Poverty In The 21st Century

In this era of 21st century, poverty is still happening around the world despite the country is developed or less developed. There is no exact definition for poverty however World Bank defined poverty as inability of human affording the basic needs, such as clean water, nutrition, health care, education, clothing and shelter. Besides, poverty is measured using the terms absolute and relative (UNESCO, 2015). Poverty is said the greatest threat to political stability in developing world because when a developing country is facing poverty, it may cause the social tensions among the people in the country to increase and then threaten the country stability. Furthermore, the effects of poverty are said interrelated as they do not occur alone.

For instance, inequalities of wealth distribution prevent people who grow up in poverty from gaining a good education. This is because with the limited money that they have they could not afford to pay for the high cost of education. Besides, majority people who grow up in poverty, they are force to work since young age to bring extra income to the family. Furthermore, lack of education is often link to higher unemployment rate. This is because those who without education hardly can find a job compare to those who have education background (Allen, 2013). When unemployment rate of a country is high, it prevents the country from progressing in all aspect as the country have a lot of job out there but no suitable people with the right skill to fit in the position. These in turn will lead the rate of poverty to increase. Therefore, unemployment without doubt is a threat to political instability. For example, in Africa, dependence ratio on governments is very high and people tend to do anything as long as they get their issues address such as unemployed person in Africa tend to lose all the democratic values and peaceful means in them and they consider that their government is worthless because fail to provide them have work (Frimpong,

According to Nidess (2013), history has proven that there is a direct relationship between poverty and crime. In one of the economic theory of crime actually explained that people will only commit crime if the costs of consequences are outweighed by the potential benefits to be gained (Rezaei, 2013). For instance, when people do not have money to buy necessities, they are force to become thieves in order to survive. Poverty cause crime rate of a country to increase which impact the political stability, as citizen will blame the government for not doing their job to protect the citizen safety. Besides, crime is said one of the core obstacles that impede the country for continuous development (Fajnzylber et al, 2000). This is because government not only has to deal with poverty issue but also have to deal with the crime issue. Furthermore, if a country is having high crime rate and government do not provide sufficient protection for investor; it will discourage new enterprises and foreign investment to invest into the country as they feel not safe to invest in a country that is high in crime and this in turn impact the country economic growth too (Devereaux, 2012; Bitzenis, 2013, p.100).

In conclusion, poverty is a dangerous threat because if poverty prolong, country will face chronic and long-lasting poverty (Berrebi, 2011) and this could threaten the country to fall apart. Not only that, if