essay on fighting poverty

5 Essays About Poverty Everyone Should Know

Poverty is one of the driving forces of inequality in the world. Between 1990-2015, much progress was made. The number of people living on less than $1.90 went from 36% to 10%. However, according to the World Bank , the COVID-19 pandemic represents a serious problem that disproportionately impacts the poor. Research released in February of 2020 shows that by 2030, up to ⅔ of the “global extreme poor” will be living in conflict-affected and fragile economies. Poverty will remain a major human rights issue for decades to come. Here are five essays about the issue that everyone should know:

“We need an economic bill of rights” –  Martin Luther King Jr.

The Guardian published an abridged version of this essay in 2018, which was originally released in Look magazine just after Dr. King was killed. In this piece, Dr. King explains why an economic bill of rights is necessary. He points out that while mass unemployment within the black community is a “social problem,” it’s a “depression” in the white community. An economic bill of rights would give a job to everyone who wants one and who can work. It would also give an income to those who can’t work. Dr. King affirms his commitment to non-violence. He’s fully aware that tensions are high. He quotes a spiritual, writing “timing is winding up.” Even while the nation progresses, poverty is getting worse.

This essay was reprinted and abridged in The Guardian in an arrangement with The Heirs to the Estate of Martin Luther King. Jr. The most visible representative of the Civil Rights Movement beginning in 1955, Dr. King was assassinated in 1968. His essays and speeches remain timely.

“How Poverty Can Follow Children Into Adulthood” – Priyanka Boghani

This article is from 2017, but it’s more relevant than ever because it was written when 2012 was the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. That’s no longer the case. In 2012, around ¼ American children were in poverty. Five years later, children were still more likely than adults to be poor. This is especially true for children of colour. Consequences of poverty include anxiety, hunger, and homelessness. This essay also looks at the long-term consequences that come from growing up in poverty. A child can develop health problems that affect them in adulthood. Poverty can also harm a child’s brain development. Being aware of how poverty affects children and follows them into adulthood is essential as the world deals with the economic fallout from the pandemic.

Priyanka Boghani is a journalist at PBS Frontline. She focuses on U.S. foreign policy, humanitarian crises, and conflicts in the Middle East. She also assists in managing Frontline’s social accounts.

“5 Reasons COVID-19 Will Impact the Fight to End Extreme Poverty” – Leah Rodriguez

For decades, the UN has attempted to end extreme poverty. In the face of the novel coronavirus outbreak, new challenges threaten the fight against poverty. In this essay, Dr. Natalie Linos, a Harvard social epidemiologist, urges the world to have a “social conversation” about how the disease impacts poverty and inequality. If nothing is done, it’s unlikely that the UN will meet its Global Goals by 2030. Poverty and COVID-19 intersect in five key ways. For one, low-income people are more vulnerable to disease. They also don’t have equal access to healthcare or job stability. This piece provides a clear, concise summary of why this outbreak is especially concerning for the global poor.

Leah Rodriguez’s writing at Global Citizen focuses on women, girls, water, and sanitation. She’s also worked as a web producer and homepage editor for New York Magazine’s The Cut.

“Climate apartheid”: World’s poor to suffer most from disasters” – Al Jazeera and news Agencies

The consequences of climate change are well-known to experts like Philip Alston, the special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights. In 2019, he submitted a report to the UN Human Rights Council sounding the alarm on how climate change will devastate the poor. While the wealthy will be able to pay their way out of devastation, the poor will not. This will end up creating a “climate apartheid.” Alston states that if climate change isn’t addressed, it will undo the last five decades of progress in poverty education, as well as global health and development .

“Nickel and Dimed: On (not) getting by in America” – Barbara Ehrenreich

In this excerpt from her book Nickel and Dimed, Ehrenreich describes her experience choosing to live undercover as an “unskilled worker” in the US. She wanted to investigate the impact the 1996 welfare reform act had on the working poor. Released in 2001, the events take place between the spring of 1998 and the summer of 2000. Ehrenreich decided to live in a town close to her “real life” and finds a place to live and a job. She has her eyes opened to the challenges and “special costs” of being poor. In 2019, The Guardian ranked the book 13th on their list of 100 best books of the 21st century.

Barbara Ehrenreich is the author of 21 books and an activist. She’s worked as an award-winning columnist and essayist.

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About the author, emmaline soken-huberty.

Emmaline Soken-Huberty is a freelance writer based in Portland, Oregon. She started to become interested in human rights while attending college, eventually getting a concentration in human rights and humanitarianism. LGBTQ+ rights, women’s rights, and climate change are of special concern to her. In her spare time, she can be found reading or enjoying Oregon’s natural beauty with her husband and dog.

7 Essays About Poverty: Example Essays and Prompts

Essays about poverty give valuable insight into the economic situation that we share globally. Read our guide with poverty essay examples and prompts for your paper.

In the US, the official poverty rate in 2022 was 11.5 percent, with 37.9 million people living below the poverty line. With a global pandemic, cost of living crisis, and climate change on the rise, we’ve seen poverty increase due to various factors. As many of us face adversity daily, we can look to essays about poverty from some of the world’s greatest speakers for inspiration and guidance.

There is nothing but a lack of social vision to prevent us from paying an adequate wage to every American citizen whether he be a hospital worker, laundry worker, maid or day laborer. There is nothing except shortsightedness to prevent us from guaranteeing an annual minimum—and livable—income for every American family. Martin Luther King Jr., Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?

Writing a poverty essay can be challenging due to the many factors contributing to poverty and the knock-on effects of living below the poverty line . For example, homelessness among low-income individuals stems from many different causes.

It’s important to note that poverty exists beyond the US, with many developing countries living in extreme poverty without access to essentials like clean water and housing. For help with your essays, check out our round-up of the best essay checkers .

Essays About Poverty: Top Examples

1. pensioner poverty: fear of rise over decades as uk under-40s wealth falls, 2. the surprising poverty levels across the u.s., 3. why poverty persists in america, 4. post-pandemic poverty is rising in america’s suburbs.

• 5. The Basic Facts About Children in Poverty
• 6. The State of America’s Children 
• 7. COVID-19: This is how many Americans now live below the poverty line

10 Poverty Essay Topics

1. the causes of poverty, 2. the negative effects of poverty, 3. how countries can reduce poverty rates, 4. the basic necessities and poverty, 5. how disabilities can lead to poverty, 6. how the cycle of poverty unfolds , 7. universal basic income and its relationship to poverty, 8. interview someone who has experience living in poverty, 9. the impact of the criminal justice system on poverty, 10. the different ways to create affordable housing.

There is growing concern about increasing pensioner poverty in the UK in the coming decades. Due to financial challenges like the cost of living crisis, rent increases, and the COVID-19 pandemic, under 40s have seen their finances shrink.

Osborne discusses the housing wealth gap in this article, where many under the 40s currently pay less in a pension due to rent prices. While this means they will have less pension available, they will also retire without owning a home, resulting in less personal wealth than previous generations. Osborne delves into the causes and gaps in wealth between generations in this in-depth essay.

“Those under-40s have already been identified as  facing the biggest hit from rising mortgage rates , and last week a study by the financial advice firm Hargreaves Lansdown found that almost a third of 18- to 34-year-olds had stopped or cut back on their pension contributions in order to save money.” Hilary Osborne,  The Guardian

In this 2023 essay, Jeremy Ney looks at the poverty levels across the US, stating that poverty has had the largest one-year increase in history. According to the most recent census, child poverty has more than doubled from 2021 to 2022.

Ney states that the expiration of government support and inflation has created new financial challenges for US families. With the increased cost of living and essential items like food and housing sharply increasing, more and more families have fallen below the poverty line. Throughout this essay, Ney displays statistics and data showing the wealth changes across states, ethnic groups, and households.

“Poverty in America reflects the inequality that plagues U.S. households. While certain regions have endured this pain much more than others, this new rising trend may spell ongoing challenges for even more communities.” Jeremy Ney,  TIME

In this New York Times article, a Pulitzer Prize-winning sociologist explores why poverty exists in North America.

The American poor have access to cheap, mass-produced goods, as every American does. But that doesn’t mean they can access what matters most. Matthew Desmond,  The New York Times

The U.S. Census Bureau recently released its annual data on poverty, revealing contrasting trends for 2022. While one set of findings indicated that the overall number of Americans living in poverty remained stable compared to the previous two years, another survey highlighted a concerning increase in child poverty. The rate of child poverty in the U.S. doubled from 2021 to 2022, a spike attributed mainly to the cessation of the expanded child tax credit following the pandemic. These varied outcomes underscore the Census Bureau’s multifaceted methods to measure poverty.

“The nation’s suburbs accounted for the majority of increases in the poor population following the onset of the pandemic” Elizabeth Kneebone and Alan Berube,  Brookings

5.  The Basic Facts About Children in Poverty

Nearly 11 million children are living in poverty in America. This essay explores ow the crisis reached this point—and what steps must be taken to solve it.

“In America, nearly 11 million children are poor. That’s 1 in 7 kids, who make up almost one-third of all people living in poverty in this country.” Areeba Haider,  Center for American Progress

6.  The State of America’s Children  

This essay articles how, despite advancements, children continue to be the most impoverished demographic in the U.S., with particular subgroups — such as children of color, those under five, offspring of single mothers, and children residing in the South — facing the most severe poverty levels.

“Growing up in poverty has wide-ranging, sometimes lifelong, effects on children, putting them at a much higher risk of experiencing behavioral, social, emotional, and health challenges. Childhood poverty also plays an instrumental role in impairing a child’s ability and capacity to learn, build skills, and succeed academically.” Children’s Defense Fund

7.  COVID-19: This is how many Americans now live below the poverty line

This essay explores how the economic repercussions of the coronavirus pandemic 2020 led to a surge in U.S. poverty rates, with unemployment figures reaching unprecedented heights. The writer provides data confirming that individuals at the lowest economic strata bore the brunt of these challenges, indicating that the recession might have exacerbated income disparities, further widening the chasm between the affluent and the underprivileged.

“Poverty in the U.S. increased in 2020 as the coronavirus pandemic hammered the economy and unemployment soared. Those at the bottom of the economic ladder were hit hardest, new figures confirm, suggesting that the recession may have widened the gap between the rich and the poor.” Elena Delavega,  World Econmic Forum

If you’re tasked with writing an essay about poverty, consider using the below topics. They offer pointers for outlining and planning an essay about this challenging topic.

