Talk Poverty

Life Amidst Poverty

poor life essay

I have lived in poverty both as a child and as an adult, and I can say with full confidence that it is a life-crushing force. I hated it. “Poverty” is also one of the most misunderstood labels that gets slapped onto individuals without their approval—cast upon them simultaneously by both unseen and more visible forces of society.

Poverty is a word loaded with preconceived notions, common misperceptions, and seemingly innocuous assumptions. What the word does not do is delve below its surface meaning, into the reality of poverty—a world that no one wants to live in.

Poverty is exhausting. Poverty is despair and desperation-inducing. Poverty is soul, dream and hope crushing. Poverty is like being enclosed in a prison cell with no doors or windows. It feels claustrophobic, as if there is no way out. Only the most resilient do not give up. Still, there is no guarantee that life will get better—and those in poverty know this all too well. They either become hardened or submit to fate. You don’t live life, you don’t thrive—you survive. You wonder if you are predestined, like a caste in another country, to live out a life destitute of fulfillment—whether financial, professional or just having a better life.

These are the very thoughts that consumed me in times of poverty. And yet, I never stopped believing that there must be a way out. The “how” and the “why” of my situation—resounding questions that were never sated—eventually fell by the wayside as I pushed towards hope. The very thing that brought despair and darkness motivated me to dig out of that prison, to fight with everything within me, to find that light that must exist outside of the walls.

In America, there is this prevalent belief that if someone just pulls herself up by her bootstraps, she can succeed. And yet, as I have learned, it is entirely possible to work your ass off and still struggle . Whether I had boots or not, whether I was barefoot, in heels, what I really learned is that resources and access to them —a network of support, and awareness of available choices—are the most influential factors in the “making it or breaking it” of life in the US. So much of this became clear to me only later—when I had the opportunity to see outside of the tiny, claustrophobic room that I had been in for years.

Living in poverty need not be a death sentence. I decided when I was 5 years old that I wanted to secure a bachelor’s degree before I was married (which I did). Throughout my childhood, I had a voracious appetite for knowledge: I was constantly hungry to learn more. In high school, I decided that upon graduation I would leave the state and my family to start a new life for myself, even though it was extremely hard and I worked three jobs at one point. In college, I knew that I wanted to live and work overseas, to expand my perspective and learn more about the world. And when life challenges blindsided me as an adult (now with two degrees under my belt), I continued to learn what my options were, what resources were available to me, and to fight hard to provide the best opportunities that I can for my own children, so that they may never see themselves as “living in poverty” or not having a shot at a better life.

Enduring poverty is not the end of hope or life. The key things needed to break down the walls that imprison those within poverty are: outside influences, support networks such as friends or family, awareness of other opportunities, and access to resources.

With this combination, a new life is possible.

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Restoring Hope to Baltimore Requires Making College Affordable

poor life essay

“I’ve always wanted to go to college. I’ve wanted to be an orthodontist since I was seven,” said 16-year-old Kayla, not realizing that because she grew up in West Baltimore the odds of her dreams coming true were very slim.

There’s a long shadow cast over Baltimore’s children. Like young people across America, they know that the ability to get a good-paying job depends on college. As teens, many of them finish high school, fill out college applications, and complete financial aid forms.  But then they find out the truth: college is unaffordable.

There is a lot of talk about elite universities offering “no loans” promises and sending letters to low-income families across the country urging their children to apply.  But that effort is relevant to a tiny few. Most people who attend college go to institutions that are far from free.

Despite massive public investment in financial aid, students from families like Kayla’s who earn less than $20,000 a year are now required to pay at least $8,000 for a year of community college and more than $12,000 a year at a public university. That “net price” is what researchers like me have found to be the real bill that students and their families face after all grants (including the federal Pell and state and institutional grants) are subtracted from the sticker price of attending college. This price has gone up substantially over time, particularly since the Great Recession.  It’s climbed as real family income for most has fallen. Worse, it may well be under-stated .

College education is central to the American Dream. But the ladder people must climb to get there has eroded, and a critical rung fell off.  After a semester or two, even the most talented students from the bottom half of the income distribution find that the price of college is more than they can afford.  They have enough money to register for classes, but they cannot pay the bills long enough to graduate .  

The young people of Baltimore know this.  Researchers tracked a set of the city’s children beginning in 1982 , when the kids were in 1 st grade.  A decade and a half later, almost two-thirds enrolled in college. But by age 28, just 17 percent had earned an associates or bachelor’s degree, with another 13 percent earning a certificate.  Nearly half who grew up poor, ended up poor, especially if they were black.

It wasn’t for lack of trying. Researchers like Stefanie DeLuca, who met Kayla while doing research on young people from Baltimore’s highest poverty neighborhoods, confirm that a strong work ethic is omnipresent there. But enrolling in college exacerbates their poverty: working two or three jobs while also taking on federal and private loans takes a heavy toll. Growing numbers of undergraduates find themselves living without sufficient food or adequate housing even as they try and focus on school.

When college is unaffordable, hope is lost.  Without degrees, young people are returning to the streets with debt, disillusioned and fearful for their futures.

Today colleges and state governments set most college prices. They are failing at this job. The opportunity to get a college education is distributed in highly inequitable ways.  Rather than promoting mobility, the broken college financing system is ensuring that economic and racial inequality gets passed down – and worsened – from one generation to the next.  Americans deserve better.

Last year, Republican Governor Bill Haslam began to restore hope in Tennessee by offering tuition-free community college.  The predecessor to the Tennessee Promise, Knox Achieves, is proving effective at helping young people who would have otherwise never experienced even a 13 th year of education earn college credits.  Helping those students complete a 14 th year, and attain a credential, may require more investment, along the lines of America’s College Promise proposed by President Barack Obama.

The initiatives of Haslam and Obama were preceded by wisdom and a smart initiative in New York. In 1969, large numbers of African Americans and Puerto Ricans demanded that the City University of New York become a place that they could enter to pursue better lives.  University administrators responded by instituting an open admissions policy to complement a very low price.  An evaluation conducted over the next 30 years revealed that while the new policy did not wipe out disadvantages due to race or class (or high school academic record), it more than doubled the proportion of black women who would attain degrees. That finding is consistent with more recent studies that raise sharp questions about the contention that “college isn’t for everyone.”

National leaders need to provide hope to young adults in Baltimore and cities like it.  Federal policy must change. Simply providing financial aid isn’t getting the job done, as it requires too little from those who establish college costs.  Instead, we need a national conversation about what it means to provide a high-quality 13 th and 14 th year of public education to everyone, and then we need to pay for it. New taxes are an option – but we can also simply stop spending where investments aren’t pay off. Ending subsidies to for-profit universities is a good place to start.

There is much to do to provide hope, dignity, and a chance at a better life to America’s poor urban youth. Part of the solution must include making college affordable.

poor life essay

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To Combat For-Profit Schools, Provide Free Community College

poor life essay

Although it is widely documented that for-profit colleges routinely prey on low-income students , these schools have proven adept at beating back regulations that would curb their abuses. To decrease the attractiveness of for-profit schools, and their power to exploit students with low incomes, progressives should rally around President Obama’s proposal to provide free community college .

Over the last few years, for-profit colleges have come under fire from the Senate HELP committee, several federal agencies, and 37 state attorneys, with good reason . The for-profit education business model provides no incentive for schools to produce successful, educated college graduates. As a result, over half of the students who attend these schools fail to obtain a degree and struggle with mounting student loan debt. Those students fortunate enough to graduate have a hard time securing employment, as employers increasingly turn away candidates with degrees from for-profit schools.

For-profit colleges use a variety of unethical and sometimes illegal practices to persuade students to attend their schools. Some schools get leads on potential students through fake job postings on websites like craigslist or monster.com. Recent reports show a few top for-profit colleges utilize fake online health insurance and food stamp applications to collect information on potential students. Individuals who fall victim to phishing schemes like these are subsequently harassed with calls from for-profit schools until they speak with admissions representatives. Students report being called up to twenty times in a single morning, or as late as 11 p.m. When students finally succumb to the pressure and speak with a representative, they are subjected to recruitment tactics that are far more abusive.

