Vicious Cycle of Poverty

Vicious Cycle of Poverty

1. Vicious Cycle of Poverty

People in general like to find reasons for poverty and unfortunately these reasons very often put the blame for poverty on the poor themselves. Examples include:

- the poor are lazy

- the poor do not educate their children

- the poor are superstitious, unscientific and do not accept change

- the poor have too many children.

It is important to note that poverty is not just the absence of a certain level of resources but a human condition that affects all aspects of life: social status, education, ability to diversify income base, livelihood risk / vulnerability, etc.

Vicious Cycle of Poverty connotes Poverty as A Human Condition that once people are poor, for various reasons they cannot easily escape from poverty. In fact, they must struggle constantly merely to stay where they are and not become poorer. This is known as the vicious cycle of poverty.

2. Vicious Cycle of Poverty – A Simple Example of Disease & Malnutrition

We know that disease and lack of proper diet causes poor health and sickness. If one is sick he/she can’t work well in the his/her fields, and if one does not work well, the productivity is going to be lower; if the productivity is low there will be little or no food.

We all do get sick sometimes, but the poor get sick more often and recover more slowly. This happens because they do not get proper treatment. The proper treatment is not available because either there are no doctors or other medical facilities or because the people are unable to pay for the treatment. The above example indicates that we are going around in cycles and this explains the vicious cycle of poverty. One problem causes another which in turns causes a third and we keep on getting new linkages till we are right back from where we started and the vicious cycle starts all over again.

3. Various Dimensions of the Vicious Cycle

However, the real world is much more complex and complicated. There are various other dimensions of the vicious cycle.

3.1 Vicious Cycle – Additional Factors

Additional factors, particularly those related to community actions, that may contribute in addition to the lack of health facilities to causing illness/sickness among the poor include:

- Lack