Cause and Effect of Poverty

NB: We do not resell your papers. Upon ordering, we do an original paper exclusively for you.

NB: All your data is kept safe from the public.

Table of Contents

Effects of poverty on health
Effects of poverty on educational attainment
Effects of poverty on migration patterns
Works Cited

Poverty can be described in a number of ways. For example, the disparities in income and wealth are considered as a sign of poverty since the state is related to issues of scarcity and allocation of resources and influence.

Although poverty is most prominent among developing countries, studies indicate that the condition is also noticeable among the developed countries. Poverty may also be defined as the combined status of poor individuals (John & Tigani 207).

Poverty affects the social, economic and political welfare of the society in many ways. This paper will therefore discuss the cause and effect of poverty with regards to the impact of poverty on: health; educational attainment; and migration patterns.

Effects of poverty on health

For majority of individuals, the harmful effects of economic poverty on health are worsened by disparity associated with racial, sex, disability, HIV infection and other aspects related with social status. Therefore, efforts that aim entirely on economic poverty may have restricted efficiency for supporting health.

Internationally, poor health also can result to perpetual poverty. Since the health sector has limited influence over other factors that affect the health conditions such as housing, education, environmental hazards and food supply, it encounters the realistic challenge of ascertaining how to coordinate with other sectors to break the vicious cycle of poverty- illness-poverty.

A number of effects of poverty- as enumerated above- can also cause of poverty, thus generating a cycle of poverty and complicating the matter even more: These comprise of extremism; depression; human trafficking; hunger; illiteracy, suicide; and drug abuse, among others (John & Tigani 208).

Poverty in childhood wields its effect all through the life course and is easily passed on to consequent generations. This transmission takes place via maternal health before and all through pregnancy. A Lower birth weight of a pregnant woman, influenced by the social and economic condition of her family, has a direct impact on the weight of the baby after birth.

Maternal height is among the major factors that determine the weight of an infant after birth. Other than the influences of genetics on maternal weight, poverty and low social and economic conditions of the immediate family of the mother have a strong effect via early childhood diet.

A number of studies have shown that the height of an expectant woman is directly related with the social status of her family. For example, South Asian women residing in UK are shorter than European women.

Poverty and low social and economic status are related with poor mental health among women and mental stress and ill health have been identified as outcomes of poverty among these women. Women from poor background have less weight during pregnancy.

They also suffer from genital diseases, have inferior micronutrient and are likely to smoke heavily. With respect to social disadvantage and mental health of children and youth, there is a marked similarity between emotional problems and poverty.

The prevalence of certain conditions such as bed wetting and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is quite elevated among poor children. According to a study done in Canada, over 21% of children from poor families lived with a depressed close relative compared to 5% among children in high income cohort.

Also, the study found that there was a high prevalence of suicide among youth from poor backgrounds. In addition, child care, a key factor in mental health of a child, is highly affected by low socio-economic status and explicit aspects such as dejection and debt are rife among poor parents.

Social risk aspects tend to clump together. The effect of clumping of social risk aspects on smoking and feeding patterns is shown through a study involving a sample of smoking families in the West Midlands who had infants aged below three months. The effects of smoking during pregnancy were analysed by Maritz and Harding.

The study found that the cigarette consumption and infant exposure to cigarette smoke these households increased steadily as their income levels dropped. These findings are consistent with the conventional knowledge that youth from poor families tend to be heavy smokers than those from well-off families.

In addition, drug abuse and consumption of alcohol is higher among youth from poor families than their rich counterparts. At the same time, Wojcicki focused on the condition of a woman before and during the pregnancy and the influence of depression on an infant because poverty can make a woman depressed.

Effects of poverty on educational attainment

The level of education attained by a mother is identified as a key marker of child health in both high and low income countries. Access to education is determined by income of the household in most countries (Sachs 3). The educational attainment of children from poor families is much lower and studies indicate that low levels of educational attainment are evident when a child is seven years old.

According to Adrienne Ingrum, there is a direct relationship between low socio-economic status and educational attainment among high school students (73). Children of parents with inferior educational attainment are likely to drop out of school.

This is because parent with low levels of education do not appreciate the value of education and tend to relay this perception to their children, hence boosting their likelihood of abandoning high school education (Ingrum 73). Thus, according to Ingrum, a low social-economic status (SES) may increase the prospect of a child dropping out of high School.

Coleman and DeLeire conducted a study in 2003 to ascertain the relationship between locus of control and educational attainment of youth. They established that children who had external locus of control do not value high school education and are thus likely to drop out of school more regularly than those with an internal locus of control (Coleman and DeLeire 712).