  An example of training materials for recruiters at a for-profit college

Admissions representatives at several large for-profit schools say management promotes a variety of exploitative practices to secure enrollment. These tactics include asking callers— many of whom are low-income or people of color— to imagine what they will buy when they make six-figures, or how their family will feel when they no longer rely on a minimum wage job. Many representatives go as far as telling callers how worthless they are with just a high school diploma. Many students who were actively recruited in this manner were unable to afford—or clearly incapable of completing—the program. Some students even struggled with a range of disabilities such as brain damage and learning disorders . In one particularly high profile case , a Corporal for the U.S. Marines was enrolled at a large for-profit college, but was so severely impaired by a traumatic brain injury that he could not remember what classes he was taking.

Students who enroll as a result of this kind of manipulation often sign themselves into financial ruin. However, as long as the students attend classes, the school turns a profit. The entire business model of for-profit schools relies on cheating victims out of their dollars and dreams, which ultimately increases their reliance on safety net programs.

In contrast, community college provides crucial alternatives for those most frequently victimized by for-profit schools—people with low-incomes and people of color. Students with low-incomes are disproportionately affected by social factors (financial instability, health issues, transportation issues) that discourage investing financial resources in brick-and-mortar schools, in deference to online education. For-profit schools take advantage of this instability, promising increased upward mobility coupled with the flexibility of online schooling. As a result, low-income students enroll in for-profit schools at nearly four times the rate of other students.

  An example of student “profiles” targeted by recruiters at a for-profit college

By providing low-income students with the opportunity to attend community college at no cost, President Obama’s plan virtually eliminates the consumer base of these profit-seeking colleges, ending their large-scale fraud. Under President Obama’s plan , students receive full tuition funding if they are enrolled at least half-time at community college and are earning above a 2.5 GPA. The proposal is also beneficial because it permits students to receive Pell grants while they are at community college; this policy would help families afford living expenses while the primary caretaker focuses on school.

Obama’s initiative encourages low-income, at-risk students to consider local community colleges before for-profit schools, thereby increasing their potential economic mobility and financial wellbeing. Current estimates suggest that as many as 9 million students would benefit from the initiative.

While Obama’s proposal is not a blank check, it provides much more flexibility for students with low-incomes. More importantly, the plan could prevent millions of our country’s most disadvantaged people from enrolling in schools that prove far better at exploiting students than educating them.

poor life essay

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New York City Limits the Use of Credit Checks in Hiring

poor life essay

One of the recurring—and troubling—themes of TalkPoverty posts has been the overwhelming number of misguided policies that kick people while they’re down: from asset limits that tell poor people not to save, to employers’ use of criminal records that make it hard for people to find a job even decades after an infraction.

In a rare moment of good news, New York City has decided to remove one of these barriers by limiting the use of credit checks for employment screening . Last month, the City Council voted overwhelmingly to pass the strongest measure in the country on this issue, joining ten states . This measure, which Mayor DeBlasio is expected to sign on Wednesday, is a major step forward to rein in a practice that does little for employers while filtering out good employees who run into financial trouble.

Nearly half of employers check credit histories for at least some positions, according to the Society for Human Resource Management . This means that before receiving a job offer, the employer has the ability to comb through your financial history to see if you’ve paid your bills on time, and can choose not to offer you a job if you haven’t. Of course, if you’re having trouble paying your bills—because of a job loss, an illness, an irregular work schedule, or other risks that working families face—being turned down for a job isn’t going to make it easier to pay your bills or improve your credit. And so the cycle continues.

Meanwhile, credit reporting itself has its limitations. Roughly one in five credit reports contains errors , according to an analysis by the Federal Trade Commission. And the information in credit reports only reflects part of a family’s financial situation—the part that tends to reflect better on upper-income folks. Mortgage payments count toward a positive credit history—very significantly—but on-time rent payments don’t. And when low-income families pay their regular bills on time—such as rent and utilities—this positive information generally doesn’t go on credit reports, even though negative information such as late payments, nonpayments, and collections ultimately does get reported. So even when families are trying hard to pay bills on time, these bills don’t count in the same way credit cards and loan payments do.

That’s slowly starting to change. There are efforts underway to improve credit reporting to more accurately reflect credit risk and help more deserving borrowers get affordable loans, including a recent pilot where thousands of low-income families living in affordable housing were able to have their rental payments applied to their credit reports and scores. But in the meantime, families are needlessly hurt by a system that misuses financial information to make hiring decisions that hurt those who are already struggling.

To be sure, New York City’s law does have some exceptions for jobs in government, law enforcement, certain finance and tech jobs, and jobs where the employee is in charge of major financial decisions. For these jobs, one can argue that the fears of theft cited when credit screening tools are pitched to companies are more legitimate. (When I worked at the Treasury Department, for example, a credit check was required.) But the City’s new law goes well beyond other states where, for example, handling a certain amount of cash could be considered an exception. And it comes close to two bills introduced in the last Congress: one bill by Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) limiting credit checks to jobs requiring a security clearance, and a bill by Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN) with added exemptions for some government and banking jobs.

The federal government has been catching on as well. Last fall, the US Department of Labor issued new guidance warning employers that the use of credit reports may be discriminatory. Policies designed to screen for people working in high-level positions shouldn’t apply to most jobs, never mind that even Bernie Madoff probably had a stellar credit history for most of his career.

We should follow New York’s example to keep credit reports where they belong—in the financial marketplace—and not as another barrier to hold people back from jobs and financial security because of past decisions or financial distress.

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Temporary Assistance Doesn’t Help Impoverished Married Parents

poor life essay

Marital poverty is a serious, widespread, but mostly unacknowledged problem in the United States. Just over 9.3 million people in married-parent families live below our extremely low official poverty line . Another 6 million people live between the official poverty threshold and 130 percent of the poverty line, which is the income limit for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and only about $26,000 for a married couple with one child.

Despite these staggering numbers, there is widespread denial of the reality of marital poverty. Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) has gone so far to claim that being “married with kids versus unmarried with kids is the difference between living in poverty and not.” It appears he is unaware there are more married parents living in poverty in his state than never married parents living in poverty.

We know from a vast body of research that poverty and related financial stressors are risk factors for marital conflict, domestic violence, and divorce. And notable recent research by Laura Tach and Kathryn Edin found that economic factors are a more important predictor of dissolution for married parents than for cohabiting ones.

The Temporary Assistance (TANF) program should be playing a central role in helping married families overcome the kinds of economic hardship and other factors that contribute to the high divorce rate among working class families . Under the Temporary Assistance program, states receive funds to provide means-tested, re-employment assistance and other services to struggling unemployed and underemployed parents with low incomes. One of the four purposes of Temporary Assistance is to “encourage the maintenance of two-parent families.”

Despite this mandate, Temporary Assistance is failing struggling, married families. The extent of TANF’s failure is shown in the chart below. Between 2000 and 2012, the number of married parents living in poverty increased 39 percent, but the already extremely low number of married parents being helped by TANF plummeted by 54 percent . In the majority of states today, fewer than 1000 married parents receive Temporary Assistance. In Louisiana, for example, over 50,000 married parents live in poverty, but only about 50 of them receive Temporary Assistance.

Where Temporary Assistance has failed, other better-designed programs have stepped up. In 2014, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) helped 5.2 million low-income children who lived with both of their married parents, and another 1.2 million children who lived with both of their unmarried parents. Unlike Temporary Assistance, SNAP actually responded to the increase in married-parent unemployment and hardship during the Great Recession. Similarly, early evidence suggests that the Affordable Care Act—including Medicaid expansion and the Premium Tax Credit—has increased health insurance coverage among working-class married families.

How can we fix Temporary Assistance so that it doesn’t effectively exclude millions of struggling, married parents from getting the temporary financial help – as well as employment and other services – that could make the difference between staying together and splitting up?

The first and arguably most important step is to acknowledge the extent of the problem of marital poverty and hardship in the United States, and the destructive impact it has on family life.

Then we need to look at models for reforming Temporary Assistance. Most notably, the original version of the Minnesota Family Investment Program (MFIP) that was evaluated in the mid-1990s reduced divorce among participating disadvantaged, two-parent families. The reductions in divorce were particularly large—70 percent—among black married couples. In addition, both MFIP and Milwaukee’s New Hope Project increased rates of marriage among disadvantaged single mothers.

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These progressive demonstration projects ensured that low-income married- and cohabiting-couple families had an adequate income to support themselves while searching for work or addressing issues that limited their work capacity, including through transitional jobs, re-employment, and other services. Unlike the current Temporary Assistance program, these programs did not utilize unreasonably restrictive participation rates or harshly punitive measures that are mostly aimed at reducing the number of people who receive help; instead, these programs emphasized helping parents obtain and maintain stable employment, while meeting their basic needs.