One of the most specific poverty essay topics to address involves the causes of poverty. You can craft an essay to examine the most common causes of extreme poverty. Here are a few topics you might want to include:

• Racial discrimination, particularly among African Americans, has been a common cause of poverty throughout American history. Discrimination and racism can make it hard for people to get the education they need, making it nearly impossible to get a job.
• A lack of access to adequate health care can also lead to poverty. When people do not have access to healthcare, they are more likely to get sick. This could make it hard for them to go to work while also leading to major medical bills.
• Inadequate food and water can lead to poverty as well. If people’s basic needs aren’t met, they focus on finding food and water instead of getting an education they can use to find a better job.

These are just a few of the most common causes of poverty you might want to highlight in your essay. These topics could help people see why some people are more likely to become impoverished than others. You might also be interested in these essays about poverty .

Poverty affects everyone, and the impacts of an impoverished lifestyle are very real. Furthermore, the disparities when comparing adult poverty to child poverty are also significant. This opens the doors to multiple possible essay topics. Here are a few points to include:

• When children live in poverty, their development is stunted. For example, they might not be able to get to school on time due to a lack of transportation, making it hard for them to keep up with their peers. Child poverty also leads to malnutrition, which can stunt their development.
• Poverty can impact familial relationships as well. For example, members of the same family could fight for limited resources, making it hard for family members to bond. In addition, malnutrition can stunt the growth of children.
• As a side effect of poverty, people have difficulty finding a safe place to live. This creates a challenging environment for everyone involved, and it is even harder for children to grow and develop.
• When poverty leads to homelessness, it is hard for someone to get a job. They don’t have an address to use for physical communication, which leads to employment concerns.

These are just a few of the many side effects of poverty. Of course, these impacts are felt by people across the board, but it is not unusual for children to feel the effects of poverty that much more. You might also be interested in these essays about unemployment .

Different countries take different approaches to reduce the number of people living in poverty

The issue of poverty is a major human rights concern, and many countries explore poverty reduction strategies to improve people’s quality of life. You might want to examine different strategies that different countries are taking while also suggesting how some countries can do more. A few ways to write this essay include:

• Explore the poverty level in America, comparing it to the poverty level of a European country. Then, explore why different countries take different strategies.
• Compare the minimum wage in one state, such as New York, to the minimum wage in another state, such as Alabama. Why is it higher in one state? What does raising the minimum wage do to the cost of living?
• Highlight a few advocacy groups and nonprofit organizations actively lobbying their governments to do more for low-income families. Then, talk about why some efforts are more successful than others.

Different countries take different approaches to reduce the number of people living in poverty. Poverty within each country is such a broad topic that you could write a different essay on how poverty could be decreased within the country. For more, check out our list of simple essays topics for intermediate writers .

You could also write an essay on the necessities people need to survive. You could take a look at information published by the United Nations , which focuses on getting people out of the cycle of poverty across the globe. The social problem of poverty can be addressed by giving people the necessities they need to survive, particularly in rural areas. Here are some of the areas you might want to include:

• Affordable housing
• Fresh, healthy food and clean water
• Access to an affordable education
• Access to affordable healthcare

Giving everyone these necessities could significantly improve their well-being and get people out of absolute poverty. You might even want to talk about whether these necessities vary depending on where someone is living.

There are a lot of medical and social issues that contribute to poverty, and you could write about how disabilities contribute to poverty. This is one of the most important essay topics because people could be disabled through no fault of their own. Some of the issues you might want to address in this essay include:

• Talk about the road someone faces if they become disabled while serving overseas. What is it like for people to apply for benefits through the Veterans’ Administration?
• Discuss what happens if someone becomes disabled while at work. What is it like for someone to pursue disability benefits if they are hurt doing a blue-collar job instead of a desk job?
• Research and discuss the experiences of disabled people and how their disability impacts their financial situation.

People who are disabled need to have money to survive for many reasons, such as the inability to work, limitations at home, and medical expenses. A lack of money, in this situation, can lead to a dangerous cycle that can make it hard for someone to be financially stable and live a comfortable lifestyle.

Many people talk about the cycle of poverty, yet many aren’t entirely sure what this means or what it entails. A few key points you should address in this essay include:

• When someone is born into poverty, income inequality can make it hard to get an education.
• A lack of education makes it hard for someone to get into a good school, which gives them the foundation they need to compete for a good job. 
• A lack of money can make it hard for someone to afford college, even if they get into a good school.
• Without attending a good college, it can be hard for someone to get a good job. This makes it hard for someone to support themselves or their families. 
• Without a good paycheck, it is nearly impossible for someone to keep their children out of poverty, limiting upward mobility into the middle class.

The problem of poverty is a positive feedback loop. It can be nearly impossible for those who live this every day to escape. Therefore, you might want to explore a few initiatives that could break the cycle of world poverty and explore other measures that could break this feedback loop.

Many business people and politicians have floated the idea of a universal basic income to give people the basic resources they need to survive. While this hasn’t gotten a lot of serious traction, you could write an essay to shed light on this idea. A few points to hit on include:

• What does a universal basic income mean, and how is it distributed?
• Some people are concerned about the impact this would have on taxes. How would this be paid for?
• What is the minimum amount of money someone would need to stay out of poverty? Is it different in different areas?
• What are a few of the biggest reasons major world governments haven’t passed this?

This is one of the best essay examples because it gives you a lot of room to be creative. However, there hasn’t been a concrete structure for implementing this plan, so you might want to afford one.

Another interesting topic you might want to explore is interviewing someone living in poverty or who has been impoverished. While you can talk about statistics all day, they won’t be as powerful as interviewing someone who has lived that life. A few questions you might want to ask during your interview include:

• What was it like growing up?
• How has living in poverty made it hard for you to get a job?
• What do you feel people misunderstand about those who live in poverty?
• When you need to find a meal, do you have a place you go to? Or is it somewhere different every day?
• What do you think is the main contributor to people living in poverty?

Remember that you can also craft different questions depending on your responses. You might want to let the interviewee read the essay when you are done to ensure all the information is accurate and correct.

The criminal justice system and poverty tend to go hand in hand. People with criminal records are more likely to be impoverished for several reasons. You might want to write an essay that hits on some of these points:

• Discuss the discriminatory practices of the criminal justice system both as they relate to socioeconomic status and as they relate to race.
• Explore just how hard it is for someone to get a job if they have a criminal record. Discuss how this might contribute to a life of poverty.
• Dive into how this creates a positive feedback loop. For example, when someone cannot get a job due to a criminal record, they might have to steal to survive, which worsens the issue.
• Review what the criminal justice system might be like for someone with resources when compared to someone who cannot afford to hire expert witnesses or pay for a good attorney.

You might want to include a few examples of disparate sentences for people in different socioeconomic situations to back up your points. 

Affordable housing can make a major difference when someone is trying to escape poverty

Many poverty-related problems could be reduced if people had access to affordable housing. While the cost of housing has increased dramatically in the United States , some initiatives exist to create affordable housing. Here are a few points to include:

• Talk about public programs that offer affordable housing to people from disadvantaged backgrounds.
• Discuss private programs, such as Habitat for Humanity , doing similar things.
• Review the positive impacts that stable housing has on both adults and children.
• Dive into other measures local and federal governments could take to provide more affordable housing for people.

There are a lot of political and social angles to address with this essay, so you might want to consider spreading this out across multiple papers. Affordable housing can make a major difference when trying to escape poverty. If you want to learn more, check out our essay writing tips !

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Poverty Essay for Students and Children

500+ words essay on poverty essay.

“Poverty is the worst form of violence”. – Mahatma Gandhi.

How Poverty is Measured?

For measuring poverty United nations have devised two measures of poverty – Absolute & relative poverty.  Absolute poverty is used to measure poverty in developing countries like India. Relative poverty is used to measure poverty in developed countries like the USA. In absolute poverty, a line based on the minimum level of income has been created & is called a poverty line.  If per day income of a family is below this level, then it is poor or below the poverty line. If per day income of a family is above this level, then it is non-poor or above the poverty line. In India, the new poverty line is  Rs 32 in rural areas and Rs 47 in urban areas.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

Causes of Poverty

According to the Noble prize winner South African leader, Nelson Mandela – “Poverty is not natural, it is manmade”. The above statement is true as the causes of poverty are generally man-made. There are various causes of poverty but the most important is population. Rising population is putting the burden on the resources & budget of countries. Governments are finding difficult to provide food, shelter & employment to the rising population.

The other causes are- lack of education, war, natural disaster, lack of employment, lack of infrastructure, political instability, etc. For instance- lack of employment opportunities makes a person jobless & he is not able to earn enough to fulfill the basic necessities of his family & becomes poor. Lack of education compels a person for less paying jobs & it makes him poorer. Lack of infrastructure means there are no industries, banks, etc. in a country resulting in lack of employment opportunities. Natural disasters like flood, earthquake also contribute to poverty.

In some countries, especially African countries like Somalia, a long period of civil war has made poverty widespread. This is because all the resources & money is being spent in war instead of public welfare. Countries like India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, etc. are prone to natural disasters like cyclone, etc. These disasters occur every year causing poverty to rise.

Ill Effects of Poverty

Poverty affects the life of a poor family. A poor person is not able to take proper food & nutrition &his capacity to work reduces. Reduced capacity to work further reduces his income, making him poorer. Children from poor family never get proper schooling & proper nutrition. They have to work to support their family & this destroys their childhood. Some of them may also involve in crimes like theft, murder, robbery, etc. A poor person remains uneducated & is forced to live under unhygienic conditions in slums. There are no proper sanitation & drinking water facility in slums & he falls ill often &  his health deteriorates. A poor person generally dies an early death. So, all social evils are related to poverty.

Government Schemes to Remove Poverty

The government of India also took several measures to eradicate poverty from India. Some of them are – creating employment opportunities , controlling population, etc. In India, about 60% of the population is still dependent on agriculture for its livelihood. Government has taken certain measures to promote agriculture in India. The government constructed certain dams & canals in our country to provide easy availability of water for irrigation. Government has also taken steps for the cheap availability of seeds & farming equipment to promote agriculture. Government is also promoting farming of cash crops like cotton, instead of food crops. In cities, the government is promoting industrialization to create more jobs. Government has also opened  ‘Ration shops’. Other measures include providing free & compulsory education for children up to 14 years of age, scholarship to deserving students from a poor background, providing subsidized houses to poor people, etc.

