The Causes Of Poverty

Similarly, poor find it difficult to invest their time and resources in educating their children. Illiteracy goes hand in hand with poverty. School going children often drop out before completing school. Thus, poor do not get the benefit of skill development or education. Due to lack of education they fail to gain access to information too.

In poorer families, women, both adults and children, bear much of the burden of poverty. Many poor households are led by single females. Families become poorer with the death or absence of a male breadwinner as a result of family breakdown. Girls are seldom sent to school. Those who attend school discontinue sooner than drop out time of the boys.

Poor cannot afford active participation in political affairs.

is to enter an intellectual dead end because poverty has no causes. Only prosperity has causes. Analogically heat is a result of active processes; it has causes. But cold is not the result of any processes; it is only the absence of heat. Just so, the great cold of poverty and economic stagnation is merely the absence of economic development. It can be overcome only if the relevant economic processes are in motion.” (in Piachaud, 2002)

Jacob wrote this in the 1960s when economic development was thought to be the panacea of most economic and social issues. Economists have offered various theories of poverty most important of which is the “vicious circle of poverty”. It argues that a country is poor because it is poor. Low income makes saving difficult when saving is necessary for further investment. Without investment production does not improve and results in low

The rich people own most of the physical and financial capital in these countries. And they also have access to better health services and high quality education. Thus, the most important step towards reducing poverty should be “reducing the concentrated control of assets, the unequal distribution of power, and the unequal access to educational and income-earning opportunities” (Todaro & Smith, 2012). Development, in its truest sense, is about challenging unjust and exploitative power structures. In the last century, popular democracy along with technology enabled people to imagine a world without poverty. The dream can only be realized by challenging the powers which have historically dominated over the masses and kept them poor and by dismantling the structures which allow these powers to operate in explicit and subtler ways. The economic function of caste system and patriarchy in today’s time needs to be researched. In India many people are poor probably because they belong to religious minorities, low castes, tribal communities and the dominated genders. This need to be so in the twenty-first