The outcome of their study support the Human Capital Theory which states that the probability of a student with an external locus of control dropping out of school is higher since they underrate their income potential and thus resolve that the value of lost wages outweighs the benefits acquired by investing in a high school education (Ingrum 74). According to Coleman and DeLeire, students from poor backgrounds are more likely to experience an external locus of control which makes them to place a low value on educational attainment (716).

Evidently, the Human Capital Theory stresses on the value of investing in human capital, for example education, for economic gains. Thus economic gains could be defined as completion of high school education, attained via investment in human capital.

Give that high school education takes place during youth, most of the human capital investments that would result in educational attainment need to be relayed from parents to young people. Thus, the socio-economic status of a family greatly affects accumulation of human capital among high school students.

Poor families not only have fewer human capital resources but also transmit less of it to their children (Ingrum 75). This implies that the effect of poverty among families with low SES is that it reduces the prospects of attaining high school education among these students.

Effects of poverty on migration patterns

Economic theories postulate that migration patterns are a result of rational choice. For instance, in the Harris-Torado model, migration of labour is structured within the framework of inequality of wages among different sectors. Labour migration choices are made by rational individuals who look for work that promise higher wage rate in urban areas.

Migration takes place when the financial gains with respect to wages at urban centres outweigh financial costs of migration and opportunity cost of rural work. Migration is thus seen as a selective process where skilled and better educated individuals move to urban centres in search of better jobs.

Since many poor families have limited financial resources, the cost of migration can limit the number of accessible destination choices, and thus the expected gains which might dampen migration. In developing countries, the adverse effects of poverty are compounded by asymmetrical information in financial markets (Waddington & Sabates-Wheeler 5).

There are several economic theories that attempt to explain the unrelenting poverty in the society. For instance, the critical threshold theory postulates that an optimal level in human capital must be realized so that the conventional competitive theory can be applicable in an economic system.

Both the country and individual must also attain this critical threshold, which varies according to the environment in which the person lives. For instance, if wage rate for unskilled labour are constrained by abundance of illiterate workers, a poor individual can’t save enough money to escape poverty if continues to live in a developing county that has a limited number of skilled labour force.

However, he can break out poverty if he shifts to a country that has a large skilled population (Bowles et al. 2). The Dysfunctional institutions theory suggests that poverty is caused by socio-economic institutions that result in skewed distribution of power and wealth in the society. Thus a society that fails to develop effective political and social institutions is likely to experience low incomes and low investments which are common ingredients of poverty (Bowles et al. 4).

A study of migration at the meso-level emphasizes migration to be a result of poverty in the community. Given that individuals are worried about their economic status, families that are poor in relation to their society move elsewhere to boost their economic status.

For instance, holding other factors constant, migration patterns to the United States from two Mexican villages (are trivially ascertained by the family’s initial absolute poverty but completely influenced by initial relative poverty).

Evidence also abounds of a non-linear association between poverty and migration which shows that poor families are not able to meet migration expenses. The outcomes suggest major concave associations between absolute and relative poverty and migration with respect to international migration (Waddington & Sabates-Wheeler 10).

Works Cited

Bowles, Samuel, Steven N. Durlauf, Karla Ruth Hoff, and Russell Sage Foundation. Poverty Traps. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. 2006. Print.

Coleman, Margo, and DeLeire Thomas. “An Economic Model of Locus of Control and the Human Capital Investment Decision.” The Journal of Human Resources 38.3 (2000): 710-721. Web.

Ingrum, Adrienne. “High School Dropout Determinants: The Effect of Poverty and Learning Disabilities.” The Park Place Economist 14 (2007): 73-79. Web.

John, Nitin Ashok, and Ahmed Tigani. “Health, Poverty and Human Development: A Review and Further Analysis of Effects of Poverty on Health.” Sudanese Journal of Public Health 2.4 (2007): 207-211. Web.

Maritz, Gert S., and Richard Harding. “Life-long Programming Implications of Exposure to Tobacco Smoking and Nicotine Before and Soon After Birth: Evidence for Altered Lung Development.” International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 8 (2011): 875-898. Web.

Sachs, Jeffrey. The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time. New York: Penguin Press. 2005. Print.

Waddington, Hugh, and Rachel Sabates-Wheeler. “Migration, How Does Poverty Affect Migration Choice?” Sussex: Institution of Development Studies, 2003. Web.

Wojcicki, Janet M. “Chronic Maternal Depression Is Associated with Reduced Weight Gain in Latino Infants from Birth to 2 Years of Age.” PLoS ONE 6 (2): e16737. Web.

Click Here To Order Now!

Cause and Effect of Poverty

Do you need this or any other assignment done for you from scratch?

We have qualified writers to help you.

We assure you a quality paper that is 100% free from plagiarism and AI.

You can choose either format of your choice ( Apa, Mla, Havard, Chicago, or any other)