Poverty is a social evil, we can also contribute to control it. For example- we can simply donate old clothes to poor people, we can also sponsor the education of a poor child or we can utilize our free time by teaching poor students. Remember before wasting food, somebody is still sleeping hungry.

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Poverty Is a Choice

Extreme poverty has declined, but the line is very low.

We live in what often feels like a biblically terrible time, marked by mass extinctions, deep recessions, epidemics, climate emergencies, inequality, and forever wars. But one thing, at least, has gotten better. More than 1 billion people have escaped extreme poverty—so many, so fast, that the world might be able to declare, within a decade, the end of this most miserable form of deprivation. “The global poverty rate is now lower than it has ever been in recorded history,” Jim Yong Kim, a former president of the World Bank, recently argued . “This is one of the greatest human achievements of our time.”

Or perhaps not. In an acidic rebuke to world leaders, the outgoing United Nations special rapporteur on poverty and human rights, Philip Alston, argues that the effort to end global poverty has failed. More people live in deprivation now than two decades ago. “We squandered a decade in the fight against poverty, with misplaced triumphalism blocking the very reforms that could have prevented the worst impacts of the pandemic,” Alston wrote in his last report .

So who’s right: Alston or Kim? The pessimistic argument is a hard one to make when looking at the raw, headline numbers. The global extreme-poverty rate fell from 36 percent in 1990 to 10 percent in 2015; the number of poor people dropped from 2 billion to 700 million. But Alston believes that by focusing only on those numbers, the world is deluding itself.

Read: A moral case for giving people money

The divisions between the World Bank’s economists and the UN’s special rapporteur are in some sense technical, about where to set the poverty line. They are in a more important sense interpretive, about whether progress has been fast or slow, and whether today’s global poverty counts are laudable or tragic.

This is a realm of yes-and s and no-but s, not direct refutations. Extreme poverty has declined rapidly, but the extreme-poverty line is very low: A person living below it spends no more than $1.90 a day, enough in many poor countries to cover some starch, a few fruits and vegetables, some cooking oil, a bit of protein, and that’s about it—with nothing left over for utilities, education, health care, transportation, or investment in wealth-generating assets, such as a cow or a motorbike. That poverty threshold represents “a staggeringly low standard of living, well below any reasonable conception of a life with dignity,” Alston argues—it is a catastrophic-destitution measure, not a poverty measure. He emphasizes the lack of progress made at the $3.20-a-day and $5.50-a-day poverty lines, too. Half the world lives on less than the latter figure.

Alston takes issue with the fact that the World Bank’s extreme-poverty line is an absolute measure, not a relative one: It sets a line and sees how many people cross it, country by country, rather than pegging the poverty threshold to median income, country by country. But “relative poverty is what really counts these days,” Alston told me, as it captures social exclusion, and the way that living on a few dollars a day is more challenging in middle-income countries like India and Kenya than in low-income countries like Afghanistan and Chad. “In a poorer country,” the bank itself explains , “participating in the job market may require only clothing and food, whereas someone in a richer society may also need access to the internet, transportation, and a cell phone.”

The bank also acknowledges that the global extreme-poverty line is low. It has generated a measure that includes relative poverty, and produces counts at the $3.20-a-day and $5.50-a-day lines. Its economists, researchers, and program experts stress that rising above the extreme-poverty line is no guarantee against malnutrition, stunted growth, early death, or any of the other horrible consequences of destitution.

But Alston’s most controversial, and most important, argument is that the focus on progress measured against the $1.90-a-day line—the prevalence of “everything’s getting better” arguments, made by Davos types like Bill Gates and Steven Pinker —has hampered progress toward true poverty eradication, and toward civil rights, social inclusion, and a basic standard of living for all. “By being able to rely so heavily on the World Bank's flagship figure, they can say, ‘Look, progress has been consistent. We’ve been doing great,’” Alston told me. “The implication of that is that the triumph of neoliberalism has brought with it very significant benefits for poor people. In reality, that’s just not the case.”

Read: How many people in the world are actually poor?

What if world leaders and multilateral institutions focused on the $5.50 line, or measures of poverty that capture social exclusion and relative deprivation? What if the headline story were that half the world still qualifies as desperately poor, and poverty head counts remain stubbornly high in dozens of countries? What if the story were not that we are succeeding, but that we are failing?

That story would not capture all the good that has happened in terms of infant-mortality rates falling, school-enrollment numbers rising, and malnutrition fading. But it would hold the world accountable for the fact that poverty is, always and everywhere, a choice. Alston’s view, and a necessary one, is that the world cannot wait for economic expansion to lift people above the poverty line. It cannot count on trade compacts and infrastructure projects and the ticking of GDP growth rates from 2.3 to 3.2 percent to do it. It needs direct interventions by governments, as fast as possible, to eliminate inequality and build safety nets, even in the poorest places.

The future is equal

• Press releases

How we fight inequality to end poverty and injustice

Fatoumata Tangara, 14, has been a peer educator for 2 years. She says it is important that young people talk to other young people, because “sometimes when we talk with adults, we can’t say everything.” She adds that parents also have to be sensitized for them to allow their girls to go and stay in school. Photo: Laeïla Adjovi/Oxfam

Today’s economic models have failed the world. Flawed and sexist, they have concentrated power in the hands of a few, at the expense of the world’s poorest and most marginalized. They have exacerbated a climate crisis that is destroying millions of lives and livelihoods. They have sustained multiple and interlinked forms of inequality that are the root cause of poverty and injustice. Across countries and regions, people are denied the ability to shape their future.

But inequality is not inevitable. The tide is turning. A better world is within our grasp. Where women and girls have agency and people are freed from the shackles of poverty. A world where everyone has the opportunity to thrive.

We are working across regions in 85 countries, with thousands of partners and allies, supporting communities to build better lives for themselves, grow resilience and protect lives and livelihoods also in times of crisis. Because we want lasting solutions, we fight the inequalities that keep people locked in poverty and injustice, we tackle not the symptoms but the systems, and we campaign for genuine, durable change.

Valerie Mukangerero walks to her pineapple farm in Rwamurema village, eastern Rwanda. Credit: Aurelie Marrier d'Unienville/Oxfam

Our vision for a just and sustainable world

We believe all lives are equal. No-one should be discriminated against or live in poverty. We want a just and sustainable world in which everyone can safely speak truth to power, claim their human rights, and build a better future for themselves.

We offer direct support to people and communities living with poverty, above all in countries in the global South. We seek to add value to the work of our partners and of all those who challenge discrimination, exclusion and exploitation.

But for change to be sustainable, it must be systemic. To contribute to change that lasts, we mobilize to transform the systems, policies and practices that have the most significant impact on people’s lives.

A just economy is inclusive. It promotes equality, protects the planet, and ends poverty. It builds social cohesion and promotes the economic empowerment of women and marginalized groups. It supports the rights of all workers, offers social protection and ensures that livelihoods and planetary resources can be sustained.

In an increasingly unequal world, advancing gender equality is fundamental to tackling poverty and injustice. A just society is not possible unless women and girls have agency over their lives. It needs to challenge harmful social norms and belief systems that underpin gender and power relations, especially where they impact women living in poverty the most. To achieve this, it needs to expose the patriarchal practices that prevent women from realizing their rights.

The climate crisis is a man-made disaster that is already reversing progress made in the fight against poverty and inequality. It contributes to vulnerable communities becoming even more fragile and exacerbates the risk of conflict and disaster. To change its course, governments and corporations must stop destructive practices and instead invest in sustainable solutions. The voices of feminist organizations, youth, and indigenous peoples must be amplified in climate negotiations, and lead the transition towards greener and fairer economic solutions.

International norms and multilateral frameworks are consistently undermined. A populist and anti-rights agenda is chipping away at the hard-won gains achieved by the worldwide movement for women’s rights, and in the fight against poverty. The demand for accountable and inclusive governance that protects human rights and our planet has never been higher. A just and sustainable future depends on safe and vibrant spaces that allow all people to hold the powerful to account.

Aisha is one of Docoloha's community health promoters, Somaliland. Together with other women, she trains the community on hygiene, water and waste management.

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We are guided by our vision, mission and values, and the transformational change that we seek. We know that to meet the challenge of a complex and unpredictable future, we need to develop new skills, innovate and improve our ability to adapt rapidly to changing contexts.

The inequalities that drive poverty and injustice are complex and multi-dimensional. They are created and sustained by unjust, deeply entrenched and interacting systems such as patriarchy, sexism, caste and racism that can affect anyone, anywhere. We take a multi-dimensional approach which makes us and our impact distinctive.

We apply a feminist lens to all our analysis and address gender justice and women’s rights across all our actions.

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We think and act locally and globally . We build coalitions within and between regions and from the local to the global level.

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We leverage the power and influence of digital technology , expanding digital spaces and seizing the potential they offer to social justice activists.

We mobilize to transform the systems that perpetuate poverty and injustice. We innovate, identify and scale-up lasting solutions that are grounded in evidence experience.

We are part of a global movement for social justice

Change at scale is possible when we act in solidarity with, and amplify, the voices of people experiencing poverty, injustice, exclusion and crisis.

Collaboration is at the heart of everything we do. Across the world, where we share vision and values, we partner with activists, communities, social movements and civil society. We seek new ways to connect with young people and women in all their diversity and aspire to become a partner of choice for them. We know that it is our supporters, volunteers, partners, staff and donors who make it possible for us to make a difference.

Together, we generate energy for transformative change. We campaign to influence local and national governments, corporate actors, and the institutions whose decisions, policies, and practices can put an end to inequality, poverty and injustice.

Our ambition for 2030

The years to 2030 will be a time of rapid and unpredictable change, and we do not know how these complex realities will play out. Our new global strategy sets out our commitment, over the next decade, to a just and sustainable future. It is made more urgent in a world further torn apart by coronavirus and offers a framework and strategic direction that remain as relevant as ever.  

