Can Poverty Really be Eradicated?
by Almost half of the world, and that is around three billion people, make out life on $2.50 a day, and one-third of those or one billion people subsist on $1.00 a day, according to data from the World Bank. These statistics on the number of people in poverty are not confined in third world countries only but include the rich countries such as the United States and the UK.
Poverty is everywhere, not only in developing countries. There is poverty in America and Europe as well as in India, China and Bangladesh, only that the numbers, the levels and the incidences are different. In the United States, there are 42.9 million people (equivalent to 14.3% of population) living below the relative poverty line. In the United Kingdom, there are 13.4 million (about 22% of the population) living on what they refer to as relative poverty (equivalent to 60% of the median UK income).
In India, there are 456 million; in China, there are 600 million; in Bangladesh, there are 56 million. And everywhere else, there is a poverty story being depicted and narrated in varying intensities. Data were culled from the World Fact Book.
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Come to think about it: It would not be surprising for poor countries, otherwise called the “third world” and now the developing, to have poor people because they are poor countries. What is surprising is to find that such rich countries as the US and the UK also and still have people in poverty in their midst.
To understand why this is so is to understand why poverty came about. Poverty is not an invention of the modern age, although it can be argued that humanity started with just two people and there are now more than 6 billion people sharing the earth’s bounties.
Economically, the world is divided into two: the poor and the not poor. The not poor people comprise the rich in a progressive degree from the absolute poverty line peaking up at the richest people in the world. The poor comprise the poor in a descending degree of lack of resources beginning at the poverty level. The poverty level used by the United Nations was $1.00 a day which was adjusted to $1.25 a day in 2008.
How did poverty start? It began when people began to appropriate land and land use for themselves and their families, either by force or sheer number, employing and invoking the survival of the fittest rule. This led to the emergence of the mighty and the weak, the conqueror and the vanquished, the leader and the led. And eventually, this dichotomy was exhibited in possessions owned by each group.
In the modern sense, aside from the division by military might, countries and people are classified as rich or poor.
It is said that this structural division was brought forth by the people themselves, that poverty would not result if it was not tolerated, that the rich are rich because they deserve the products of their toil and creativity, and that this toiling and creative use are equally available to the poor but the poor preferred to be where their present comforts are.
Half of the world in poverty is a problem that cannot be solved in an instant. There are only two ways the two ends can be drawn closer to close the gap in between: the poor must rise up from their stupor and the rich must reach down for their hands.
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