Unfortunately, the current financial structure of Temporary Assistance and the federal law that governs it makes operating rigorously tested programs like the original MFIP or New Hope all but impossible for states. Fixing this should be at the top of the list of reforms that would help struggling, two-parent families. At the very least, the federal government should establish a national Temporary Assistance demonstration project for married and unmarried two-parent families based on the original MFIP program and New Hope. Of course, some policymakers would prefer to just talk about family values, but even in today’s polarized political environment it should be possible to move forward on a concrete initiative like this one that actually values working-class families by helping them stay together.

poor life essay

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Poverty Essay for Students and Children

500+ words essay on poverty essay.

“Poverty is the worst form of violence”. – Mahatma Gandhi.

poverty essay

How Poverty is Measured?

For measuring poverty United nations have devised two measures of poverty – Absolute & relative poverty.  Absolute poverty is used to measure poverty in developing countries like India. Relative poverty is used to measure poverty in developed countries like the USA. In absolute poverty, a line based on the minimum level of income has been created & is called a poverty line.  If per day income of a family is below this level, then it is poor or below the poverty line. If per day income of a family is above this level, then it is non-poor or above the poverty line. In India, the new poverty line is  Rs 32 in rural areas and Rs 47 in urban areas.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

Causes of Poverty

According to the Noble prize winner South African leader, Nelson Mandela – “Poverty is not natural, it is manmade”. The above statement is true as the causes of poverty are generally man-made. There are various causes of poverty but the most important is population. Rising population is putting the burden on the resources & budget of countries. Governments are finding difficult to provide food, shelter & employment to the rising population.

The other causes are- lack of education, war, natural disaster, lack of employment, lack of infrastructure, political instability, etc. For instance- lack of employment opportunities makes a person jobless & he is not able to earn enough to fulfill the basic necessities of his family & becomes poor. Lack of education compels a person for less paying jobs & it makes him poorer. Lack of infrastructure means there are no industries, banks, etc. in a country resulting in lack of employment opportunities. Natural disasters like flood, earthquake also contribute to poverty.

In some countries, especially African countries like Somalia, a long period of civil war has made poverty widespread. This is because all the resources & money is being spent in war instead of public welfare. Countries like India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, etc. are prone to natural disasters like cyclone, etc. These disasters occur every year causing poverty to rise.

Ill Effects of Poverty

Poverty affects the life of a poor family. A poor person is not able to take proper food & nutrition &his capacity to work reduces. Reduced capacity to work further reduces his income, making him poorer. Children from poor family never get proper schooling & proper nutrition. They have to work to support their family & this destroys their childhood. Some of them may also involve in crimes like theft, murder, robbery, etc. A poor person remains uneducated & is forced to live under unhygienic conditions in slums. There are no proper sanitation & drinking water facility in slums & he falls ill often &  his health deteriorates. A poor person generally dies an early death. So, all social evils are related to poverty.

Government Schemes to Remove Poverty

The government of India also took several measures to eradicate poverty from India. Some of them are – creating employment opportunities , controlling population, etc. In India, about 60% of the population is still dependent on agriculture for its livelihood. Government has taken certain measures to promote agriculture in India. The government constructed certain dams & canals in our country to provide easy availability of water for irrigation. Government has also taken steps for the cheap availability of seeds & farming equipment to promote agriculture. Government is also promoting farming of cash crops like cotton, instead of food crops. In cities, the government is promoting industrialization to create more jobs. Government has also opened  ‘Ration shops’. Other measures include providing free & compulsory education for children up to 14 years of age, scholarship to deserving students from a poor background, providing subsidized houses to poor people, etc.

Poverty is a social evil, we can also contribute to control it. For example- we can simply donate old clothes to poor people, we can also sponsor the education of a poor child or we can utilize our free time by teaching poor students. Remember before wasting food, somebody is still sleeping hungry.

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5 Essays About Poverty Everyone Should Know

Poverty is one of the driving forces of inequality in the world. Between 1990-2015, much progress was made. The number of people living on less than $1.90 went from 36% to 10%. However, according to the World Bank , the COVID-19 pandemic represents a serious problem that disproportionately impacts the poor. Research released in February of 2020 shows that by 2030, up to ⅔ of the “global extreme poor” will be living in conflict-affected and fragile economies. Poverty will remain a major human rights issue for decades to come. Here are five essays about the issue that everyone should know:

“We need an economic bill of rights” –  Martin Luther King Jr.

The Guardian published an abridged version of this essay in 2018, which was originally released in Look magazine just after Dr. King was killed. In this piece, Dr. King explains why an economic bill of rights is necessary. He points out that while mass unemployment within the black community is a “social problem,” it’s a “depression” in the white community. An economic bill of rights would give a job to everyone who wants one and who can work. It would also give an income to those who can’t work. Dr. King affirms his commitment to non-violence. He’s fully aware that tensions are high. He quotes a spiritual, writing “timing is winding up.” Even while the nation progresses, poverty is getting worse.

This essay was reprinted and abridged in The Guardian in an arrangement with The Heirs to the Estate of Martin Luther King. Jr. The most visible representative of the Civil Rights Movement beginning in 1955, Dr. King was assassinated in 1968. His essays and speeches remain timely.

“How Poverty Can Follow Children Into Adulthood” – Priyanka Boghani

This article is from 2017, but it’s more relevant than ever because it was written when 2012 was the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. That’s no longer the case. In 2012, around ¼ American children were in poverty. Five years later, children were still more likely than adults to be poor. This is especially true for children of colour. Consequences of poverty include anxiety, hunger, and homelessness. This essay also looks at the long-term consequences that come from growing up in poverty. A child can develop health problems that affect them in adulthood. Poverty can also harm a child’s brain development. Being aware of how poverty affects children and follows them into adulthood is essential as the world deals with the economic fallout from the pandemic.

Priyanka Boghani is a journalist at PBS Frontline. She focuses on U.S. foreign policy, humanitarian crises, and conflicts in the Middle East. She also assists in managing Frontline’s social accounts.

“5 Reasons COVID-19 Will Impact the Fight to End Extreme Poverty” – Leah Rodriguez

For decades, the UN has attempted to end extreme poverty. In the face of the novel coronavirus outbreak, new challenges threaten the fight against poverty. In this essay, Dr. Natalie Linos, a Harvard social epidemiologist, urges the world to have a “social conversation” about how the disease impacts poverty and inequality. If nothing is done, it’s unlikely that the UN will meet its Global Goals by 2030. Poverty and COVID-19 intersect in five key ways. For one, low-income people are more vulnerable to disease. They also don’t have equal access to healthcare or job stability. This piece provides a clear, concise summary of why this outbreak is especially concerning for the global poor.

Leah Rodriguez’s writing at Global Citizen focuses on women, girls, water, and sanitation. She’s also worked as a web producer and homepage editor for New York Magazine’s The Cut.

“Climate apartheid”: World’s poor to suffer most from disasters” – Al Jazeera and news Agencies

The consequences of climate change are well-known to experts like Philip Alston, the special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights. In 2019, he submitted a report to the UN Human Rights Council sounding the alarm on how climate change will devastate the poor. While the wealthy will be able to pay their way out of devastation, the poor will not. This will end up creating a “climate apartheid.” Alston states that if climate change isn’t addressed, it will undo the last five decades of progress in poverty education, as well as global health and development .

“Nickel and Dimed: On (not) getting by in America” – Barbara Ehrenreich

In this excerpt from her book Nickel and Dimed, Ehrenreich describes her experience choosing to live undercover as an “unskilled worker” in the US. She wanted to investigate the impact the 1996 welfare reform act had on the working poor. Released in 2001, the events take place between the spring of 1998 and the summer of 2000. Ehrenreich decided to live in a town close to her “real life” and finds a place to live and a job. She has her eyes opened to the challenges and “special costs” of being poor. In 2019, The Guardian ranked the book 13th on their list of 100 best books of the 21st century.

Barbara Ehrenreich is the author of 21 books and an activist. She’s worked as an award-winning columnist and essayist.

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About the author, emmaline soken-huberty.

Emmaline Soken-Huberty is a freelance writer based in Portland, Oregon. She started to become interested in human rights while attending college, eventually getting a concentration in human rights and humanitarianism. LGBTQ+ rights, women’s rights, and climate change are of special concern to her. In her spare time, she can be found reading or enjoying Oregon’s natural beauty with her husband and dog.