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Laura Santhanam Laura Santhanam

• Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/why-the-u-s-is-rethinking-its-approach-to-poverty

Why the U.S. is rethinking its approach to poverty

At least one Saturday each month, Arlean Younger volunteers handing out boxes of donated food at church. Last time, she helped distribute provisions to more than 100 people. At the end of the shift, she took home a box, too — for herself and Mylie Jai, the little girl she has been taking care of since infancy.

Before the coronavirus pandemic, the number of American households in poverty was shrinking. In 2019, 34 million people lived in poverty , a decrease of 4.2 million individuals from a year earlier, according to the Census Bureau. Children made up a substantial portion of those in low-income households, according to the latest available data from a recent National Academies of Sciences study. A year since the coronavirus began its deadly rampage in the U.S., economic stresses have pushed millions more households to the brink, with some estimates suggesting it also forced an additional 2.5 million more children into poverty.

At the end of 2020, more than 50 million people were facing hunger, up 15 million from the year before, according to data from Feeding America , an anti-hunger organization. Millions of Americans have turned to food banks, with four out of 10 doing so for the first time during the pandemic.

Each month, Younger earns roughly $2,000 from her job at a company that hires home health aides. But the money is spent almost as soon as her deposit clears. Rent gobbles up $800. Utilities cost $300. Water adds $130. And $400 goes for the gas she needs to reach her health care clients. There are credit card bills and the new cost of daycare for Mylie Jae, whose school, the cost of which is normally subsidized by the state, shut down. The COVID-19 pandemic has made everything more precarious, including her own work.

Younger’s role is usually that of a manager but often demands more than overseeing client needs and people’s schedules. She supervises eight employees. Because of pandemic-driven demand, Younger said she often cares for clients herself, working far more than 40 hours, sometimes seven days a week. She drives up to 40 minutes each way to reach the clients farthest from her house; the costs are always greater than what her company reimburses her. She feels like she is struggling to provide a good home for the girl who calls her “Mama.”

Lawmakers in the U.S. have for years debated how to track poverty, and child poverty in particular. Now, in the midst of a pandemic, when the country is caught in a deep recession that has forced families deeper into financial difficulty amid widening inequalities, “it’s not surprising” that politicians have found renewed interest in curbing this hardship, said Rebecca Blank, a macroeconomist who worked on anti-poverty policy for the the Clinton and Obama administrations and now serves as chancellor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Chart by Megan McGrew

Along with what it provides in COVID relief, the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan signed into law by President Joe Biden this month offers one of the most sweeping anti-poverty packages in recent memory. Along with one-time stimulus checks to most children and adults and an extension of unemployment benefits, the legislation increases the child tax credit to between $3,000 and $3,600, depending on the age of the child, and makes that money available over the course of the year rather than only at tax-filing time. It offers housing vouchers for those nearing homelessness, as well as health care subsidies for people whose states have not expanded Medicaid.

One estimate by the Urban Institute suggests these measures will cut child poverty in half for children, and significantly for families experiencing job loss.

READ MORE: How to help kids build resilience amid COVID-19 chaos

In the pandemic, advocates have an opportunity to generate sufficient political will for the U.S. to not only sew up some of the holes in its social safety net, but make it big enough to catch more families and individuals in need. “One thing we know out of American history is when we expand these programs, it tends to be in response to more than just the very poor having need,” Blank said. “When need is more expansive, people are more willing to think about new things.”

The bill only guarantees the expanded tax credit for a year, though Democrats have promised to extend the benefit. The question now: Could this become permanent? If the tax credit expires, the child poverty rate will double again by 2022. Many Republicans, who are seeking to regain control of Congress in the next midterm elections, have voiced concerns about supporting continued assistance, citing costs or because the measures don’t do enough to incentivize work. But advocates say the idea of a long-standing safety net has now entered the conversation, and there are a number of small models of success across the country and over time that lawmakers can draw from when considering solutions.

How the U.S. has attempted to address poverty

For years, the United States has maintained a stubbornly high rate of child poverty compared to other developed countries, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development reported in November 2019 . Traditionally, Americans have bristled at giving taxpayer money to alleviate poverty, especially if that means the government will assume a greater role in people’s daily lives. But not making a serious investment in solving the problem comes with major costs.

Lack of a political will has obstructed greater progress on child poverty are cold and straightforward, said Cara Baldari, vice president, family economics, housing and homelessness at First Focus on Children, a child advocacy organization. “Kids can’t vote,” she said. That has helped perpetuate a trend in the U.S. where children are more likely than adults to live in poverty because a child’s fortune matches that of the grown-up who cares for them.

Child poverty affects an estimated 9.6 million children and costs the U.S. as much as $1.1 trillion each year, according to a 2019 report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine . Studies suggest children accumulate these costs over the course of a lifetime due to worse health outcomes that end up adding up to expensive treatment and lost productivity in the job market. Children who grow up in poverty are more likely to report lower incomes, worse health outcomes and less likely to experience social and emotional turmoil.

In the 2016 National Survey on Children’s Health, parents reported that 25.5 percent of children have experienced economic hardship “somewhat” or “very often.” By that measure, poverty is the most common adverse childhood experience in the United States — more common than divorce or separation of parents or living with someone struggling with alcohol or substance use. These events offer a heightened risk of trauma that can have potentially lasting effects on a child’s physical, mental and emotional health, according to Child Trends , a research organization focused on studying child development and well-being.

Other countries have made explicit moves in recent years to tackle those kinds of issues. In 2019, Canada’s Poverty Reduction Act became law , part of a $22 billion package to create poverty reduction targets and funnel resources toward programs that can help meet the social and economic need. The country is on track to reduce child poverty by half, according to the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine. New Zealand has also released intermediate and long-term targets designed to cut child poverty dramatically within a decade. In both countries, people receive direct monthly payments to give families a cushion against poverty.

The U.S. hasn’t yet gotten that far, instead operating multiple policies entangled in a way that sometimes pits them against one another. To stem hunger, the federal government funds Supplement Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP benefits. To help working families, the Earned Income Tax Credit refunds money to individuals based on what was earned and household need. And those who qualify to receive Temporary Assistance for Needy Families are often flagged to receive job training or help securing employment. But families often bump up against income thresholds, earning too little to live comfortably but too much to receive government benefits. Younger, 49, has been caring for Mylie Jai for five years, ever since she offered help to a friend who had just given birth and was hopping between rundown motels in Jackson, Mississippi, without a stable home, car or job. Mylie Jai is now in preschool, and Younger is her official legal guardian. Younger was told she earns too much money to qualify for SNAP benefits, she said.

The Mississippi Department of Human Services normally covers the cost of Mylie Jai’s school, but in late February, the building was shut down after pipes burst in a historic snowfall and ice storm. Younger was forced to instead send Mylie Jae to a small daycare operated by a friend, but the state’s vouchers got caught in bureaucratic red tape, so she said she had to come up with $90 per week out of pocket.

Medicaid covers Mylie Jai’s doctor visits, Younger said, but she herself visits a community health center if she gets sick and cannot afford health insurance, despite being a health care worker.

Arlean Younger, 49, of Jackson, Mississippi, works full-time (and often logging extra hours) for a company that hires home health aides. But she struggles to make ends meet for herself and Mylie Jai, 5, for whom she is the legal guardian. Photos courtesy of Arlean Younger

Those ill-fitting pieces are problematic, said Beryl Levinger, a child policy expert and professor at Middlebury Institute, and policymakers need to take a more holistic approach, rather than hunt for a silver bullet that doesn’t exist.

Levinger also served as a researcher on a new report from child advocacy group Save the Children that used data to analyze which states offered kids the best and worst COVID-19 responses . Minnesota, Utah and Washington state ranked highest while Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas were among the lowest. This latest report suggested 6 million more children endured hunger during the pandemic, and a quarter of children lacked resources for remote learning, which made completing school work virtually impossible for many families. The report urged states to protect child care, which has unraveled during the pandemic, and address child hunger through SNAP and other federal programs.

“This problem will not end even when the last of the vaccine is distributed,” the report said. “The additional benefits and supports for these children and families will need to be made permanent until all children have access to the food they need.”

The debate over cash payments

Created as part of the Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997, the child tax credit offered a $500-per-child nonrefundable credit to ease the tax burden of middle-income households. Since then, it has become more tightly woven into the U.S. social safety net over time, said Elaine Maag, who studies programs for low-income families and children for the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center at the Urban Institute. Decades later, she said the policy has evolved and holds the potential to become a permanent fixture to help families.

But government programs, no matter how well designed or executed to fit a certain set of circumstances, often miss the mark, Maag said, because life is messy. She pointed to SNAP benefits as an example. With them, a person may have food, but if they get sick, do they have money to pay for a doctor’s visit or to fill a drug prescription? A mountain of research that suggests direct cash payments are the most effective way to alleviate poverty and documents a “growing understanding that people know how to solve their problems the best way,” Maag said. “Cash can be used to meet all your needs.”

Of all of the provisions in the latest relief bill, the $1,400 cash payments have the most potential to reduce poverty, according to the Urban Institute’s analysis. In recent years, there has been growing discussion of using a universal income to alleviate poverty, but it is not politically popular. Democratic presidential candidate and philanthropist Andrew Yang campaigned on this idea, but just a fraction of Democrats supported it, much less the country overall. In a July 2019 poll from PBS NewsHour, NPR and Marist , only 26 percent of Americans said they supported giving each U.S. adult $1,000 per month, a proposal that was more popular among Democrats than Republicans.

Despite robust evidence supporting the use of direct payments, Americans historically do not like to give people tax-payer dollars unless society deems them to be deserving, Maag said. Since the Great Depression, older adults, people with disabilities or some survivors of people who die have received cash benefits. But distributing cash payments to families or other more specific groups is an easier political sales pitch than to do so for all able-bodied adults, Maag said.

So for generations, the U.S. has pursued anti-poverty policies that are very specific about how people spend their resources, said Aisha Nyandoro, chief executive of Springboard to Opportunities, a direct service organization. “Why not try something different?”

That is what Nyandoro’s organization did in 2018 when it founded the Magnolia Mother’s Trust. The project gave $1,000 per month for 12 months to Black mothers living in extreme poverty in Jackson, Mississippi. The goal was to target systemic problems by empowering women with cash payments so they could decide how to improve their lives. The project has grown from helping 20 women to more than 200. During that time, Nyandoro said she has witnessed women pay off debt, return to school, cook more nutritious meals for their families and become better parents.

