MARCH 11, 2015

MAX BENGTSSON

Poverty The
Fight to Help
THIS BOOK HAS A
VARIETY OF REASONS
THAT YOU CAN FIGHT
POVERTY.

INTERNATIONAL
POVERTY
POVERTY AREAS

POVERTY IN AMERICA
POVERTY RIGHT NEXT
TO US

CAUSE AND EFFECT

OF POVERTY
HOW AND WHO

POVERTY

Introduction
1.3 billion people are in poverty. That is close to 20% of the
world population. How would you feel if you lived in poverty on less
than $1.25. You don't have enough money to pay for school if you have
kids. You do not have a place to call home. Think that 22,000 people
die everyday from poverty and one of them as your child.

!1

Poverty: the state

of being extremely
poor. Money
represents what
people in poverty
need

MARCH 11, 2015

MAX BENGTSSON

Table of Contents
I. Introduction
II. International Areas Where Poverty is Common
III. Poverty in America
IV. What Are The Causes for Poverty
V. What Are The Effects of Poverty
VI. What Are Other Problems With Poverty
VII. Why Help?
VIII. How You Can Help poverty
IX. Conclusion

!2

MARCH 11, 2015

MAX BENGTSSON

International Areas
Where Poverty is
Common

Countries and
Continents

Poverty is common in many areas around the world.

These areas are usually not in major cities but in outskirt
areas and in the middle of nowhere. Most of these areas are
in third world countries (the group of developing
nations, especially of Asia and Africa, that do not align
themselves with the policies of either the U.S. or the former
Soviet Union).
In third world countries the standard of living is not
very high, so poverty in the whole country is very common.
Since the standard is very low in these countries almost all of
the population has poverty. 57% of all people living in South
Africa is below the poverty line and the people that are above
the poverty line don't exactly have a lot of money. Areas that
generally don't have a lot of money must have more people
in poverty because the average amount of money is lower. In
Asia 33% is below the poverty line. Asia has a very large
population so 33% is an incredible amount of total people. a
total of 346 million people in poverty according to the
Economist. That is 34 million more than the whole
population of the U.S. by comparison to Asia you have
Sweden with a population of nine million. If you multiply the
Swedish population by three and add the U.S. population on
you would be one million people short of the population of
Asia in poverty. And Asia making up 12% of the world
population is very very large. Do some math and you would
figure out that then 4% of the world is in poverty just from
Asia. With the world having a total of 18% of the worlds
population being in poverty. This means that Asia's
population makes up about 25% of all of the poverty
population. Then we have Africa with a 630 million people in
poverty that makes up for 48% of all poverty being in Africa.
Those two nations combined make up for almost 75% of all
poverty. Just these two areas make up 75% of all poverty and
they are both third world countries.

!3

As you can see above this

caption there is Africa,
Asia and the United
States. These are the three
countries that I mention in
this chapter. These
counties and continents
are not all International
because I use the United
States as a comparison.

MARCH 11, 2015

MAX BENGTSSON

Poverty in America
Even though there is a lot of poverty in the rest of the world there is still plenty of poverty in
the U.S. There is a lot of poverty in America. In the U.S there are many areas where poverty is
common. I will touch upon the three ideas in this chapter; what does poverty mean in America,
Where poverty mostly occurs and lastly why these areas occur.
The American definition of poverty is; the state or condition of having little or no money,
goods, or means of support; condition of being poor. In America living on less than $1.25 a day is
considered poverty. That is only $456.25 a year. $456.25 is about the same as one iPad. The
minimum paying wage (the minimum that someone can pay you per hour) in the U.S. is $7.25.
So every single person in poverty in the U.S. cant have a job. And since they dont have a lot of
money they cant afford a house therefore they are also homeless. Plus you cant get almost no food.
If you are living under $1.25 per day there is almost nothing for you to buy.
In America you can find poverty in different areas one of which is in outskirts of cities. For
example in Chicago on the south side nearly 60% of the people live in poverty. Since you need to be
smart and have a good job to earn money in the U.S. because it is a very developed country since in
it is hard to make a lot of money because if you can't help a company then you won't make any
money because nobody would like to pay you for something that you're not good at. In New York
21% of everyone who lives there is below the poverty line. That is 1.7 million people. That is one of
the major cities in the U.S. But even there in the outskirts there is a lot of poverty.
Some other areas where poverty is common is in places where you have never heard of. Places
where there are no major cities. Even though I am pointing out very specific examples poverty can
be anywhere. There is not one specific area that only has poverty but these are the areas where
poverty is the most common. These areas are the areas in the middle of nowhere. These areas are
somewhere that you will probably never go on vacation to. I will talk upon why the poorest city in
the U.S. is so poor.
the is a interesting place because some cities are incredible and some people in the North
Shore have unimaginably huge houses on the lake. But in some other areas people are starving and
dying. In 2000 875,000 people died due to poverty that was 36% of the whole population. So this is
a problem that needs to fixed and I think we should start out with Brownsville-Harlingen,TX. Here
the average income is $31,736 which may sound a lot but the U.S. standard is about 60,000. They
also have 36.3% of their 408,054 citizens in poverty which is 146,899 people in poverty. And 12.5%
is unemployed. Here 53% dont even graduate high school which is very important and I will talk
about that in the causes for poverty chapter.