Why poverty is not a personal choice, but a reflection of society

poor life essay

Research Investigator of Psychiatry, Public Health, and Poverty Solutions, University of Michigan

Disclosure statement

Shervin Assari does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

University of Michigan provides funding as a founding partner of The Conversation US.

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poor life essay

As the Senate prepares to modify its version of the health care bill, now is a good time to back up and examine why we as a nation are so divided about providing health care, especially to the poor.

I believe one reason the United States is cutting spending on health insurance and safety nets that protect poor and marginalized people is because of American culture, which overemphasizes individual responsibility. Our culture does this to the point that it ignores the effect of root causes shaped by society and beyond the control of the individual. How laypeople define and attribute poverty may not be that much different from the way U.S. policymakers in the Senate see poverty.

As someone who studies poverty solutions and social and health inequalities, I am convinced by the academic literature that the biggest reason for poverty is how a society is structured. Without structural changes, it may be very difficult if not impossible to eliminate disparities and poverty.

Social structure

About 13.5 percent of Americans are living in poverty. Many of these people do not have insurance, and efforts to help them gain insurance, be it through Medicaid or private insurance, have been stymied. Medicaid provides insurance for the disabled, people in nursing homes and the poor.

Four states recently asked the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services for permission to require Medicaid recipients in their states who are not disabled or elderly to work.

This request is reflective of the fact that many Americans believe that poverty is, by and large, the result of laziness , immorality and irresponsibility.

In fact, poverty and other social miseries are in large part due to social structure , which is how society functions at a macro level. Some societal issues, such as racism, sexism and segregation, constantly cause disparities in education, employment and income for marginalized groups. The majority group naturally has a head start, relative to groups that deal with a wide range of societal barriers on a daily basis. This is what I mean by structural causes of poverty and inequality.

Poverty: Not just a state of mind

We have all heard that the poor and minorities need only make better choices – work hard, stay in school, get married, do not have children before they can afford them. If they did all this, they wouldn’t be poor.

Just a few weeks ago, Housing Secretary Ben Carson called poverty “ a state of mind .” At the same time, his budget to help low-income households could be cut by more than US$6 billion next year.

This is an example of a simplistic view toward the complex social phenomenon. It is minimizing the impact of a societal issue caused by structure – macro‐level labor market and societal conditions – on individuals’ behavior. Such claims also ignore a large body of sociological science.

American independence

poor life essay

Americans have one of the most independent cultures on Earth. A majority of Americans define people in terms of internal attributes such as choices , abilities, values, preferences, decisions and traits.

This is very different from interdependent cultures , such as eastern Asian countries where people are seen mainly in terms of their environment, context and relationships with others.

A direct consequence of independent mindsets and cognitive models is that one may ignore all the historical and environmental conditions, such as slavery, segregation and discrimination against women, that contribute to certain outcomes. When we ignore the historical context, it is easier to instead attribute an unfavorable outcome, such as poverty, to the person.

Views shaped by politics

Many Americans view poverty as an individual phenomenon and say that it’s primarily their own fault that people are poor. The alternative view is that poverty is a structural phenomenon. From this viewpoint, people are in poverty because they find themselves in holes in the economic system that deliver them inadequate income.

The fact is that people move in and out of poverty. Research has shown that 45 percent of poverty spells last no more than a year, 70 percent last no more than three years and only 12 percent stretch beyond a decade.

The Panel Study of Income Dynamics ( PSID ), a 50-year longitudinal study of 18,000 Americans, has shown that around four in 10 adults experience an entire year of poverty from the ages of 25 to 60. The last Survey of Income and Program Participation ( SIPP ), a longitudinal survey conducted by the U.S. Census, had about one-third of Americans in episodic poverty at some point in a three-year period, but just 3.5 percent in episodic poverty for all three years.

Why calling the poor ‘lazy’ is victim blaming

If one believes that poverty is related to historical and environmental events and not just to an individual, we should be careful about blaming the poor for their fates.

Victim blaming occurs when the victim of a crime or any wrongful act is held entirely or partially responsible for the harm that befell them. It is a common psychological and societal phenomenon. Victimology has shown that humans have a tendency to perceive victims at least partially responsible . This is true even in rape cases, where there is a considerable tendency to blame victims and is true particularly if the victim and perpetrator know each other.

I believe all our lives could be improved if we considered the structural influences as root causes of social problems such as poverty and inequality. Perhaps then, we could more easily agree on solutions.

  • Social mobility
  • Homelessness
  • Health disparities
  • Health gaps
  • US Senate health care bill
  • US health care reform

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383 Poverty Essay Topic Ideas & Examples

  • 📑 Aspects to Cover in a Poverty Essay

Students who learn economics, politics, and social sciences are often required to write a poverty essay as part of their course. While everyone understands the importance of this topic, it can be hard to decide what to write about. Read this post to find out the aspects that you should cover in your essay on poverty.

🏆 Best Poverty Topics & Free Essay Examples

👍 powerful topics on poverty and inequality, 🎓 simple & easy topics related to poverty, 📌 interesting poverty essay examples, ⭐ strong poverty-related topics, 🥇 unique poverty topics for argumentative essay, ❓ research questions about poverty.

Topics related to poverty and inequality might seem too broad. There are so many facts, factors, and aspects you should take into consideration. However, we all know that narrowing down a topic is one of the crucial steps when working on an outline and thesis statement. You should be specific enough to select the right arguments for your argumentative essay or dissertation. Below, you will find some aspects to include in your poverty essay.

Poverty Statistics

First of all, it would be beneficial to include some background information on the issue. Statistics on poverty in your country or state can help you to paint a picture of the problem. Look for official reports on poverty and socioeconomic welfare, which can be found on government websites. While you are writing this section, consider the following:

  • What is the overall level of poverty in your country or state?
  • Has the prevalence of poverty changed over time? If yes, how and why?
  • Are there any groups or communities where poverty is more prevalent than in the general population? What are they?

Causes of Poverty

If you look at poverty essay titles, the causes of poverty are a popular theme among students. While some people may think that poverty occurs because people are lazy and don’t want to work hard, the problem is much more important than that. Research books and scholarly journal articles on the subject with these questions in mind:

  • Why do some groups of people experience poverty more often than others?
  • What are the historical causes of poverty in your country?
  • How is poverty related to other social issues, such as discrimination, immigration, and crime?
  • How do businesses promote or reduce poverty in the community?

Consequences of Poverty

Many poverty essay examples also consider the consequences of poverty for individuals and communities. This theme is particularly important if you study social sciences or politics. Here are some questions that may give you ideas for this section:

  • How is the psychological well-being of individuals affected by poverty?
  • How is poverty connected to crime and substance abuse?
  • How does poverty affect individuals’ access to high-quality medical care and education?
  • What is the relationship between poverty and world hunger?

Government Policies

Governments of most countries have policies in place to reduce poverty and help those in need. In your essay, you may address the policies used in your state or country or compare several different governments in terms of their approaches to poverty. Here is what you should think about:

  • What are some examples of legislation aimed at reducing poverty?
  • Do laws on minimum wage help to prevent and decrease poverty? Why or why not?
  • How do governments help people who are poor to achieve higher levels of social welfare?
  • Should governments provide financial assistance to those in need? Why or why not?

Solutions to Poverty

Solutions to poverty are among the most popular poverty essay topics, and you will surely find many sample papers and articles on this subject. This is because poverty is a global issue that must be solved to facilitate social development. Considering these questions in your poverty essay conclusion or main body will help you in getting an A:

  • What programs or policies proved to be effective in reducing poverty locally?
  • Is there a global solution to poverty that would be equally effective in all countries?
  • How can society facilitate the reduction of poverty?
  • What solutions would you recommend to decrease and prevent poverty?

Covering a few of these aspects in your essay will help you demonstrate the in-depth understanding and analysis required to earn a high mark. Before you start writing, have a look around our website for more essay titles, tips, and interesting topics!

