Poverty Problem In Poor Countries

The poverty problem in poor countries is intractable. And it triggers a series of problems like lacking of food, low education level, unemployment and so on. One of the most important features of poverty is that it would influence the future and could even be transmitted to the second generation. Just like what has been illustrated in the S-Shape Curve, people who are already in the poverty trap will have lower and lower income in the future (Banerjee,A., Banerjee,A.V., & Duflo, E.,2011). So if we want to alleviate the serious poverty situation in developing countries, we may need to start from the origin. In other words, if we can control the poverty situation within each family, we can then change the life of the second generations of those

However, people in poor countries still tend to form larger families. This is mainly because people in developing countries rely on producing primary commodity and Labor force is extremely essential for the production of primary commodity. With more boys in a family, they can be prospective manual labor. As for girls, they can get married in the future and bring the family with bride-price as household. However, with serious shortage of food in developing countries, a high population will only make the situation worse. The theory of “nutrition-based poverty trap” points out that lacing food will lead to the result of being incapable of work and people who are hungry because of poverty will slip into poverty again. This is a vicious circle. Providing aid to those hungry people is a kind of solution, but it’s like a Chinese old saying ‘it addresses the symptoms, not the cause’. Sometimes, to increase the quantity of resources allocates to everyone, we need to control the population. So restricting the number of children in a family may be a way to reduce the hunger problem. Parents give many births because they want to rely on their children when they get old, but they just give themselves too much pressure and unaffordable responsibility right now. Having fewer children in a family means more food for everyone else in that family. Children with more food and less hunger can have better

Lacking of specific knowledge makes poor people stay under-nourished as they do not know how important nutrition is. And this leaves them with serious negative impact on their health. For instance, in Indian, pregnant women are not allowed to eat too much because Indian thinks food would occupy baby’s space (Banerjee, A., Banerjee, A.V., & Duflo, E.,2011). But actually having insufficient food when women are pregnant will make them become weaker which is bad for the parturition. This could even influence the baby’s health. So it is very important and urgent to convey the importance of nutrition to poor people through education. Education can do more. It is a very important element of changing the life of the poor. However, it has always been neglected as the poor need to ensure their problem of food and clothing firstly. Although the number of children of school age who are out of school has sharply decreased from 103million form 1999 to 73million in 2006, the education quality is not high enough (Banerjee, A., Banerjee, A.V., & Duflo, E.,2011). Due to hard living environment in poor countries, only elite have the chance of get better education (Banerjee, A., Banerjee, A.V., & Duflo, E.,2011).If there are two or more boys in a family, only the smartest can get to higher level of school cause education may cost a lot. And even when education is free for some of them as a subsidy,