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1. Causes of poverty
After the global economic crisis of 2008, many people around the globe faced one of the
worst social phenomenons – poverty. In the United States alone, the number of poor people in
2012 increased up to 46.5 million. In developing countries, the situation has become even worse.
Poverty does not mean that a person has little money to afford goods they want to purchase, or to
maintain a stable quality of life; rather often poverty is absolute, which means that one literally
has no livelihood at all. But what factors usually stand behind such dramatic impacts of poverty
around the world, except the aforementioned economic crisis?
Poverty rates are greatly influenced by overpopulation. Overpopulation is a situation of a
large number of people residing in a territory extremely limited in space and resources. Developing
countries often face the problem of overpopulation; except the unequal distribution of resources
and the lack of space, they usually have high birth rates, and low agricultural productivity. For
example, Bangladesh has the highest population density in the world – 2,970 persons per square
mile. The dominating majority of them are engaged in low-productivity farming and manual labor,
which causes extremely high levels of poverty in this country.
Another factor is unemployment. This problem has become one of the most urgent after
2008. In 2009 through 2010, about 42% of all families in Great Britain alone had no working
members. The job markets cannot offer enough jobs that would correspond with the skills of
unemployed people. Besides, because of poverty many people are willing to get any job for any
payment; thus, they decrease the overall wages in those spheres that they start working at.
One more reason is significant demographic shifts. For example, in the United States a
number of single-parent families is traditionally high, and has been increasing; because one parent
has less opportunities to ensure an adequate standard of living both for their children and for
themselves, single-parent families are traditionally poorer than normal.
Poverty is not a new social phenomenon. It has existed as long as the humankind has been
around. But, until 2008, it was more typical for developing countries, whereas after the global
economy crisis, even the developed post-industrial countries experienced it. Among the reasons
for poverty the most obvious are overpopulation, unemployment, and demographic shifts.
In spite of rapid economic growth in recent years, more than a quarter of the people remain
below the national poverty lines. It is imperative for Mongolia to diversify its economy and create
alternative employment sources, especially for the youth.