  • UN Summit in New York: Ending Global Poverty He challenges the international community to enact laws that categorizes the misuse of power ‘which leads to poverty’ as a crime against humanity. The persistence of poverty can be attributed to poor governance and ignorance.
  • Poverty and the Environment The human population affects the environment negatively due to poverty resulting to environmental degradation and a cycle of poverty. Poverty and the environment are interlinked as poverty leads to degradation of the environment.
  • Concepts of Prenatal Drug Exposure vs Poverty on Infants In conclusion parents are of great influence to the development of their children character. Drugs use and poverty are all parents fault, and has nothing to do with the child but they are a major […]
  • Aspects of Global Poverty There are arguments that have been put forth in regard to the causes of poverty in various nations with some people saying that the governments in various nations are there to be blamed for their […]
  • Peter Singer on Resolving the World Poverty Everyone in this world has different perception about luxury for example many people consider Television as the basic need of life in order to get information and current situation of the world where as some […]
  • Poverty and Wealth in “The Lesson” by Toni Cade Bambara This theme contributes to the meaning of “The Lesson” because the narrator illustrates the differences that exist amid the prosperous and poor kids in the fictitious story.
  • Literature Study on the Modern Poverty Concerns Although the author does not expound on the various factor that enhance the growth and development of poverty, it is vivid that the world population in the modern society is facing a common economic threat.
  • Poverty Concerns in Today’s Society In the contemporary world, the definition of poverty is often made international by bodies such as the World Bank and the United Nations bodies with a hypothetical line being described for the various regions of […]
  • Poverty and Its Impact on Global Health: Research Methodologies Little progress has been shown to exist if one is to compare the late nineties and into the twenty first century but a lot still needs to be done to avert this catastrophe.
  • Poverty in Urban Areas The main reason for escalation of the problem of poverty is urban areas is because the intricate problems of urban poverty are considered too small to attract big policies.
  • Why Poverty Rates are Higher among Single Black Mothers Lack of assets, loan facilities and poor savings have played a role in contributing to the growth of poverty among single black women.
  • The Problem of Immigrants Poverty in the US Alternative Hypothesis The level of poverty is significantly higher among immigrants than in general population, or Immigrant’s poverty is the root cause of social factors within their families and in society as well.
  • Poverty in Brazil The primary aim of the exploration was to relate and construe the experimental findings arising from the application of the FGT poverty standards reformulation to Brazilian domestic examination data.
  • What Causes Poverty in the World One of the major factors that have contributed to poverty in given areas of the world is overpopulation. Environmental degradation in many parts of the world has led to the increase of poverty in the […]
  • Poverty in the Bronx: Negative Effects of Poverty South Bronx is strictly the southwestern part of the borough of Bronx and Bronx is the only borough in New York city in the mainland.
  • Effects of Poverty on Immigrant Children As research studies show, although there is a group of immigrants who belong to higher social classes, mostly because of their formal education levels, most of immigrants belong to the low socioeconomic class, as most […]
  • Immigrant Status and Poverty: How Are They Linked? It has been shown that native status of the immigrant family does affect the amount of income earned by a family by Chapman and Berstein.
  • Social Welfare Policy That Facilitates Reduction of Poverty and Inequality in the US In spite of the scale of the increase in the inequality, the political class in the US rarely discusses this subject in the public.
  • Banker to the Poor: Micro-Lending and the Battle against World Poverty: Advantages of Microcredit The main features of the Grameen project are the availability to the poor people who have no credit history and are not able to borrow a loan from a bank because of the lack of […]
  • Poverty in Russia during the Late Nineteenth Century Most importantly, Pytor Pertovich Semyonova role was instrumental in the life of the peasants living before the revolution since he championed the passing of rules that were intended to guarantee the Russian peasants of their […]
  • Poverty and its Effects on Childhood Education The foremost strength of Guo’s study is that in it, author succeeded with substantiating the full soundness of an idea that children’s exposure to poverty cannot possibly be thought of as only the factor that […]
  • What is the Relationship between Race, Poverty and Prison? The inherent problem with this is that it becomes a “self fulfilling prophecy” in that a higher predilection to suspect minorities for crimes does indeed result in minorities being arrested for crimes but this leaves […]
  • The Singer Solution to World Poverty: Arguments Against The article compares the lives of people in the developed world represented by America and that of developing world represented by Brazil; It is about a school teacher who sells a young boy for adoption […]
  • Poverty in America Rural and Urban Difference (Education) The understanding of the needs of the poverty American rural and urban schools is the first step on the way to reforming the system of elementary and secondary education.
  • Poverty and Inequality in Jacksonian America One of the reactions of the leaders and most especially the presidents under this period was to impose a policy of non-intervention by the federal government.
  • The Singer Solution to World Poverty In his work, “The Singer solution to the world poverty” he tried to sell his idea of how the world poverty could be eradicated through sacrifice.
  • On (Not) Getting by in America: Economic Order and Poverty in the U.S. In fact, according to her, these conditions are unlivable and can be referred to as another form of servant class. To this extent, it is possible to concur with Ehrenreich that these conditions are unlivable […]
  • Poverty among Women and Aboriginals The following are the factors that contribute to the poverty of women: First is the gender related roles; this is whereby women are only restricted to household roles.
  • The Problems of Poverty in the Modern World It is interesting to note that practically, all the problems that are linked to poverty, are either directly or indirectly caused by lack of or inadequacy of money, thus, it can confidently be said that […]
  • Capitalism and Poverty While the president’s statement after the release of the report agreed that 2009 was tough especially to the working class people, two of the richest men in the world, Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, live […]
  • Poverty as a Peculiarity of the Economical Development I think that poverty is not only financial, economic problem, therefore, the economic model of “rich” developed countries cannot be appropriate for all societies in the worlds due to the different aspect such as mentality, […]
  • The End of Poverty Philippe Diaz’s documentary, The End of Poverty, is a piece that attempts to dissect the causes of the huge economic inequalities that exist between countries in the Northern Hemisphere and the Southern Hemisphere.
  • Poverty in Africa These pictures have been published online to show the world the gravity of the poverty situation in the African continent. The pictures represent the suffering of majority of the African people as a result of […]
  • Poverty as Capability Deprivation In this paper, the importance of social justice manifests through the understanding of social deprivation, as opposed to the understanding of income levels in the achievement of social justice.
  • Poverty in Saudi Arabia It is expected that through the various facts and arguments presented in this paper.the reason behind the high poverty rate within Saudi Arabia despite its oil wealth as compared to its neighbors will become clear […]
  • The Causes of Poverty Concentration in the Modern World Even though the average income of people living in developed countries is above the poverty line, the nations still experience concentrations of poverty especially when it comes to income inequality.
  • The Myth of the Culture of Poverty Unfortunately, rather all of the stereotypes regarding poor people are widespread in many societies and this has served to further increase the problem of generational poverty. Poor people are regarded to be in the state […]
  • War on Poverty in US The term war on poverty officially came into being in 1964 and referred to concerted government efforts to eradicate assiduous poverty in the United States of America.
  • Consumerism: Affecting Families Living in Poverty in the United States Hence, leading to the arising of consumerism protection acts and policies designed to protect consumers from dishonest sellers and producers, which indicates the high degree of consumer’s ignorance, and hence failure to make decisions of […]
  • Freedom From Poverty as a Human Right and the Un Declaration of Human Rights This reveals the nature of the interrelatedness of the whole boy of human rights and the need to address human rights in that context.
  • Environmental Degradation and Poverty It is however important to understand the causes of the environmental degradation and the ways to reduce them, which will promote the improvement of the environmental quality.
  • War on Poverty: Poverty Problem in US Apart from the two initiatives discussed above, another important initiative that can be used in the war against poverty is to engage the poor in programs of fighting poverty.
  • Sweatshops and Third World Poverty When discussing about the role of multinationals in developing countries and the way they treat the economies, the writers are of the opinion that to avoid negative outcomes and promote the spirit of international corporation, […]
  • Effect of Poverty on Children Cognitive and Learning Ability The majority of the conducted researches have reveals a positive relationship between the achievement and SES in all ages of children. Poverty and low socioeconomic status are closely related to cognitive development of children.
  • The Mothers Who Are Not Single: Striving to Avoid Poverty in Single-Parent Families In the present-day world, single-parent families are under a considerable threat due to the lack of support and the feeling of uncertainty that arises once one of the spouses leaves, whether it is due to […]