!4

MARCH 11, 2015

MAX BENGTSSON

This is to show a
visual for the
experiment that was
conducted.

Here you can see that

the average I.Q.
score is 100 hundred
and losing 13 I.Q. is
more than 1/10 of it.

Causes of Poverty
There is a wide variety in causes of poverty. Some of these causes are very different.
You can't always blame the people. Because you don't know what happened to them and you
don't know what their cause is. There are many reasons why they could be where they are.A
few reasons why someone could be in poverty for is: for being lazy and making bad decisions
in their life, other people are just born into poverty, also people are affected by poverty
because of war.
The first way that causes poverty is by being lazy or making bad decisions. This is
what your first reaction might be they just did by themselves even though some scenarios are
very different but sometimes that is the case. Making bad decisions could like dropping out
of high school which wont give you a good education. In that case a job most likely wont
hire you if it is a well paying job which would allow you to avoid poverty because they want
people that are smart and have learned a lot in school. You could also have been lazy and not
studied for tests and not done your homework which would have had an effect which would
have been that you wouldn't have gotten good enough grades which would also lead to a
difficulty in finding a job. Why this bad decision making happens is because when you enter
poverty you receive a mental burden (that which is carried; load) which is similar to losing
13 IQ points. These people are no longer capable of thinking in the long run like a marathon
but they think of life as a sprint and that it doesn't matter what they do they will alway be
poor. They feel like when they have money in their hand they have to use it and not save up.
That should mean that giving them money should give them more confidence and maybe
save up. But with a experiment where they found a man in poverty as well as homeless. They
gave him $100,000 to see what he would do with it. This man was found in the same place a
year later with no money back to the way he started. This shows that once you have entered
a poverty mindset it is very difficult to switch that around and go back to being possible and
to think that you can turn this around.
Sometimes people are simply born into poverty which is another way that one more
person enters poverty. When some people think of poverty you may think of a homeless
person by themselves but actually 20% or 19.9% of everyone in poverty are children. So every
fifth person is just born into poverty. Raising children in poverty can have many risks that
are very dangerous some of which follow: poverty may impair brain development, also
poverty affects social and emotional development. This is a problem because then the kids
will have a harder time to get somewhere when they are older.