Tamara Ware was one of those women. In late February 2020, she had to leave her job at a child care facility, afraid she might bring the coronavirus home to her three daughters, ages 13, 14 and 17, who were struggling in school even before the virus forced classrooms to close and instruction to go virtual. She had been earning $11 per hour and had no savings to pay for food or housing.

When the COVID-19 pandemic forced Tamara Ware, 36, of Jackson, Mississippi, out of her job at a child care facility, Ware said she did not know how she could afford to raise her three daughters, age 13, 14 and 17. But when she received $1,000 per month for a year from the Magnolia Mother’s Trust, Ware said she could focus on being a more patient, present and understanding parent. For the first time in years, she threw a birthday party for her daughter, Erianna, in July. Photos courtesy of Tamara Ware

Within weeks, Ware was accepted into the trust. She found tutoring help for her daughters and counselors for them to address trauma they had endured, including the grief and loss of Ware’s twin sister, who had been shot and killed eight years earlier. She threw a party to celebrate her daughters’ birthdays, something she hadn’t been able to afford to do in years. She became a more patient and understanding mother, she said, and developed a deep sense of community with other mothers who worked to overcome struggles that had ensnared them for years.

“I could be in the moment,” Ware said. “Look, I ain’t gotta worry about nothing this month.”

She graduated from the program last month, and it gave her a chance to build her own business as a child care provider.

“My head is in the right direction,” Ware said. “I have the tools I need now.”

Many women in the program report feelings of joy, Nyandoro said. Often, that is because they struggled to survive. With a guaranteed income in place, the women’s focus could broaden beyond meeting basic needs and tapping to what they actually wanted in life.

“If you have lived a life of scarcity so often, joy is something you feel like you haven’t been allowed either. You’re constantly trying to survive,” she said. “You tell yourself dreams are something for other people.”

What works?

After the implementation of the “Great Society” programs in the 1960s, such as Medicaid and federal funding for education, the U.S. saw its child poverty rate cut in half. If successful, advocates say the American Rescue Plan could help bring the U.S. and other countries closer to a global goal set in motion by the United Nations (long before COVID-19) to end extreme child poverty by 2030 and cut child poverty rates in half worldwide.

Researchers behind a pilot universal income program that gave participants in Stockton, California, $500 a month released data that showed a 12 percent increase in full-time employment after one year, and 62 percent reported paying off debt, a 10 percent increase from before the program began.

The biggest spending category was food, their research showed, followed by merchandise, utilities and auto costs, which all have an impact on someone’s ability to get and keep a job, researchers said.

More than 40 mayors across the country who are part of a Mayors for Guaranteed Income initiative are launching similar programs.

“COVID-19 has made it very, very clear that you could play by all the rules, that you could be working, and that still may not be enough,” Michael Tubbs, the mayor of Stockton, told the PBS NewsHour in December.

Some economists reviewing Stockton’s pilot have also pointed out the complicated questions that arise around deciding who is eligible for these kinds of programs and how to reach them. Certain requirements may unintentionally cut out people who need help most, in favor of people who don’t have as much need. And cash can only go so far in solving structural issues like access to health care and education.

During the pandemic, fighting poverty has drawn some bipartisan support. Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, proposed the $254 billion Family Security Act to replace some existing programs with a monthly child allowance — $350 for each young child and $250 for every school-aged child. But the cost of this program would mean making choices about discontinuing others, and some experts have raised concerns about the possible unintended consequences of replacing programs, such as TANF, that have been used to connect families to other services. That could lead to families falling through the cracks and needs going unmet.

But some critics say these programs don’t go far enough to incentivize work as a way to alleviate poverty. Robert Rector, a welfare policy expert for the conservative Heritage Foundation, said he doesn’t think the pandemic justifies the child poverty policies passed into law. Instead, he said, the U.S. already has “a very large welfare state,” adding that roughly $500 billion he said is currently devoted to poverty-alleviation programs should be “more efficient” and “targeted to be more supportive of work.”

READ MORE: How the economic relief law narrows the equity gap for farmers of color

The policies targeting child poverty in the American Rescue Plan represent “an enormous expansion of the welfare state” and are only exceeded by the Affordable Care Act, Rector said.

“You want to be compassionate to be people who need assistance, but you don’t want free handouts where an individual can take advantage of the charity extended to them,” he said.

In the 2019 report, researchers suggested expanding benefits to target food and housing insecurity, along with the earned income tax credit and the child tax credit, and creating a child allowance, as Romney’ proposed, which the study found would have the biggest impact on low-income households. Families who claim children as dependents could receive these funds as deposits from the Social Security Administration or even the Internal Revenue Service, according to proposals currently before policymakers. They predicted that those measures could stabilize families in need and reduce child poverty by almost half in the U.S. On a basic level, putting targets in place would help policymakers see if programs like these are making a difference in reducing child poverty, such as how many children and households receive SNAP benefits or if the Census Bureau develops a more accurate measure of poverty based on who actually gets benefits or has health care coverage due to household income.

Rep. Danny Davis, D-Ill., said he sees increased interest in alleviating child poverty as “investing in the future of our country.” While U.S. politics are still intensely polarized, people can still rally behind children, added Davis, who authored the Child Poverty Reduction Act.

“We are at a tremendous crossroads right now in the future of our country, and so, this will help to move America forward and not move America backwards,” Davis said.

That includes people like Younger. She said she feels one major setback away from economic catastrophe, and doesn’t know how long she can keep herself and Mylie Jai afloat.

“Any help at the time of need we’re in right now, I’m thankful for,” Younger said.

She doesn’t allow Mylie Jai to attend birthday parties because she is afraid she might get sick. Her daughter plays with baby dolls and imaginary friends, and loves to play in the park.

For Younger, having a little more money could release her from being pinned down into survival mode each day. She could focus more fully on the moments she spends with Mylie Jai and be empowered to help her secure a better future.

“What would help me is to make sure the little girl I take care of every day grows up to be a prosperous adult,” Younger said.

Laura Santhanam is the Health Reporter and Coordinating Producer for Polling for the PBS NewsHour, where she has also worked as the Data Producer. Follow @LauraSanthanam

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• Journal of Economic Literature
• Fighting Poverty One Experiment at a Time: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty: Review Essay

Fighting Poverty One Experiment at a Time: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty : Review Essay

• Martin Ravallion
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• P36 Socialist Institutions and Their Transitions: Consumer Economics; Health; Education and Training: Welfare, Income, Wealth, and Poverty

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The transformative power of education in the fight against poverty

October 16, 2023.

Zubair Junjunia, a Generation17 young leader and the Founder of ZNotes, presents at EdTechX.

Zubair Junjunia

Generation17 Young Leader and founder of ZNotes

Time and again, research has proven the incredible power of education to break poverty cycles and economically empower individuals from the most marginalized communities with dignified work and upward social mobility. 

Research at UNESCO has shown that world poverty would be more than halved if all adults completed secondary school. And if all students in low-income countries had just basic reading skills, almost 171 million people could escape extreme poverty. 

With such irrefutable evidence, how do we continue to see education underfunded globally? Funding for education as a share of national income has not changed significantly over the last decade for any developing country. And to exacerbate that, the COVID-19 shock pushed the level of learning poverty to an estimated 70 percent .

I have devoted the past decade of my life to fighting educational inequality, a journey that began during my school years. This commitment led to the creation of ZNotes , an educational platform developed for students, by students. ZNotes was born out of the problem I witnessed first-hand; the inequities in end-of-school examination, which significantly influence access to higher education and career opportunities. It is designed as a platform where students can share their notes and access top-quality educational materials without any limitations. ZNotes fosters collaborative learning through student-created content within a global community and levels the academic playing field with a student-empowered and technology-enabled approach to content creation and peer learning. 

Although I started ZNotes as a solo project, today, it has touched the lives of over 4.5 million students worldwide, receiving an impressive 32 million hits from students across more than 190 countries, especially serving students from emerging economies. We’re proud to say that today, more than 90 percent of students find ZNotes resources useful and feel more confident entering exams , regardless of their socio-economic background. These globally recognized qualifications empower our learners to access tertiary education and enter the world of work.

Sixteen-year-old Zubair set up a blog to share the resources he created for his IGCSE exams. Through word of mouth, his revision notes were discovered by students all over the world and ZNotes was born.

In rapidly changing job market, young people must cultivate resilience and adaptability. World Economic Forum highlights the importance of future skills, encompassing technical, cognitive, and interpersonal abilities. Unfortunately, many educational systems, especially in under-resourced regions, fall short in equipping youth with these vital skills.

To address this challenge, I see innovative technology as a crucial tool both within and beyond traditional school systems. As the digital divide narrows and access to devices and internet connectivity becomes more affordable, delivering quality education and personalized support is increasingly achievable through technology. At ZNotes, we are reshaping the role of students, transforming them from passive consumers to active creators and proponents of education. Empowering youth through a community-driven approach, students engage in peer learning and generate quality resources on an online platform.

Participation in a global learning community enhances young people's communication and collaboration skills. ZNotes fosters a sense of global citizenship, enabling learners to communicate with a diverse range of individuals across race, gender, and religion. Such spaces also result in redistributing social capital as students share advice for future university, internship and career pathways.

“Studying for 14 IGCSE subjects wasn't easy, but ZNotes helped me provide excellent and relevant revision material for all of them. I ended up with 7 A* 7 A, and ZNotes played a huge role. I am off to Cornell University this fall now. A big thank you to the ZNotes team!"

Alongside ensuring our beneficiaries are equipped with the resources and support they need to be at a level playing field for such high stakes exams, we also consider the skills that will set them up for success in life beyond academics. Especially for the hundreds of young people who join our internship and contribution programs , they become part of a global social impact startup and develop both academic skills and also employability skills. After engaging with our internship programs, 77% of interns reported improved candidacy for new jobs and internships. 

ZNotes addresses the uneven playing field of standardized testing with a student-empowered and technology-enabled approach for content creation and peer learning.

A few years ago, Jess joined our team as a Social Impact Analyst intern having just completed her university degree while she continued to search for a full-time role. She was able to apply her data analytics skills from a theoretical degree into a real-world scenario and was empowered to play an instrumental role in understanding and developing a Theory of Change model for ZNotes. In just 6 months, she had been able to develop the skills and gain experiences that strengthened her profile. At the end of internship, she was offered a full-time role at a major news and media agency that she is continuing to grow in!