  • Poverty in the United States Inadequate fundamental learning, a wide gap between the incomes of the o-level learners and the professionals, among others, are some of the cited causes of the poverty, but lack of employment is the root cause.
  • Reducing Poverty: Unilever and Oxfam From the case, it is clear that most MNC’s conduct their businesses in Least Developed Countries with no regard to the communities and environmental concerns of their areas of operations.
  • Impacts of global poverty resistance Though global economy has raised the world productivity and living standards of the humans due to increased income, it has led to greater inequality within countries as evidenced among the less developed economies in Africa […]
  • Microcredit: A Tool for Poverty Alleviation In recognition of the role that microfinance’s can play in the eradication of poverty and hence the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals, The UN duped 2005 as the “year of microcredit”.
  • Third World Countries and the Barriers Stopping them to Escape Poverty The phrase Third World was initially used in the Cold War period to represent those countries that were neither on the West NATO nations referred to as the first world countries, nor on the East-Communist […]
  • Poverty in India and China India’s slow rate of poverty reduction compared to China is due to the differences in their approach to the economy. Improving the living conditions and general well being of the people is not only the […]
  • We Can Stop Poverty in Ghana Today One of the main disadvantages of the document is that the problem of poverty is not considered separately, but only as a part of other economic and social problems.
  • MDG Poverty Goals May be Achieved, but Child Mortality is not Improving The progress in achieving the first goal- to cut the number of people living in poverty by half- is evidenced by the high growth rates in China and India.
  • Social Issues; Crime and Poverty in Camden This has threatened the social security and peaceful coexistence of the people in the community. The larger the differences between the poor and the rich, the high are the chances of crime.
  • Susceptibility of women and Aboriginal people to poverty in Canada The prevalence of poverty among women and the Aboriginal people in Canada is an issue that requires urgent concern. This is a clear indication that eradication of poverty among the women and Aboriginal people in […]
  • Africa’s Poverty: The Influence of Western States These people are the ones who are in a better position to accelerate the development of Africa because they have the skills that are required to take African states to another level.
  • Social Business Scope in Alleviating Poverty Instead of charity work, social business aims at creating a mechanism in which the poor may be helped in a sustainable manner in that the social business makes profits just like conventional businesses, but the […]
  • Cause and Effect of Poverty For example, the disparities in income and wealth are considered as a sign of poverty since the state is related to issues of scarcity and allocation of resources and influence.
  • Poverty, Homelessness and Discrimination in Australia: The case of the Aboriginal He described the various aspects of the ownership of the means of production in the form of factories, machines and technology and emerging system of relations of production as an important determinants of classes.
  • Poverty Indicators in Developing Countries It was chosen by the World Bank for use in determining the poverty rates of poor countries. Poor countries are given first considerations in programming and implementing of the World Bank’s projects.
  • Analytical Research: Poverty in Thailand: Peculiarities and Perspectives Therefore, the government has enacted the various measures that have to improve the level of life and the image of the country.
  • The Problem of Poverty in Bob Marley’s “No Woman, No Cry” To see the situation from the perspective of its social significance, it is necessary to refer to Mills’ concept of sociological imagination and to the division of problems and issues into personal and social ones.
  • Civil War and Poverty: “The Bottom Billion” by Paul Collier He uses it when referring to the countries in the world, which make up the majority of the billion population of the world that unfortunately sits at the bottom of the world in terms of […]
  • Fight Poverty, Fight Illiteracy in Mississippi Initiative What is required is a commitment of the members to voice the concerns of the population to the US government to take actions that are aimed at ensuring that policies are put in place to […]
  • Correlation between Poverty and Obesity The present research seeks to achieve this through assessing the suggestion that today in the Western nations; the poor are now, for the first time in history, proportionately the most obese in the population groups.
  • Poverty and Gender Violence in Congo In the 1990s, the country witnessed a brutal civil conflict that was attributed to struggle for power and the interest of the foreign powers.
  • Is Poverty Of Poor Countries In Anyway Due To Wealth Of The Rich? There is the class of the rich elites and the class of the illiterate poor. This paper seeks to ascertain the argument that poverty of poor countries is due to the wealth of the rich.
  • Poverty Effects on Child Development and Schooling To help children from low-income families cope with poverty, interventions touching in the child’s development and educational outcomes are essential. Those programs campaign against the effects of poverty among children by providing basic nutritional, academic, […]
  • Rural Poverty in Indonesia As on one hand a larger number of people living in poverty are found in the rural areas, on the other hand, there exists “a division in which the pace of poverty reduction slows down […]
  • Property, Urban Poverty and Spatial marginalization Blomley observes that the working of the property market also makes a significant contribution to the urban poverty and consequently leads to spatial marginalization.
  • Social Dynamics: The Southern Poverty Law Centre To appreciate the need for equality and equity in any given society, the author will rely on the activities of an organization championing the same in compiling the report.
  • Poverty and Development into the 21st Century The choices of citizens in the west influence the consumer, as well as political behaviors of the consumers and voters in the developing regions.
  • Technological development in trade and its impacts on poverty On the same note, Cypher and Dietz claim that due to the expenses incurred in updating the technology to international standards, many business organizations have over the years been increasing the prices of their commodities […]
  • Poverty fighting in Saudi Arabia and in USA This report discuses some of the poverty prevention programs that have been adopted by Saudi Arabia and the United States in dealing with a global problem, threatening the lives of billions of people around the […]
  • African Poverty: To Aid, or Not to Aid In my opinion, granting educational aid to Africa is one of the best strategies required by African economies and eradicates poverty.
  • Does Parental Involvement and Poverty Affect Children’s Education and Their Overall Performance? The discussion will look at the various ways in which parents are involved in the academic performance of children and also whether poverty affects the involvement of parents in the academic performance of their children.
  • The Connection Between Poverty and Mental Health Problems The daily struggle to earn a daily bread takes a toll on an individual mental health and contributes to mental health problem.
  • Poverty Reduction in Africa, Central America and Asia In spite of the growing attention into the subject, poverty threatens majority of the communities and societies in the developing countries, particularly in Africa.
  • Global Poverty, Social Policy, and Education Defining, compare and contrasting modernization and dependency theories in relation to development and global poverty stating suggestions and causes of poverty globally Modernization theory as the name suggests, refers to modernizing or venturing to new […]
  • Global Poverty, Social Poverty and Education It is therefore quite important that new forms of education systems and development theories are introduced based on situations in developing countries.
  • How World Vision International Contributes to Poverty Reduction It is with the understanding of the root causes of poverty that World Vision International, it enacts programs that address the root causes so that they remain sustainable in the future even after the withdraw […]
  • Critical Analyses of the Climate of Fear Report from Southern Poverty Law Center Following the murder of Marcelo Lucero in the Suffolk County, the federal government initiated an investigation to establish the foundations of the practice and pattern of hate crimes against the undocumented immigrants.
  • Global poverty and education This paper will discuss the criticisms of the development theories, the historical context of development efforts, the role of international and non-governmental organizations in multilateral education and solutions offered by contemporary scholars to enhance the […]
  • Terrorism, poverty and financial instability Terrorist activities are perpetrated to compel the affected parties to comply with the demands of the terrorists. Some of the conflicts in the developing countries caused by the instability and poverty in the third world […]
  • Poverty Prevalence in the United States In order to meet the American Dream, the issue of poverty needs to be addressed in the US in order to pave the way for the realization of these goals. The higher is the gap […]
  • Films Comparison: “The Fields” by Roland Joffe and “Hotel Rwanda” by Terry George In the killing fields, three journalists Schanberg, Swain and Pran who witnessed the Cambodian genocide under the regimes of Pol Pot and Rouge recount the stories and events of the genocide.
  • Issues Underlying Global Poverty and Provision of Aid The argument Barrientos, Hulme and Hanlon holds is indeed strong, but it is very important to note that even with the massive achievements that aid programs have achieved in the setting up of individuals and […]
  • Development is No Longer the Solution to poverty Thus, the so-called development throughout the world has led to the creation of additional dependence of the poor nations to the rich nations.
  • Millennium Development Goals in Kenya, Ivory Coast, Haiti, and Chad Relationship between poverty and education As has been observed above, low income countries that experience extreme famine tend to have the lowest rates of education.
  • Why is poverty important in contemporary security studies? In addition, the essay will explore the evolution of global security studies and evaluate the significance of poverty in the modern security studies.