!5

MARCH 11, 2015

MAX BENGTSSON

What Are The Effects of Poverty

There are many different effects of poverty. With 1.3 billion people being in poverty all
these people have different effects. One problem in poverty never really occurs by itself
there are always multiple problems happening at once. Some effects of poverty include:
you don't have the money to get clean water and food, kids are also very affected by
poverty, lastly homelessness is a effect of poverty.
One effect of poverty is that people in poverty do not have clean water and food to
eat. Many people in poverty live in small groups and the lack of sanitation passes new and
old diseases and since they do not have clean water or much food these people have an
easier time to pick up these diseases. This was a example how one problem is often related
to many other problems. Clean water is very hard to find. 562,666,667 people don't have
access to clean water. That is close to half of everyone in poverty. According to
DoSomthing.org every 20 seconds someone dies due to a lack of water or they get a
disease. This is because 65% of your body is made up of water and 75% of your brain is
water. So you can only survive two days without water unlike food where you can survive
three weeks to a month with no food because your body can use your muscles for food.This
lack of water can lead to many diseases. This if you don't have insurance which in 2013 was
12.5% of all americans so the chance that someone in poverty would have it is very unlikely.
So they are very threatened by these diseases.
Kids get very affected by poverty. Since kids need food and water to grow up and get
strong poverty can greatly affect them. Since one of five people in poverty are kids there are
many kids in poverty. These kids can have many different behavior (manner of behaving
or acting) issues if you compare them to kids who grow up in an environment that is not in
poverty. This also means that they usually don't have good academic skills. Scientists have
decided that 30-50 percent of how well you do academically is just genes. But the other
50-70 percent is the environment that you grow up in. This means that if your parents
weren't smart and you live in poverty then you get kind of the double douse. Also the
parent do usually not have good prenatal care because the parent could be exposed to
toxins or be under a lot of stress which could alter the child development. This means that
now they get the triple douse!
Lastly one more effect of poverty is homelessness. When you can't afford a house
you won't be able to to get one so it ultimately leads to homelessness. Like I explained
earlier poverty is always coming with other problems poverty never has a stand alone
problem. One of these connections is with homelessness. Because if you can't afford a
house where would you live? Kids are also affected because when you are homeless that
means that you don't have healthcare or that you would be able to pay for a child to attend
school. These people can't pay for food or water either. There is no affordable housing for
these people. When you enter poverty you lose much money if you had any to start off with.
So not many people in poverty can afford poverty.

!6

MARCH 11, 2015

MAX BENGTSSON

What Are Other Problems With Poverty

Poverty can have many effects on a person but is there is an effect there must
be and these effects often lead to more problems as well. There are many potential
outcomes and problems of poverty since so many people are in poverty. These
outcomes and problems can vary greatly. Some of these outcomes include: doing
illegal (something that is against the law) things to earn money, another thing that
can happen is that someone may join a gang (a group or band).
The first problem that can occur is that someone will try to make money
illegally. Some people may do this because they are not capable in making money the
legal way so to make money they must resort to what is left. They decide to sell drugs.
This is something that people will pay a lot of money for drugs so they are a good way
to make money. This is easy cash because once you start with drugs you can't stop. If
you were to live in an area where drugs are common and you live in a area with lots of
poverty surrounding you that means that you will be surrounded by a lot of drug
dealers or drug addicts which would allow you to do what your friends are doing. This
means that eventually you will start to do drugs because of curiosity. All the people
that start with this use all their money on it so for the people that aren't addicted and
constantly go minus it is a good business. If they live in a big enough group then they
could be making a lot of money because nobody is stopping to think why am I giving
this guy all my money because they are too busy thinking that I need more drugs. This
to some people is really bad because to the people that are buying the drugs are not
thinking about what they are doing so they keep on spending money.
Another problem with poverty is that people may join gangs. Where they live in
a area with loads of poverty and maybe even crime in that area. People feel like they
need to join a gang because they feel safer when they are with other people. They may
feel like being in a gang may give them money. If they were to rob a bank then maybe
they would get money so the person would have made money that day. Some reasons
why someone may join could include many things. One could be that gangs may
provide a sense of friendship. This means that they feel like they are family to them.
And that means that they enjoy being there which makes them want to go back. This
could be bad because they could get into big trouble if someone were to catch them
and since they are kids that would make it even harder than what they already have it.
They may not feel safe like I talked about earlier. They feel like the gang might do
something to them and they would feel safer to join the gang. To them it could offer a
kind of protection.
This is a image that shows by crossing out the
IL that now it is legal which to me represents
that you shouldnt do illegal things.
!7