Jess’s example applies to almost every one of our interns . As another one of them, Alexa, said “ZNotes offers the rare and wonderful opportunity to be at the center of meaningful change”.

Being part of an organization making a significant impact is profoundly inspiring and empowering for young people, and assuming high-responsibility roles within such organizations accelerates their skills development and sets them apart in the eyes of prospective employers.

On the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty, it is a critical moment to reflect and enact on the opportunity that we have to achieving two key SDGs, Goal 1 and 4, by effectively funding and enabling access to quality education globally.

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Ending Poverty Through Education: The Challenge of Education for All

About the author, koïchiro matsuura.

From Vol. XLIV, No. 4, "The MDGs: Are We on Track?",  December 2007

T he world made a determined statement when it adopted the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in 2000. These goals represent a common vision for dramatically reducing poverty by 2015 and provide clear objectives for significant improvement in the quality of people's lives. Learning and education are at the heart of all development and, consequently, of this global agenda. MDG 2 aims to ensure that children everywhere -- boys and girls -- will be able to complete a full course of good quality primary schooling. MDG 3 targets to eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary education, preferably by 2005, and at all levels by 2015. Indeed, learning is implicit in all the MDGs: improving maternal health, reducing child mortality and combating HIV/AIDS simply cannot be achieved without empowering individuals with knowledge and skills to better their lives. In addition, MDG 8 calls for "more generous official development assistance for countries committed to poverty reduction". The MDGs on education echo the Education for All (EFA) goals, also adopted in 2000. However, the EFA agenda is much broader, encompassing not only universal primary education and gender equality, but also early childhood education, quality lifelong learning and literacy. This holistic approach is vital to ensuring full enjoyment of the human right to education and achieving sustainable and equitable development. What progress have we made towards universal primary education? The EFA Global Monitoring Report 2008 -- Education for All by 2015: Will we make it? -- presents an overall assessment of progress at the halfway point between 2000 and 2015. There is much encouraging news, including: • Between 1999 and 2005, the number of children entering primary school for the first time grew by 4 per cent, from 130 million to 135 million, with a jump of 36 per cent in sub-Saharan Africa -- a major achievement, given the strong demographic growth in the region. • Overall participation in primary schooling worldwide grew by 6.4 per cent, with the fastest growth in the two regions farthest from achieving the goal on education -- sub-Saharan Africa, and South and West Asia. • Looking at the net enrolment ratio, which measures the share of children of primary school age who are enrolled, more than half the countries of North America, Western, Central and Eastern Europe, East Asia and the Pacific, and Latin America and the Caribbean have rates of over 90 per cent. Ratios are lower in the Arab States, Central Asia and South and West Asia, with lows of 33 per cent (Djibouti) and 68 per cent (Pakistan). The challenge is greatest in sub-Saharan Africa, where more than one third of countries have rates below 70 per cent. • The number of children out of school has dropped sharply, from 96 million in 1999 to around 72 million by 2005, with the biggest change in sub-Saharan Africa and South and West Asia, which continue to harbour the largest percentages of children not in school. South and West Asia has the highest share of girls out of school. The MDG on education specifies that both boys and girls should receive a full course of primary schooling. The gender parity goal set for 2005, however, has not been achieved by all. Still, many countries have made significant progress. In South and West Asia, one of the regions with the widest disparities, 93 girls for every 100 boys were in school in 2005 -- up from 82 in 1999. Yet, globally, 122 out of the 181 countries with data had not achieved gender parity in 2005. There is much more to be done, particularly in rural areas and urban slums, but there are strong trends in the right direction. This overall assessment indicates that progress in achieving universal primary education is positive. Countries where enrolments rose sharply generally increased their education spending as a share of gross national product. Public expenditure on education has climbed by over 5 per cent annually in sub-Saharan Africa and South and West Asia. Aid to basic education in low-income countries more than doubled between 2000 and 2004. Progress has been achieved through universal and targeted strategies. Some 14 countries have abolished primary school fees since 2000, a measure that has promoted enrolment of the most disadvantaged children. Several countries have established mechanisms to redistribute funds to poorer regions and target areas that are lagging in terms of access to education, and to offset economic barriers to schooling for poor households. Many countries, including Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, India and Yemen, have introduced specific strategies to encourage girls' schooling, such as community sensitization campaigns, early childhood centres to release girls from caring for their siblings, free uniforms and learning materials. These strategies are working and reflect strong national commitment to achieving universal primary education. Enrolment, however, is only half the story; children need to stay in primary school and complete it. One way of measuring this is the survival rate to the last grade of primary education. Although data are not available for every country, globally the rate of survival to the last grade is 87 per cent. This masks wide regional variations, with medians of over 90 per cent all over the world, except in South and West Asia (79%) and sub-Saharan Africa (63%). Even then, some children drop out in the last grade and never complete primary education, with some countries showing a gap of 20 per cent between those who enter the last grade and those who complete it. One of the principal challenges is to improve the quality of learning and teaching. Cognitive skills, basic competencies and life-skills, as well as positive values and attitudes, are all essential for development at individual, community and national levels. In a world where the acquisition, use and sharing of knowledge are increasingly the key to poverty reduction and social development, the need for quality learning outcomes becomes a necessary essential condition for sharing in the benefits of growing prosperity. What children take away from school, and what youth and adults acquire in non-formal learning programmes, should enable them, as expressed in the four pillars of the 1996 Delors report, Learning: The Treasure Within, to learn to know, to do, to be and to live together. Governments are showing growing concern about the poor quality of education. An increasing number of developing countries are participating in international and regional learning assessments, and conducting their own. Evidence shows that up to 40 per cent of students do not reach minimum achievement standards in language and mathematics. Pupils from more privileged socio-economic backgrounds and those with access to books consistently perform better than those from poorer backgrounds with limited access to reading materials. Clear messages emerge from these studies. In primary education, quality learning depends, first and foremost, on the presence of enough properly trained teachers. But pupil/teacher ratios have increased in sub-Saharan Africa and South and West Asia since 1999. Some 18 million new teachers are needed worldwide to reach universal primary education by 2015. Other factors have a clear influence on learning: a safe and healthy physical environment, including, among others, appropriate sanitation for girls; adequate learning and teaching materials; child-centred curricula; and sufficient hours of instruction (at least 800 hours a year). Initial learning through the mother tongue has a proven impact on literacy acquisition. Transparent and accountable school governance, among others, also affects the overall learning environment. What then are the prospects for achieving universal primary education and gender parity? The EFA Global Monitoring Report 2008 puts countries into two categories depending on their current net enrolment rate: 80 to 96 per cent, and less than 80 per cent. For each category, it then assesses whether current rates of progress are likely to enable each country to reach the goal by 2015. Noting that 63 countries worldwide have already achieved the goal and 54 countries cannot be included in the analysis due to lack of adequate data, the status is as follows: Out of the 95 countries unlikely to achieve gender parity by 2015, 14 will not achieve it in primary education and 52 will not attain it at the secondary level. A further 29 countries will fail to achieve parity in both primary and secondary education. The international community must focus on giving support to those countries that are currently not on track to meet the MDGs and the EFA goals, and to those that are making progress. On current trends, and if pledges are met, bilateral aid to basic education will likely reach $5 billion a year in 2010. This remains well below the $9 billion required to reach universal primary education alone; an additional $2 billion are needed to address the wider context of educational development. Ensuring that adults, particularly mothers, are literate has an impact on whether their children, especially their daughters, attend school. In today's knowledge-intensive societies, 774 million adults are illiterate -- one in four of them women. Early learning and pre-school programmes give children a much better chance to survive and succeed once they enter primary school, but such opportunities are few and far between across most of the developing world, except in Latin America and the Caribbean. Opportunities for quality secondary education and ongoing learning programmes provide motivation for students to achieve the highest possible level of education and view learning as a lifelong endeavour. The goals towards which we are striving are about the fundamental right to education that should enable every child and every adult to develop their potential to the full, so that they contribute actively to societal change and enjoy the benefits of development. The challenge now is to ensure that learning opportunities reach all children, youth and adults, regardless of their background. This requires inclusive policies to reach the most marginalized, vulnerable and disadvantaged populations -- the working children, those with disabilities, indigenous groups, linguistic minorities and populations affected by HIV/AIDS.

Globally, the world has set its sights on sustainable human development, the only prospect for reducing inequalities and improving the quality of life for present and future generations. In this perspective, Governments, donors and international agencies must continue working jointly towards achieving universal primary education and the broader MDG agenda with courage, determination and unswerving commitment. To find out more about the EFA Global Monitoring Report 2008, please visit ( www.efareport.unesco.org ).

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Poverty and the Environment Expository Essay

Poverty and the environment, world poverty, persistence of global poverty, addressing global poverty, benefits of global poverty, reference list.

Poverty exists when one lacks typical socially acceptable things or possessions. People who are in poverty lack basic needs vary from one context to another. The common understanding of basic needs is things necessary for continued existence.

Many people around the globe face the problem of poverty. Poverty links to human population and their activities on the environment. The human population affects the environment negatively due to poverty resulting to environmental degradation and a cycle of poverty.

Poverty and the environment are interlinked as poverty leads to degradation of the environment. On the other hand, the issues of poverty eradication and degradation of the environment are often treated separately hence failure in addressing the issues effectively and reducing poverty around the globe.

Human activities have led to destruction of the environment and the trend shows that there is a bleak future ahead unless the destructive activities on the environment are halted or regulated to avoid destroying the environment further as the future generations are in jeopardy (Ezeonu, 2004).

For instance, people living in poverty destroy natural resources such as forests to clear land to plant food. Consequently, deforestation leads to environment challenges like flooding. Moreover, the high number of human population also causes destruction of the environment when people live on land near rivers and clear tracts of forests to inhabit.

Close to forty per cent of the world’s total population live in poverty according to World Bank estimate in 2004(Whitman, 2008). Explosion in population causes a strain on the environment and pushes millions of people into poverty. Poverty varies from one country to another and poverty in developing countries is dire than in the developed countries.

Poverty depends on class, race and gender. For example, more women than men live in poverty (Kendall, 2009). The poor struggle in their lives as they are disadvantaged in the society and often face prejudice of being lazy.

