Essay on Urban Poverty in America

A community is a small or large social unit in which some things are common like norms, religion, values, and identities among the people living together over there. With the gradual passage of time, there have been many changes occurring in different communities as more new people come and older people moved out, and with further developments in every field of life, these communities which already have a history also then make a future. With time communities have grown significantly as there has been an increase of 47% from [2000-2010] in the city of Omaha. It is also estimated according to the United Nations that over half of the population of developing countries will live in cities by 2020. I am going to discuss in this report how the growth in urbanization leads the people living in urban areas into urban poverty, in which issues will be discussed from both national and global perspectives, and the national perspectives will come from Pakistan my home country.

By looking at my research on the changing communities the most significant and, which have the most impact on society, issues are that urban poverty will increase and secondly many financially weak people will be under complex. These two main issues related to changing communities greatly affect the people living together in a community.

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Urban poverty

Urban poverty is usually defined as an absolute standard based on a minimum amount of income needed to sustain a healthy and minimally comfortable life while living in a nation (McDonald & Mc Millen, 2008, p.397). Historically, poverty belonged to rural areas, but nowadays it is the same in mega cities and it is estimated that a quarter of the world's urban population is currently living in a poverty situation (Perlman, 1998). One of the major causes of urban poverty is the increase in population. Since the 20th century 50 years, along with the accelerated process of urbanization and urban population density increase, the population of the world from 30% to about 50% now approaching 60% by 2030.

Secondly, employment also causes urban poverty as the people who live in urban poverty will easily lack employment. Perlman (1998) said that women who work in poverty areas are overstrained and without safety property. What is more, fewer working opportunities contribute to low-income households struggling for survival (Baker and Schuler, 1997), and therefore, the gap between rich and poor is widening (Perlman, 1998).

Due to urban poverty poor do not get proper and standard education or living areas and hence face material difficulties. Hence indirectly it leads to the destruction of the social class status. Secondly with more poverty in urban areas gangs arise due to the hunger for food and money and hence there is civil unrest. Civil unrest in France is a typical example of it.

Urban poverty can be solved by taking some efficient and curative measures such as the government must be concerned about the poverty problem, to take extreme care of their children at school, and basic health. Make sure the urban poor can get special prices for urban water, electricity, gas price, and so on so that their living condition does not deteriorate. And the government has to design an income mechanism to mitigate the distribution. gap, such as controlling taxes and the social welfare system to make the strong revenue transfer to the weak. Secondly, by giving equal rights to everyone urban poverty can be solved.

According to the perspective of the people of Pakistan, they think that if they get proper skill education in diverse fields of life then they can reduce urban poverty as they will be able to do work, secondly they have a perspective that if their government invests more money on the building of industries then more and more new products could be manufactured and then by exporting those products to the world they can earn money and hence reduce urban poverty.

Social, and economic inequality

As the world continues to develop so does its communities develop with it and so to keep up with the rapidly developing world the people living in it also have to change themselves to compete with the world because if they leave developing themselves with it then they will be left behind and will then not be able to pick themselves up.

In 2013, nearly half of all global wealth was owned by one percent of the global population. On current trends, Oxfam says, in its latest research, it expects the wealthiest 1 percent to own more than 50 percent of the world’s wealth by 2016. With more and more developments in every aspect of life, things are changing and so are people. With more developments, to maintain their status in society, people have to become financially strong which has now become increasingly difficult and hence few people can keep themselves with the prospering world.

There are many people in developed nations that are of middle class such as in Pakistan. They are unable to afford the expensive products that cover the whole market and due to their inability to afford expensive things they get complex from those who can afford those things and this has many side effects.

With more socio-economic inequality in the society the difference between the rich and the poor increases significantly which is not good for a nation. Secondly, many people also do not get access to quality medication treatments and hence the rate of diseases increases. Healthcare costs in the United States were $75 billion in 1970, and $2.6 trillion in 2010, and are expected to reach $4.8 trillion in 2021. With more economic inequality in society, many children are also deprived of standard education because they cannot afford it.

This socio-economic inequality can be resolved by taking measures such as creating more jobs by spending money on infrastructure, secondly by taking action against countries that manage their currencies to subsidize their exports to us and tax our exports to them, and also by providing oversight of financial markets.

According to the perspective of Australia, they think that as most of the population of many countries directly depends on wages and salary inequality in jobs greatly affects many people’s lives, it should be stopped by the government.

Evaluation

With the passage of time people and communities have changed a lot so due to the developments of communities many different types of issues have arisen within the communities which include urban poverty and economic inequality. The different sites that I have surfed on the internet show that the growth of urbanization has led the people living in urban areas to urban poverty. The websites that I have chosen seem very authentic to find information from because they contain statistics behind every claim that they make and secondly they have also used factual evidence with the opinions and values of different people around the globe. Hence looking at many of the strengths of the websites I have chosen a collective amount of information from different websites related to the causes and consequences of the issues due to changing communities.

Conclusion

In conclusion, my perspective has changed a little bit because of the deep research that I have done on the changing communities. The changing communities with the developing world have greatly contributed to the society as urbanization increases and due to this there is an increase in science and technology so new things are made. Secondly, with growing communities, more people migrate from rural areas to urban areas, and due to this more people interact with each other and hence get exposure to the developing world around them.

However, I have also learned that despite its positive contributions to society, it also has some negative effects as it increases socioeconomic inequality ainsociety, the whole world works with a balance of positive and negative aspects of different things therefore the world needs to work together to provide equal access to all.