  • How Poverty Affects Children Development? The fact is that as much as it is the responsibility of parents and guardians to ensure that children get their needs, the inability of the parents and guardians to provide these basic needs to […]
  • Social Entrepreneurship and Successful Entrepreneur To access it easily, one has to design the program in a way that compels the legions of imitators and replicators.
  • Hispanic Childhood Poverty in the United States Importance of the Problem The problem of childhood poverty in Hispanic groups in America is important to this study and to the social studies in America.
  • Wordsworth’s Vision of Childhood in His Poems “We Are Seven” and “Alice Fell or Poverty” Specifically, the joint publication he released in 1798 known as “Lyrical Ballads” are considered the most important publications in the rise of the Romantic literature in the UK and Europe.
  • Importance of Foreign Aid in Poverty Reducing Foreign aid is one of the methods used by wealthy nations to help reduce poverty in the least developed countries. Such countries as the US and Canada have provided financial aid to a number of […]
  • “Urban and Rural Estimates of Poverty: Recent Advances in Spatial Microsimulation in Australia” by Tanton, R, Harding, A, and McNamara, J The purpose of this article was to use “a spatial microsimulation model to calculate the rates of poverty for small areas in Australia”.
  • Does Poverty Lead to Terrorism? While there are conflicting arguments regarding the factors that influence terrorism, scholars agree on the need to evaluate evidence on the causes of terrorism and develop concrete strategies and approaches to tackle a vice that […]
  • Concept of Poverty The main difference between this definition and other definitions of poverty highlighted in this paper is the broad understanding of the concept.
  • Measuring Poverty and Social Exclusion in Australia The topic, measuring poverty and social exclusion was chosen to broaden the understanding of poverty and elements of social exclusion. Therefore, it is imperative for policymakers to recognise the role of diverse indicators that measure […]
  • The Rise of Extremist Groups, Disparity and Poverty Despite the negative consequences that terrorists have posed to the society, the fight against the vice has become more difficult with time, especially in the light of the increasing support for the violent actions against […]
  • Poverty and Domestic Violence It is based on this that in the next section, I have utilized my educational experience in order to create a method to address the issue of domestic violence from the perspective of a social […]
  • How do Migration and Urbanization Bring About Urban Poverty in Developing Countries? When there is a high rate of rural to urban migration, there is pressure on the limited resources in the urban centers.
  • Energy and Poverty Solutions – World Bank Ultimately, bank team confirms eligibility of all aspects of the project and their consistency with World Bank requirements and at the same time the potential of intended government to efficiently implement the projects.
  • Energy and Poverty Solutions – Non-traditional Cookstoves The assessment paper which is based on a survey of women in rural Bangladesh explores the most valued attribute of a non-traditional stove, the significance of downward sloping curve, factors that influence household decisions to […]
  • Sociological Indicators of Energy Poverty Access to energy has been viewed as one of the ways of uplifting the living standards of people. The lack of enough energy supplies is perceived to be a major contributor to poverty in this […]
  • Millennium Development Goals – Energy and Poverty Solutions It is in the family of access to assert. It is in the family of inequity.
  • Tourism Contribution to Poverty Reduction Managers usually make targeting errors such as poor delivery of tourism benefits to the poor and accruing tourism benefit to the rich in the society.
  • Causes of Poverty Traps in an Economy, its Results and Ways of Avoiding them Unemployment in an economy results to low incomes to the workers since their services are readily available in the market which in turn leads to reduction in the disposable income of the workers.
  • What Should You Do? Poverty Issue The only way to stop that would be to sacrifice his car, to stop the train by pushing it on the track but he does not.
  • “Facing Poverty With a Rich Girl’s Habits” by Suki Kim Finally, revealing the problems of adapting to a new social status, the story turns remarkably complex, which also lends it a certain charm.
  • Business and Pollution Inequality in Poor States Pollution in the third world countries leads to the degradation of the environment reducing the quality of life for the people.
  • The Economic Effect of Issuing Food Stamps to Those in Poverty This method would be the most suitable because of the large number of participants to be involved in collection of data. The interviewer will have to be highly responsive to individual differences of participants and […]
  • Globalization and the Issue of Poverty: Making the World a Better Place The aforementioned definitions of globalization and poverty can help define the potential changes that the globalization will have on the rates of the former in the nearest future.
  • Challenges of Social Integration: Poverty The government of Romania uses two measures of poverty to estimate the level of poverty in the country: absolute and relative poverty measures.
  • The World Bank and the Poverty of Reform However, with the various leadership scandals that have been observed in the bank, experts now doubt whether the World Bank has the capacity to address the various development challenges that are facing the developing nations.
  • Poverty Research Proposal To justify this, the recent and most current statistics from the Census Bureau shows that the level and rate of poverty in USA is increasing, with minority ethnic groups being the most disadvantaged.
  • Global Poverty Studies and their Importance The most difficult thing in discussing and scientifically explaining the phenomenon of poverty is that there is no macroeconomic approach to it.
  • Human Capital and Poverty in Scottsdale According to Lang and LeFurgy, over 52% of the residents of this city have a degree or higher education attainments, because of the education policies and the attractiveness of the city to foreigners.
  • “The Singer Solution to World Poverty” by Peter Singer The article “The Singer Solution to World Poverty” by author Peter Singer attempts to provide a workable solution to the world poverty problem.
  • Catholic Dealing with Poverty and Homelessness The idea of “common good” will support many people in the world. The practice will support many people in the world.
  • How Racial Segregation Contributes to Minority’s Poverty? In the conclusion section, the paper argues that racial segregation though a contributor to concentrated poverty in minority communities, is a social issue that arguably cannot be legislated.
  • The Poverty Across the US Culture This paper argues that the prevalence of poverty in most parts of the US is a result of poor strategizing, the lack of education, mistakes in choosing courses, the disappearance of low-skill jobs and a […]
  • The Solution to World Poverty by Peter Singer Therefore, in the worst case scenario, the implementation of the plan proposed by Singer will lead to the financial instability for not only the beneficiaries, but also for the people donating for the wellbeing of […]
  • Suburbanisation of Poverty in the USA In particular, it is necessary to focus on the transformation of American economy and changing attitudes of people who previously wanted to settle in suburban areas.
  • Max Weber’s Thoughts on Poverty Weber has contributed to the exploration of the origins of poverty and the impact of religions on the attitude to it.
  • Poverty as the Deprivation of Capabilities Nussbaum supports Sen’s argument that efforts in poverty eradication should be focused on capability deprivation, which is the taking away of the abilities bestowed on someone, rather than raising the income of the poor.
  • Poverty Controversy in the USA The essay provides a consistent discussion of poverty in the USA as well as verifies the standards of socioeconomic life in America against those, which exist in the developing countries.
  • Detroit Poverty and “Focus Hope” Organization There is a great number of factors and issues that lead to a certain part of the population to live in poverty.”Focus Hope” is an organization that tries to alleviate the suffering of those in […]
  • Poverty: $2.00 a Day in America When conversations about the poor occur in the city of Washington, they usually discuss the struggles of the working poor, forgetting about the issues that the non-working poor face day by day.
  • Social Issues of Families in Poverty With the tightened budget, parents of the families living in poverty struggle to make ends meet, and in the course of their struggles, they experience many stresses and depressions.
  • Profit from Organizing Tours to Poverty Areas The tour operators are in the business of selling services that are beneficial to both the tourist and the people in the destination country.
  • The Rise of Poverty in the US The main issue that is portrayed in the article is the presence of the invisible poor and the homeless poor in the US.
  • Poverty in the Novel “Snow” by Orhan Pamuk All through, the author creatively captures the attention of the reader without watering down the content and flow of the storyline. The reality of poverty is undeniable in this book.
  • Global Conflict and Poverty Crisis The contemporary issue of global conflict and poverty crisis requires the attention of international communities and governments. The study of international conflicts and poverty crisis is important for individuals, communities, and nations across the world.
  • Global Poverty Reduction: Economic Policy Recommendation Relative poverty is the unforgivable level of poverty ranging between average and absolute poverty. In accordance with the capabilities approach, poverty and dispossession are as a result of lack of individual capacity and competencies.
  • Global Poverty and the Endeavors of Addressing It Despite the attempts of modern economists to reconsider the financial options for the poor, the latter will always exist unless the very structure of economy is replaced with an entirely new principle of distributive justice.
  • Poverty and Education: School Funding Reinforces Inequality The government supplied the highest amount of funds in New York City Schools, but the inadequacy made them to achieve the poorest results.
  • Poverty Effect on Children 1 million children, aged between 5 to 17 years old, were noted to be from low income families which, as explained by George Stokes, & Wilkinson, can result in a lack of access to a […]
  • African Poverty at the Millennium: Causes and Challenges The book “African Poverty at the Millennium: Causes, Complexities, and Challenges” explores the issue of poverty in Africa. In the second part of the book, the authors discuss the social, political, and economic causes of […]