World poverty is caused by a number of factors such as inequality of resource distribution, wars and conflicts, natural disasters such as earthquakes, flooding and droughts, degradation of the environment and social inequality among others. It is important to note that the levels of world poverty have reduced with global economic growth but many people are still living in poverty.

The reasons for persistence of world poverty are things such as discriminatory trade policies that favor only the developed countries at the international market and exploit the developing nations hence they are unable to make a profit that can be used in fighting poverty (Wade, 2004).

Wars and conflicts that emerge in countries from time to time keep people in poverty for instance the war in Iraq has contributed to high levels of poverty to the citizens. Other factors such as corruption in governments make fighting poverty impossible as a few rich embezzle public funds.

The continued unequal distribution of resources confines people to poverty. Furthermore, those born in poor families are unable to breakaway from the cycle as they do not get opportunities to acquire education and thus grow and live in poverty as their poor parents (Pogge, 2008).

However, world poverty can be addressed by acknowledging that poverty and the environment are connected. Then look for ways of helping people to acquire food without having the need to deforest. If people can access food they are can concentrate on economic activities to improve their situation.

Governments should also deal with corruption because it leads to misuse of funds that would have been used to lift the standards of living of the people.

The international business laws and policies should also change to give all countries a fair opportunity at the international market. More importantly, people should be empowered through training and given access to loans to start small businesses to gain a source of livelihood.

Some countries may favor continued world poverty because it enables them to take advantage of the poor countries that depend on them by exploiting resources in such countries through multinational corporations.

The organizations in such countries that concern themselves with the issue of poverty may never want to see poverty eradicated because they would not have any business and many of their employees would become jobless. The countries may also want poverty to continue so that they can lend loans with high interest to poor nations (Mack, 2009). Thus, world poverty may benefit a few countries.

Ezeonu, I.C. Poverty and the environment: sociologizing environmental protection in sub-Saharan Africa. Review of Black Political Economy , 31(3), 33-42.

Kendall. D. (2010). Social problems in a diverse society . 5 th ed. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.

Mack, E. (2009). Absolute poverty and global justice: empirical data, moral theories, initiatives. New York: Ashgate Publishing Ltd.

Pogge, W.T. (2008). World poverty and human rights: cosmopolitan responsibilities and reforms . United Kingdom: Polity.

Wade, R.H. (2004). On the causes of increasing world poverty and inequality, or why the Matthew effect prevails. New Political Economy, 9 (2), 163-188.

Whitman, S. (2008). World poverty . Infobase Publishing: New York.

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IvyPanda. (2018, May 25). Poverty and the Environment. https://ivypanda.com/essays/poverty/

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• Monopoly in the Unites States of America

7 Ways You Can Help Fight Poverty in Your Community

• CommonBond Communities
• October 5, 2022

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, 7.8 million people have fallen into poverty—the biggest jump in a single year since the government began tracking poverty 60 years ago. It’s easy to think about poverty as a national crisis that is bigger than you, but there are actually lots of things you can do to influence this systemic problem right in your own community. CommonBond works to help fight poverty through housing in Minneapolis, Milwaukee, and Iowa, and we’ve outlined some examples of how you can help fight poverty in your community .

How to Help Poverty Issues in Your Community

1. challenge ideas and assumptions.

Whether you have preconceived notions about poverty within your community, or as a concept in general, it’s important to challenge those assumptions so you aren’t unintentionally spreading harmful biases. One common misconception, for example, is that people experiencing homelessness choose not to work. This misconception is incredibly harmful because it negates the many uncontrollable and systemic conditions that can cause housing instability or poverty. In reality, there are many factors people have to deal with that make it hard to find employment, including loss of affordable housing , inequitable access to training and tools, and mental illness.

If you recognize this myth, be sure to challenge it. Want to go a step further with how to help the poor and fight poverty in your community? Learn about the specific poverty issues your town or city faces; this will educate you on matters and enable you to apply context and critical thinking while pushing back against assumptions and myths.

2. Create awareness/get informed

Poverty is in every community, so it’s important to know where the issues lie within your own. Get informed about the resources that are already available and those that are still needed. There are local groups doing this work that could use your help—you can then do your part in getting the word out and listening to these community experts about where you can be helpful in fighting poverty in your community. A great resource in Minneapolis, for example, is the Twin Cities Mutual Aid Map . This map shows a myriad of organizations and mutual aid efforts around the Twin Cities area that are accepting donations or other resources.

3.  Donate funds and time & find volunteer opportunities

One of the most straightforward ways to help fight poverty in your community is to donate funds to organizations whose mission it is to end these economic disparities. No amount of money is too small or too large. As these donations add up, organizations can put the funds toward fixing housing inequalities, education gaps, food insecurities and more.

Another helpful option is to p artner with local organizations that help the community by donating time. Whether it’s helping out in a food kitchen or working with children after school to get their homework done, there are ways that don’t require money that can still make an impact. We’ve created a volunteer list that you can join to support our work, whether you’re in Minneapolis, Milwaukee, or Iowa.

Fighting Poverty in Your Community is as Simple as Donating a Few Dollars.

Donate Today!      

4. Make kits or fundraise for those experiencing homelessness in your neighborhood

In addition to donating time, you can also reach out to local organizational leaders to see what specifically folks who are experiencing poverty in their communities need. To ensure your donations have the most impact, listen to these community experts. Be sure to donate items that are specifically being asked for, not just what you have in your pantry! Use that info to create meal kits or baskets full of food or house cleaning products that will keep people stocked up on essentials for a while, and give it to local organizations and community experts to distribute.

Another option is to hold fundraisers. How about fighting poverty in your community by throwing a pizza party where the proceeds go to local shelters or other organizations that provide critical services? Get bigger local businesses to donate services for a silent auction. Doing fundraisers like this can be a fun way to bring people together for an important cause.

5. Attend demonstrations or rallies to increase awareness

Another way to create and increase awareness and help fight poverty in your community is to attend events like demonstrations and rallies. These may be block parties or parades or any other kind of peaceful event that will grab the community’s attention and turn it toward fighting against systemic poverty. There are organizations that regularly hold events that both raise awareness, as well as stand in solidarity with those affected by poverty—and by joining their work, you may learn how to be a better advocate.

6. Create jobs

If you own a business or an organization in the community, look for areas you could use some help with. Many people living in poverty may not have had access to higher education or specialty certifications, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have skills to contribute. Identifying areas of opportunities within your business or organization, expanding your recruiting pool, and paying a living wage is one way to make a change to help neighbors living in poverty in your community.

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7. Provide paid leave and paid sick days

If you’re a business owner within your community, offer paid leave and paid sick days. Although it’s an investment for you, taking a day off every now and then without pay can seriously hurt some of your employees, especially if they’re under the poverty line. Your employees are going to get sick from time to time—let them rest easy by offering paid sick leave. For staff who are earning under the area median income, consider offering stipends for childcare, or even consider an on-site childcare option to create an environment where working families don’t have to choose between income and childcare.

CommonBond Can Help

Poverty affects more people than you think, and as you now know, there are many ways to help fight poverty in your community. Serving your community by donating time or money is a valuable way to get involved. Our team at CommonBond wants to help you in your fight, whether you’re in Minneapolis, Milwaukee, or Iowa. Get in touch to learn more about how to help the poor and fight poverty in your community today!

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To Fight Inequality, America Needs to Rethink Its Economic Model

F or decades, economic policy in most liberal democracies has been premised on two core beliefs: that free markets would maximize economic growth, and that we could address inequality through redistribution.

The recent revival of industrial policy, championed by President Biden, is a clear repudiation of the first of these beliefs. It reflects a growing recognition among economists that state intervention to shape markets and steer investment is crucial for fostering innovation, protecting strategically important sectors like semi-conductors, and tackling the climate emergency.

But we must also reassess the second belief—that taxes and transfers alone can address the vast inequalities that have brought American democracy to such a perilous juncture. Doing so will lead us towards a more fundamental rethink of our economic institutions, and the values that guide them.

This is partly a pragmatic response to economic reality. The massive increase in inequality since the 1980s in America was mostly driven not by a reduction in redistribution, but by the growing gap in earnings between low skill workers, whose wages have suffered an unprecedented period of stagnation, and college-educated professionals whose salaries have continued to soar. And while inequality has increased in most advanced economies, that it is so much higher in the U.S. compared to Europe is mostly the result of bigger gaps in earnings than lower levels of redistribution. In other words, even if America were to increase the generosity of the welfare state to European levels it would still be much more unequal.

But the need to look beyond redistribution is about more than economics, it is about resisting the narrow focus on money that dominates most debates about inequality, and the tendency to reduce our interests as citizens to those of consumers. While government transfers are essential for making sure that everyone can meet their basic needs, simply topping up people’s incomes fails to recognize the importance of work as a source of independence, identity, and community, and does nothing to address the insecurity faced by gig-economy workers, or the constant surveillance of employees in Amazon warehouses.

This is not purely a moral issue. According to a recent paper by economists at Columbia and Princeton, the Democratic Party’s shift towards a “compensate the losers ” strategy in the 1970s and 1980s—taxing high earners to fund welfare payments to the poor—played a key role in driving away less educated voters, who disproportionately support “pre-redistributive” policies like higher minimum wages and stronger unions.

Things are moving in the right direction. President Biden has put “good jobs” at the centre of his economic agenda, claiming that “a job is about [a] lot more than a pay cheque. It’s about your dignity. It’s about respect.” Leading economists such as Dani Rodrik at Harvard and Daron Acemoglu at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s have started to challenge the prevailing orthodoxy that such jobs are an inevitable by-product of a well-functioning market economy. This shift of focus towards the production or supply side of the economy has been variously termed “ productivism ”, “ modern supply-side economics ” and “ supply-side progressivism .”

Read More: Why Joe Biden is Running on the Economy

And yet, to grasp the full potential of these ideas we must look beyond economics to philosophy. Contemporary thinkers such as Michael Sandel and Elizabeth Anderson have done much to put questions about work back on the agenda. But for a systematic vision of a just society that recognizes the fundamental importance of work we should revisit the ideas of arguably the 20th-century’s greatest political philosopher, John Rawls—an early advocate for what we would now call “pre-distribution,” who argued that every citizen should have access to good jobs, a fair share of society’s wealth, and a say over how work is organized.

