Poverty Epidemic by Nick Froeschner

The reality of poverty is that it affects many more people than we care to think about. We never hear about the struggling mom who can even feed her children, or the plant work that has no bed to rest his head. It’s very shocking that in our so called modern society there are millions of families living on less than $10,000 a year (Gonfloff). These are people just like you and me, fighting for their survival. The daily battles that these people face only help to set them further and further back. One of the most difficult problems we face, as a society, is that poverty cultivates a life style that hinders a person’s ability to succeed. Not being able to obtain the most essential building blocks for a prosperous life, makes it impossible for people living in poverty to make it out. This is where we find our problem, a repetitive cycle that claims the lives of thousands each year.

Of the 43.1 million people in America that fall below the poverty line, 19.7 percent of them are children under the age of 18 ("Hunger and Poverty Facts and Statistics."). Children that are unable to access a proper education, children that don not receive basic pleasures of life, children that go without food for weeks even months (1). Poverty entails an entirely separate but correlated phenomenon, hunger. Hunger and malnutrition runs ramped amongst impoverished communities. Hunger along with a lack the ability to obtain other good puts those affected by poverty in a sinking ship. The effect that poverty exerts on one of its victims is enough to draw attention. Cupelled with its vast scale, even here in the United States, creates a devastating equation that presents a dire problem.

Poverty has been plaguing humanity since our ancestral past. Modern poverty is no different the primitive humans scavenging for food. It was not until the first civilizations emerged that poverty became an isolated condition. With the rise of large cities and nations living conditions became more stable, for those of wealth, leaving others to face the affects of poverty as a lesser social class. We can look to medieval Europe and see the birth of what we now know as poverty  vast numbers of people in ancient European cities live in terribly impoverished conditions, however it was not until the early 1800s that poverty became recognized as a serious condition of living (Brittain) ("Encyclopedia of the United States in the Nineteenth Century, 2001"). bB the 1820s, the United States of America began experiencing huge waves of immigration due to industrial expansion, which lead to record breaking poverty rates in highly industrialized cities poverty grew in the United States to the point of government intervention in the late 1870s (1). third party action and government programs have been used to help combat poverty ever sense.

Poverty in the United States is far more extensive than one would think. According to the 2015 census 13.5% of Americans live below the poverty line ("Hunger and Poverty Facts and Statistics."). That equates to more than 41.3 million people who cannot obtain basic necessities on a daily basis (1). 19.7% of those who live in poverty or 24.5 million are less than 18 years of age (1). Perhaps one of the most devastating parts of poverty is its vicious cycle of oppression. Every day there are hundreds of children born into and impoverished home. These children receive little to no education, eat little more than a once a day, and live with hundreds of other families, if they’re lucky. Children who are born into poverty find themselves trapped in a cycle that has little chance of escape.  We have all heard of these problems, we have all heard of these people, but we do not realize how many there are or how close they are to home.

Poverty’s vast scale makes the fight against very difficult, however there are way that we can help. There are a number of third party and privet organizations that provided much needed support to people who struggle to survive. The American Poverty Organization is one of many that “uses visual media to raise awareness about poverty in the United States, dispel inaccurate and destructive stereotypes about poor people and encourage action to alleviate poverty” ("Anti-Poverty Organizations”). There are thousands of volunteer opportunities to help provide critical support to people in our very own communities that desperately need it. In the united states government programs and efforts aid in combination with third party action to provide relief for impoverished citizens; “As of Oct. 1, 2008, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is the new name for the federal Food Stamp Program. The new name reflects the changes we’ve made to meet the needs of our clients, including a focus on nutrition and an increase in benefit amounts” (1). Other organizations such as the U.S. department of housing and urban development provide housing to low incomes families to help provided impoverished children the ability to escape the devastating cycle of poverty. Resurch show that the use of these programs has made large steps in the right direction. According to the World Bank, between 1990 and 2015, the percentage of the world's population living in extreme poverty fell from 37.1% to 9.6%, falling below 10% for the first time (1). This means that we can all make a difference and help those in need.

Poverty surrounds us and affect far more people then we may care to think. It’s devastating conditions oppress it’s victims and traps them in a repetitive cycle with little hope of escape. However, with the help of privet and government support we can work to fight against the huge epidemic.

Works cited

"Anti-Poverty Organizations." Anti-Poverty Organizations | Out of Poverty Caucus. Out of Poverty Caucus, n.d. Web. 12 May 2017.Gongloff, Mark. "45 Million Americans Still Stuck Below Poverty Line: Census." The Huffington Post.TheHuffingtonPost.com, 16 Sept. 2014. Web. 07 Mar. 2017.

Brittain, C. Dale. "Life in the Middle Ages." Medieval Poverty. N.p., 01 Jan. 1970. Web. 11 May 2017.

"Encyclopedia of the United States in the Nineteenth Century, 2001." Galegroup. Gale, n.d. Web.

"Hunger and Poverty Facts and Statistics." Feeding America. FeedingAmerica, 23 Nov. 2015. Web. 29 Mar. 2017.