Poverty...

Poverty is the deprivation of a human’s basic needs such as food, clothing, shelter and safe drinking water, all of which determine our quality of life and necessary for maintaining life. And many sociologists try to explain poverty but not many can come to an agreement. Some say it's the lack of jobs, while others say it's the poor who are lazy. But still there are more theories on poverty than these. As for the documentary film, she’s not only the person in the world which had this case like hers. It’s all over the world and it’s gradually becoming one of the worst problems this world would ever have, as Mahatma Gandhi called Poverty as the worst form of violence. On the other hand, poverty has 2 major definitions- Relative Poverty and Absolute Poverty. The condition of lacking of the minimum food and shelter necessary for maintaining life is known as Absolute Poverty. According to the conducted surveys done by the sociologist, today it is estimated that more than 35 million Americans, about 14 percent of its population, do experience and live in poverty. However, these are accompanied with controversies and biases, just like all other social science statistics. Some estimates of poverty in the United States of America range from 10 to 21 percent depending on one’s political inclinations. This is why a lot of sociologists nowadays prefer the Relative one rather than the Absolute, definition of Poverty. They define Relative Poverty as those who live and are experiencing under poverty whose lacking what is basically needed by most of Americans in order for them to live decently. These are also the people who earn less than half of the country’s average income. With this, the standard says 20 percent live in poverty, and this has been in effect for 40 years from then to now. Of these 20 percent, 60 percent of it came from working class poor. Sociologists too gave what are their causes and effects toward poverty. As a summarization, Poverty has many causes. Some of it is just basic that if we think of it, it’s very possible to solve this. Sociologists suggest, for instance, that the world has became too overpopulated, with too few job offers and opportunities and with not enough food for everyone, but such essential causes are obstinate which can’t be easily removed or eliminated. In most cases, Poverty’s causes and effects do interrelate. So what makes them poor will build circumstances that will still keep them as poor. However, major factors that may lead to poverty include overpopulation, unequal distribution of resources, inability to cope with the increasing high standards of living today, illiteracy or having insufficient education, job opportunities, environmental deprivation, economic and demographic development, and welfare incentives. On the other hand, its effects were just summarized. The factors of the effects include being unhealthy or not-well being, leads to homelessness, having debts, lack of educational attainment, which may lead to lesser job opportunities, committing crimes and a stigma for their selves. Nevertheless, there’s a feminist perspective on Poverty as well, that may clearly relate to as what the lead female character in the documentary is experiencing in real life. For long years, at last, this generation and the past decades too have witnessed what they so-called Feminization of Poverty. This is the considerable increase of numbers of single women in poverty alone all over the worlds, which mostly are single –parents. For the past 30 years the decades the amount of poor families headed by women has increased up to more than 50 percent. Most of this mainly affects the group of African-American women. However, this feminization of Poverty may be linked to abundant changes in America today. The boosts in unwanted pregnancy, separations, and divorces have obliged increasing statistics of women to lead poor households. Meanwhile, increases in separated fathers who stowaway child support attached with diminution in welfare support have strained many of these women-headed households to belong in the lowest class of the society. Furthermore, women generally live longer than men, thus growing numbers of elderly women live in poverty. Feminists also attribute the Feminization of Poverty to women's vulnerability brought about by the patriarchal, sexist, and gender-biased nature of the Western society, which does not value on defending women's rights.

http://www.cliffsnotes.com/WileyCDA/CliffsReviewTopic/Causes-and-Effects-of-Poverty.topicArticleId-26957,articleId-26882.html

http://www.fightpoverty.mmbrico.com/poverty/reasons.html#causes

 http://www.childreninwales.org.uk/areasofwork/childpoverty/endchildpovertynetwork/2156/2160/index.html