The publication of Rawls’s magnum opus A Theory of Justice in 1971 marks a watershed moment in the history of political thought, drawing favourable comparisons to the likes of John Stuart Mill, Immanuel Kant, even Plato. Rawls’s most famous idea is a thought experiment called the “original position.” If we want to know what a fair society would look like, he argued, we should imagine how we would choose to organize it if we didn’t know what our individual position would be—rich or poor, Black or white, Christian of Muslim— as if behind a “veil of ignorance.”

Our first priority would be to secure a set of “basic liberties,” such as free speech and the right to vote, that are the basis for individual freedom and civic equality.

When it comes to the economy, we would want “fair equality of opportunity,” and we would tolerate a degree of inequality so that people have incentives to work hard and innovate, making society richer overall. But rather than assuming that the benefits would trickle down to those at the bottom, Rawls argued that we would want to organize our economy so that the least well-off would be better off than under any alternative system—a concept he called the “difference principle.”

This principle has often been interpreted as justifying a fairly conventional strategy of taxing the rich and redistributing to the poor. But Rawls explicitly rejected “welfare state capitalism” in favour of what he called a “property-owning democracy.” Rather than simply topping up the incomes of the least well off, society should “put in the hands of citizens generally, and not only of a few, sufficient productive means for them to be fully cooperating members of society.”

Doing so is essential for individual dignity and self-respect, he argued, warning that “Lacking a sense of long-term security and the opportunity for meaningful work and occupation is not only destructive of citizens’ self-respect but of their sense that they are members of society and not simply caught in it. This leads to self-hatred, bitterness, and resentment” – feelings that could threaten the stability of liberal democracy itself. A focus on work is also necessary for maintaining a sense of reciprocity since every able citizen would be expected to contribute to society in return for a fair reward.

Rawls’s philosophy offers the kind of big picture vision that has been missing on the center-left for a generation—a unifying alternative to ‘identity politics’ grounded in the best of America’s political traditions. It also points towards a genuinely transformative economic programme that would address the concerns of long-neglected lower-income voters, not simply for higher incomes but for a chance to contribute to society and to be treated with respect.

At the heart of this vision is the idea that productive resources—both human capital (skills) and ownership of physical capital (like stocks and shares)—should be widely shared. People’s incomes would still depend on their individual effort and good fortune, but wages and profits would be more equal, and there would be less need for redistribution.

How might we bring this about?

First, we would need to ensure equal access to education, irrespective of family background. Sadly, the reality in America today is that children from the richest fifth of households are fivetimes more likely to get a college degree than those from the poorest fifth. Achieving true equality of opportunity is a generational challenge, but the direction should be towards universal early years education, school funding based on need rather than local wealth, and a higher education system where tuition subsidies and publicly-funded income-contingent loans guarantee access to all.

We also need to shift focus towards the more than half of the population who don’t get a four-year college degree. Our obsession with academic higher education—justified in part on the basis that this will generate growth, which in turn will benefit non-graduates—is simply the educational equivalent of trickle-down economics. At the very least, public subsidies should be made available on equal terms for those who want to follow a vocational route, as the U.K. is doing through the introduction of a Lifelong Learning Entitlement from 2025, providing every individual with financial support for four years of post-18 education, covering both long and short courses, and vocational and academic subjects.

Second, we must address the vastly unequal distribution of wealth . Thewealthiest 10 % of Americans have around 70 % of all personal wealth compared to roughly 2% the entire bottom half. Sensible policies like guaranteed minimum interest rates for small savers and tax breaks to encourage employee share ownership would encourage middle-class savings. But to shift the dial on wealth inequality we should be open to something more radical, like a universal minimum inheritance paid to each citizen at the age of eighteen, funded through progressive taxes on inheritance and wealth. If developments in AI push more income towards the owners of capital, something like this will become necessary.

Finally, we need to give workers real power to shape how companies are run. The idea that owners, or shareholders, should make these decisions is often treated as an immutable fact of economic life. But this “shareholder primacy” is neither natural nor inevitable about, and in most European countries employees have the right to elect representatives to company boards and to ‘works councils’ with a say over working conditions. This system of ‘co-management’ allows owners and worker to strike a balance between pursuing profit and all the other things we want from work – security, dignity, a sense of achievement, community – in a way that makes sense for a particular firm. The benefits of co-management appear to come at little or no cost in terms of profits or competitiveness, are popular with managers, and may even increase  business investment and productivity.

Critics will no doubt denounce these ideas as “socialism.” But as we have seen, they have impeccable liberal credentials, and are perfectly compatible with the dynamic market economy that is so vital both for individual freedom and economic prosperity. Neither are they somehow “un-American.” As Elizabeth Anderson has reminded us , America was the great hope of free market egalitarians from Adam Smith through to Abraham Lincoln, whose dreams of a society of small-scale independent producers were dashed by the industrial revolution, and would have been horrified by the hierarchy and subservience of contemporary capitalism. Rawls’s ideal of property-owning democracy can help us revive this vision for the 21 st century.

Still, even sympathetic readers might wonder whether there is any point talking about a new economic paradigm when the U.S. has failed even to raise the Federal minimum wage since 2009. But this would be to ignore the lessons of history. As the neoliberal era comes to an end, we should learn from its leading architects Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek, who were nothing if not bold, and saw their ideas go from heresy to orthodoxy in a single generation. As Friedman put it “Only a crisis — actual or perceived — produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around."

It often takes a generation or two before the ideas of truly great thinkers start to shape real politics. Now, for the first time since the publication of  A Theory of Justice  just over half a century ago, there is an urgent need and appetite for systematic political thinking on a scale that only a philosopher like Rawls can provide. In the face of widespread cynicism, even despair about the American project, his ideas offer a hopeful vision of the future whose time has come.

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The Philippines Can Overcome Poverty

Opening Remarks by  Mara K. Warwick,  Country Director for Brunei, Malaysia, Philippines and Thailand

at the launch of  Making Growth Work for the Poor: A Poverty Assessment for the Philippines

As Prepared for Delivery

I am pleased to welcome you to today’s media briefing on the Philippines Poverty Assessment report, entitled “ Making Growth Work for the Poor: A Poverty Assessment for the Philippines .”

The Report has two important stories to tell. The first story is inspiring. And gives everyone hope: The Philippines can overcome poverty!

The reason for this optimism is that from 2006 to 2015, robust economic growth helped the poverty rate in the Philippines to fall by 5 percentage points. Hence, poverty declined from 26.6 percent in 2006 to 21.6 percent in 2015. The contributing factors for this decline in poverty were the expansion of jobs outside agriculture, government transfers, in particular to qualified poor families through the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program, and remittances.

School enrollment has notably increased in recent years, with universal and mandatory kindergarten as well as two years of senior high school added to the education cycles. Pro-poor policies and changes to health insurance coverage have resulted in increased use of health services. Access to clean water and sanitation and electricity has improved. Social safety nets were expanded to cover most of the poor.

All these developments give us hope that poverty can be overcome. It is not at all insurmountable.

But here is the second story, an equally important one: The Philippines needs to do more to end poverty. 

While poverty has declined, there are still about 22 million poor Filipinos, as of 2015. These poor families most often live in rural areas with limited access to quality schools, health centers, and safe drinking water, not to mention, roads and transportation that will help them go to their jobs or bring their produce to market.

Some poor families live in areas scarred by conflict or prone to natural disasters. Conflict can force families to move far away from their homes. Disasters can knock down families that are struggling to climb the economic ladder.

Poor families are most often trapped in a vicious cycle of poverty. They usually have many children, an average of 5 per family. Pregnant mothers face high risk: every day, 5 Filipina women die in childbirth or due to other causes related to pregnancy.

In a poor family of 5 children, 2 will likely be stunted, a visible sign of malnutrition. Children who remain malnourished in the first 1000 days of their lives do not fully develop the neural connections in their brains, making them unable to reach their full potential, even as adults.  

Just half the children in the poor households will enroll in lower secondary school. Even those who do enroll may learn little due to malnourishment and poor quality of instruction. As a result, when they grow up, their chances of getting a well-paying job are slim.

So the Philippines has experienced success in reducing poverty. But there are  remaining challenges, What can we all do together to end poverty?

How can we unlock this trap and make growth work for the poor?  How can one family break from the path of poverty so the future generations have a better life than their parents or grandparents?

I want to highlight a few particular points.

The number one priority is creating more and better jobs, to offer opportunity for the poor to lift themselves out of poverty.

Since two out of five of the country’s poor are in Mindanao, unlocking Mindanao’s potential is critical in bringing down poverty in the entire country.

In addition, tackling the country’s severe stunting crisis will require an all hands-on-deck effort, starting with maternal health and focusing health interventions on the “first 1000 days” of life.

And creating opportunities for children means also ensuring that the poor attend school and that the schools they attend foster learning.

Many of these policy suggestions align well with the Government’s long-term vision -- the AmBisyon 2040 and the Philippine Development Plan 2017–2022 , which aims to transform the country into a prosperous middle-class society.

In closing, I would like to repeat the message:  With solid economic fundamentals, the Philippines can overcome poverty.  It is important to break the cycle of inequitable investment in human capital, making the pattern of growth more inclusive and creating opportunities for more and better jobs.

The World Bank believes that, together, with various stakeholders, we can take concrete actions to end poverty in the Philippines.

Before I close, let me add one remark. The Poverty Assessment is an analytical report – we have delved into the data and information that’s available on poverty to come up with an up-to-date and sound analytical basis for policy making. It is a foundational piece and more work will be done by us and others to really take the recommendations and to work in more detail on how to do that -- what needs to change in the Philippines in order to address the problems in a more focused way and how to carry these  forward. Our team will also explain during the Q and A session that there will also be other follow up work by the World Bank, by government, and others to take these recommendations to the policy realm.

Thank you very much and may we all have a very fruitful discussion today.

Maraming Salamat Po! [Thank you very much!]

In Manila: David Llorito, +63-465-2514, [email protected]

Home / Essay Samples / Social Issues / Homelessness / Fighting Poverty in the Philippines: Challenges and Solutions

Fighting Poverty in the Philippines: Challenges and Solutions

• Category: Social Issues , World , Government
• Topic: Homelessness , Philippines , Unemployment

Pages: 3 (1462 words)

Views: 1085

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Introduction

Fighting poverty in the philippines, reducing poverty, ambisyon natin 2040.

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