Poverty is Complex

Poverty is complex and involves so much more than a financial status of low income. Because of the cyclic nature of poverty, the causes are often also the consequences.

 Hunger and malnutrition result in lower mental capacity and increased health issues. Education requires nourished bodies and balanced lives, and without an education it is very difficult to generate enough income to feed a family.

 Low income combined with living in places where there is little or no infrastructure for basic services like sanitation, clean water, and adequate housing contribute to many illnesses and diseases. The result is downward spirals of depression and apathy.  These are known as the diseases of poverty.

 Limited access to formal education means a lack of stimulation of certain types of reasoning and problem-solving that contribute to diminished capacity to generate an income. Parents who earn perpetually low incomes need their children to contribute to the family income. The children who must leave school at an early age are unable to provide an income for their children, thus perpetuating generational poverty.

 Social discrimination is an invisible barrier that reinforces the other elements of poverty. The poor are often judged as being poor because they are lazy and stupid. That becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy since prejudice is a preconceived projection of the beholder. In that type of situation, no matter what the judged person does, it’s interpreted in terms of the preconceived projection that the person is poor because they are lazy and stupid. This type of projected judgement is one of the most difficult to break through since it involves people’s beliefs.

 Exclusion from processes of decision-making and power are also both a cause and a consequence of poverty. When the social and political barriers impede co-participation, the tendency is to stop trying. Especially when there is diminished capacity for reasoning and problem solving caused by low levels of education and influenced by compromised mental acuity due to malnutrition.

 The secondary effects of poverty are worse health outcomes, including higher mortality rates, and increased risk of mental health conditions such as depression, anger, and substance abuse. In extreme cases, the combination of everything mentioned contributes to desperation and violence.

 Therefore, the generational cycles of poverty are difficult to break because there are so many factors involved. Children born into poor families begin with a disadvantage by having parents who have neither the skills nor the education to generate an income that would allow their children to be nourished and educated adequately, and those children grow up to repeat the cycle with their children.