MARCH 11, 2015

MAX BENGTSSON

Why Help?
If you still don't get why you should help poverty this will be the last
way I will tell you why to help. Why should you help poverty? How does
poverty affect you? Are you thinking it probably won't make a difference if
I help i might as well skip this section? Is that you? There are many
reasons why you should help. Some reasons why you should help are: that
poverty affects the economy (thrifty management; frugality in the
expenditure or consumption of money, materials, etc), also how do you
think the people in poverty feel and do you think they deserve to live like
they currently do.
Poverty greatly affects the economy. With 1,300,000,000 in the
world in poverty not having well paying jobs that contribute to the
economy. Like I explained earlier when I was talking about the effects of
poverty. If you grow up in a poverty environment chances are you won't
get that high of a paying job when you become an adult and that does not
affect our economy as much. If those people had higher paying jobs that
made more impact than if they were to get a job at McDonalds. If you
don't want to help poverty because you feel bad for those people that are
in poverty. If you don't think that it is inhuman to not do anything for
these people that don't even have safe water to drink then at least help for
the economy. So that the U.S. runs smoother.
My second and final reason why you should help is because it is
inhuman to not do anything about what is happening to these people. Do
you think that it makes sense that 22,000 people die everyday due to
poverty. That is 154,000 each week and 4,774,000 every month and
54,288,000 every year due to poverty. These people can barely afford
clean water or food. One person dies in poverty every four seconds due to
poverty. Isn't it inhuman to not put the any of the 713,000,000,000
dollars we spend on our military to try and help poverty. These people just
need a little support to get off the ground and start.

!8

MARCH 11, 2015

MAX BENGTSSON

How You Can Help Poverty

There are many ways that you can help poverty. Poverty have so many
problems that connect so there are many, many ways you can help. Some ways
that you can help poverty are: to donate, also you could help try to raise the
minimum wage, improve health care. These three are the best way to lessen
poverty.
The first way that you can help is by donating. Donating is very important
this isn't something that can really affect poverty to much in the long run. But
this will definitely help people now. Donating is essential because then they
don't need to buy even more things and lose even more money. They can simply
come and get the food they need. This means that they can have a meal and
instead of not spending any money and not getting food they can come and get
food for free. This could help because then it wouldn't be as easy for them to
catch a disease. This could also mean that then the people that come to this
could buy water with their other money.
Another way that you can help poverty is by trying to help raise the
minimum wage. If you raise the minimum wage. Then people would earn more
money which would also lead to a better economy. By raising the minimum
wage from$7.25 to $15 the people that live on the minimum wage could get
more than double their money and so then there would be less poverty.
Another way you can help is by improving health care. In Europe
everyone gets free health care. In the U.S. you have to buy insurance. And the
insurance (A contract (policy) in which an individual or entity receives
financial protection or reimbursement against losses from an insurance
company. The company pools clients' risks to make payments more affordable
for the insured) is the health care. Is it fair that if someone is dying that the
people at the front desk can just say we can't help you because you don not have
insurance. Improving health care could also mean that people in poverty
wouldn't need to worry about disease. That would mean that the people
wouldn't have a downward spiral when the get into poverty and get sicker and
sicker because they would be able to go to the doctor.

!9

MARCH 11, 2015

MAX BENGTSSON

Conclusion
"The burden of poverty isn't just that you don't
always have the things you need, it's the feeling
of being embarrassed every day of your life, and
you'd do anything to lift that burden," Jay-Z.
Poverty is a problem around the world. Some
things you can do is to just say hi. This could
help with them not feel their burden as much
and feel happier. If you don't want to donate
money or donate to a food pantry just say hi to
someone that is homeless that will make them
feel like they are a human being and that there
is still home a conversation with them don't look
at them like a monster because they just haven't
been very lucky in their life. Try to lift that
burden tell them that it will be alright.

!1 0

MARCH 11, 2015

MAX BENGTSSON

Glossary
Third World Countries - the group of developing nations, especially
of Asia and Africa, that do not align themselves with the policies of
either the U.S. or the former Soviet Union.
Minimum Paying Wage - the minimum that someone can pay you per
hour
Burden - that which is carried; load
Behavior - manner of behaving or acting
Gang - group of band
Illegal - something that is against the law
Economy - thrifty management; frugality in the expenditure or
consumption of money, materials, etc
Insurance - A contract (policy) in which an individual or entity
receives financial protection or reimbursement against losses from an
insurance company. The company pools clients' risks to make
payments more affordable for the insured

!1 1

MARCH 11, 2015

MAX BENGTSSON

Sources
http://www.economist.com
http://www.dosomething.org
http://www.poverty.com
http://www.borgenproject.org
http://www.globalissues.org
http://www.huffingtonpost.com
http://www.heifer.org
https://www.freedomfromhunger
http://www.edutopia.org

!1 2