is time to sleep. Tomorrow might be better…The narrative above is a common story that is relatable to a lot of homeless people where according to the 2017 annual report revealed by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development had risen to the count of around 554,000 people all over the country which has increased to 1% from the 2016 report (Weber and Mulvihill, 2017). On the other hand, a data presented by Esteban Ortiz-Ospina and Max Roser, in our World in Data website showed that out of a population of 100,000, there are 216.77 people in France that are homeless, 177.1 in the US, 155. 72 in Chile, 78.32 in Ireland, 49.38 in Spain, and 20.19 in Portugal. These just 5 Countries out of the 35 which are part of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (Ortiz-Espina and Roser, 2018). The homeless people are mostly hungry for they can only managed to have at least one meal a day and sometimes even without. They also do not have houses to give them shelter and protection from the coldness or hotness of the weather. Most of the them do not have jobs to sustain themselves and depends only on the alms given by people when they beg. Some of them could be employed yet have salaries that are not enough for them to rent a house or sustain most of their needs. This could also be because they also have no or little education to carry around for them to get better paying jobs. Access to medication and hospitalization is also difficult. Their hygiene can also be compromised as they do not have access to water and sanitation. With these in mind, we could say homelessness is one way to indicate poverty. Poverty is generally defined as being in a situation having none or a few goods, money or means of support (“Poverty”, n. d.). Yet, according to United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), poverty can further redefined, in economic, relative and absolute terms. Income Poverty is the poverty identified in pure Economic terms. It is defined as a situation wherein the income of a family does not reach the federally accepted threshold that varies in each country but the extreme poverty international standard is having less than 1$ a day. This is also measured not individually but per family considering also the number of persons within the family. (“International Migration: Poverty”, n. d.). As of October 2015, World bank had updated the extreme poverty international standard to 1.90$ a day because variations in the cost of living around the world have also evolved. In 2015, it was projected by the World bank that over 700 million people live under this line around the world (“Faqs: Global Poverty Line Update”, 2015). Relative Poverty, on the other hand, is more related to social economic status and is defined as having failed to lived according to the living standards of society. This takes in consideration that individuals also have cultural and social needs aside from the basic needs. Lastly, Absolute Poverty is more related to the general meaning of poverty wherein it assesses poverty according to the amount of money a person has to be able to provide for his basic needs such as in our narration above which are shelter, clothing, and food (“International Migration: Poverty”, n. d.). This is an issue experienced by many people not only in the current day but probably since trade and commerce had entered the civilized world. It is also an international issue which not only third world countries experience but also the industrialized and developed ones. I therefore seek to ask if poverty will be solved?
The answer is supposed to be simply just yes or no yet there is more to that than we think. Hypothetically, there are solutions to a lot of problems and poverty is one of the problems that can possibly be solved logically. In my logic, since poverty is a condition where you fail to afford basic needs, then we, therefore, address the failure. If a simple algebraic expression would say a + b = c, then let supposed c would be the acquisition of the basic needs. This, therefore, would conclude that a and b will be the means to get them. In the reality of the world today, we cannot get anything for free. We always need to buy them thus, we need money and to be able to have money, we need a job. Therefore, a would be a job and b will be the salary which means the money thus, a job plus the salary will result in acquiring the basic needs. Again, this is not as simple as we think for there are a lot of complications with this solution. Acquiring a job meant that you should have the skill or the education to be qualified for it and if the person does not have those then our simple logic above will simply not be achieved. Another complication could be that you are able to acquire the skill or the education for the job yet there are no jobs available. Thus, we need to look at more facts and studies before we could provide an answer.
Aside from the definitions above, poverty can still be further defined according to several types that can be identified base on duration and distribution. Duration can be, short-term, long-term or cyclical. Distribution, on the other hand, can be individual, concentrated, and widespread. The first type of poverty is Cyclical poverty wherein the duration of its occurrence is limited yet widespread across the population. This is mostly experienced by industrialized societies where the main cause is a change in the business cycle. Such changes are the periods of depression or serious recession that leads to massive unemployment. Another type of Poverty is Collective Poverty. Contrary to Cyclical Poverty, this type is permanent and concentrated in a relatively large group of people or generally the average level of life of a society which suffers from inadequate means of acquiring basic needs despite living in a prosperous society. This type of poverty, both general and concentrated, can be transferred from generations to generations such as parents to children. This type is mostly seen in developing countries in Africa, Asia, and Central America as this is linked to economic underdevelopment. From this type of poverty springs the Concentrated Collective poverty which is defined as a long-term poverty where particular demographic groups in relatively wealthy and industrialized countries are susceptible to experience. Victims of this type of poverty can usually be seen in abandoned or bypassed industries in regions or in Ghettos in the cities as well as in places where industry and agriculture are not profitable and inefficient. Poor health conditions, high mortality rates, low level of education and a lot more are suffered by the people of both general and concentrated collective poverty. The last type of poverty is the Case Poverty where it is also long-term but focus only on the inability of a family or an individual to acquire basic needs despite the wealthy social surroundings it belongs to. The inability would refer to the absence of an attribute that allows the individual to sustain his/her needs such as physical or emotional disability or chronological illness (Poverty, 2018). Knowing each type of Poverty, we might be able to answer the question by exploring if we can have solutions for each type.
When the growth of economies is well below the in total and per capita rate of output as well as below their long-term average, Depression occurs. Depressions had been experienced by the industrialized societies in the 19th, 20th and even the 21st Century. The 19th Century depression occurred in 1873 to 1879. On the other hand, the 20th century depression occurred in 1929 to 1939 and the 21st century depression occurred in 2008 to 2009 (Mckee, 2016). The depression happened in the 20th Century around the 1930s is called the Great Depression which had been a global economic cataclysm in which the US, Japan, Germany and Chile were some of the countries that was greatly affected (Romer, 1993). The experience that the affected countries had paved way for economists and governments alike to find solutions. Almost all of the advanced industrial societies and their government had tried to restrict the bad effects of economic fluctuations by adopting economic policies. John Maynard Keynes was an English economist of that time whose famous work, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money had provided a solution to alleviate this situation. His theory required the government to become key players by increasing their spending to stimulate the economy. The government spending can be done partly by giving jobs to the unemployed through projects in public works or by giving welfare, unemployment compensation or other subsidies. His theory despite some debates in its clarity w...