  • Divorce Outcomes: Poverty and Instability Divorce is not the solution to challenges in marriage since it results in poverty, instability and unstable environment for children. Personal analysis shows that due to this situation, some children are usually left to the […]
  • The Relationship between Poverty and Education My research paper tends to provide investigation towards the amount of characteristics that alter the degree of registration into institutions of higher education of scholars from inferior social groups; to define the relative importance of […]
  • Poverty Reduction Among American Single Mothers The typical causes of the single-mothers’ unemployment and poverty are the lack of education to receive the well-paid job and the absence of the social support to provide the adequate care for children.
  • Poverty in “A Theology of Liberation” by Gutierrez The most critical aspect in which this state deviates from the former two is that a poor person perfectly understands the necessity to abide with God and, simultaneously, the debilitating effect of poverty.
  • Poverty and Social Welfare in the United States Nevertheless, unemployment is not the only source of poverty, and the New World was hardly the land of wealth and prosperity.
  • Poverty in Orwell’s “Down and Out in Paris and London” The fact that the structure of society is discussed is especially interesting, and it is suggested that opinions of people that live in poverty are not acknowledged most of the time.
  • Children and Poverty in “Born into Brothels” Documentary The desire to cognize the meaning of life involves the quest for the internal integrity and constancy of the personality. The fact of belonging to a particular cultural group, in which there are standards and […]
  • Poverty and Challenges in Finding Solutions It is obvious, that an ideal solution to the issue of poverty is distribution of these funds between people in need and improvement of current situation.
  • American War on Poverty Throughout US History It was the beginning of the issue of poverty. However, there is an opinion that it was the question of policy and his way to increase the level of popularity.
  • Poverty Reasons in Ancient Times and Nowadays It is possible to suggest that there are some main reasons for poverty, which are the ineffective political system, discrimination, and mistakes of the rulers of different states.
  • Do Poverty Traps Exist? Assessing the Evidence They believe unless there is a proper policy in place that can change the fundamentals of the economy, simple investment with the assistance of foreign aid will not help the country to come out of […]
  • “Halving Global Poverty” by Besley and Burges Tim Besley and Robin Burges note in their paper “Halving Global Poverty” that, depending on the average real per capita income of a country, high inequality of income is positively correlated to the high degree […]
  • Poverty as a Cause of the Sudanese Civil War The connection between poverty and conflict has been analyzed in the West African region where “11 of the world’s 25 poorest countries are contained and is currently one of the most unstable regions of the […]
  • Poor Economics and Global Poverty In the given paper, we will discuss and analyze the factors contributing to the increase in poverty rates, review the consequences and effects of poverty on individuals and the society as a whole, and outline […]
  • Poverty in the US The United States of America is one of the most diverse countries in the world. The question here is what are the possible causes of poverty in a country like the United States.
  • Culture of Poverty in the “Park Avenue” Documentary In contrast, the uncaring and greedy attitudes of the people in the movie could be characterized as a “culture of wealth”.
  • Poverty Rates Among Whites and Blacks Americans To support the evidence provided by the new report, the author of the article cites the data of the American Community Survey from 2009-2013 that demonstrate that in Chicago, more than 30% of poor black […]
  • Global Health Governance and Poverty The aim of this paper is to outline the importance of health in global governance and discuss the issue of poverty in less-developed nations as a significant challenge to the global health system.
  • Vietnamese Poverty and Productivity Increase There was also a change in the percentage of the population that lived on or below the poverty line. In1993, 60% of the population was living on or below the poverty line through this reduced […]
  • Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty The hypothesis presented by the authors is a difference in the economies: while the former shows the signs of the inclusive economy, which does not restrict the wealth from being distributed among the population for […]
  • Energy Poverty Elimination in Developing Countries Responding to the article by Sagar, I would like to emphasize that the establishment of a special fund to assist the mentioned countries in alleviating energy poverty is a feasible idea.
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  • The Relation Between Poverty and Justice
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  • Theories of Fertility. Economics Aspect and Poverty.
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  • Poverty and Its Effects on Women
  • Poverty and Its Effects on Females
  • Poverty and Inequality in Modern World
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  • The Underclass Poverty and Associated Social Problems
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  • Marginalization and Poverty of Rural Women
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  • Poverty as a Great Social Problem and Its Causes
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  • Poverty by Anarchism and Marxism Approaches
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  • Is Poverty From Developing Countries Imagined?
  • Social and Economic Policy Program: Globalization, Growth, and Poverty
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  • The End of Poverty Possibility
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  • Poverty in United States. Facts and Causes
  • War and Poverty Connection in Developing Countries
  • Values and Ethics: Poverty in Canada
  • Poverty in America: A Paradox
  • The Poverty Rates in the USA
  • The Effects of Poverty Within Criminal Justice
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  • “The End of Poverty” by Phillipe Diaz
  • Poverty Sustainability in Sub-Saharan Countries: The Role of NGOs
  • The Problem of Poverty in Africa
  • The Notion of “Poverty” is a Key Word of a Modern Society
  • Intro to Sociology: Poverty
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  • Poverty in Africa: Impact of the Economy Growth Rate
  • The Internet and Poverty in Society
  • Poverty: Causes and Effects on the Population and Country
  • Poverty and Diseases
  • Poor Kids: The Impact of Poverty on Youth
  • Individualistic Concepts and Structural Views on Poverty in American Society
  • The Problem of Childhood Poverty
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  • Health, Poverty, and Social Equity: The Global Response to the Ebola Outbreak
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  • Corporate Social Responsibility & Poverty Alleviation
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  • Dependency Theory and “The End of Poverty?”
  • The Impact of Poverty on Children Under the Age of 11
  • Microeconomic Perspective on Poverty Evolution in Pakistan
  • Poverty: A Sociological Imagination Perspective
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  • Couple Aims to Fight Poverty, One Village at a Time
  • “Poverty, Race, and the Contexts of Achievement” by Maryah Stella Fram et al.
  • Community Health Needs: Poverty
  • The Issue of Vicious Circle of Poverty in Brazil
  • The Criminalization of Poverty in Canada
  • Poverty’s Effects on Delinquency
  • Guns Do Not Kill, Poverty Does
  • Children Living in Poverty and Education
  • Wealth and Poverty: The Christian Teaching on Wealth and Poverty
  • Poverty, Social Class, and Intersectionality
  • Researching the Problem of Poverty
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  • Poverty and Sex Trafficking: Qualitative Systematic Review
  • Analysis of Theodore Dalrymple’s “What Is Poverty?”
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  • Poverty in New York City, and Its Reasons
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  • Poverty in “A Modest Proposal” by Swift
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  • Is Poverty a Choice or a Generational Curse?
  • “Poverty, Toxic Stress, and Education…” Study by Kelly & Li
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  • Reducing Poverty in the North Miami Beach Community
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  • Anti-Poverty Programs From the Federal Government
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  • Why Has Poverty Increased in Zimbabwe?
  • Should Private Donations Help Eliminate Child Poverty?
  • Why Was Poverty Re-discovered in Britain in the late 1950s and Early 1960?
  • Why Does Child Labour Persist With Declining Poverty?
  • Why Are Child Poverty Rates Higher in Britain Than in Germany?
  • What Are the Principles and Practices for Measuring Child Poverty in Rich Countries?
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  • Single-mother Poverty: How Much Do Educational Differences in Single Motherhood Matter?
  • What Are the Causes and Effects of Poverty in the United?
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  • Why Were Poverty Rates So High in the 1980s?
  • With Exhaustible Resources, Can a Developing Country Escape From the Poverty Trap?
  • Why Does Poverty Persist in Rural Ethiopia?
  • Who Became Poor, Who Escaped Poverty, and Why?
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  • Poverty Essay for Students in English

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Essay on Poverty

Poverty is a disease that has no cure. The deeper this disease is, the deeper its wound. By the way, man lives under compulsion. But usually one wants to avoid it. Poverty is a condition of extreme poverty for any person or human being. This is a situation when a person starts to lack important things in his life such as the roof, necessary food, clothes, medicines, etc. to continue his life.

The causes of poverty are excessive population, fatal and contagious diseases, natural disasters, low agricultural yields, unemployment, casteism, illiteracy, gender inequality, environmental problems, changing trends in the economy of the country, untouchability, little or limited access to people's rights, Problems such as political violence, sponsored crime, corruption, lack of encouragement, inaction, ancient social beliefs, etc. have to be faced.

Poverty has become a big problem of the world, efforts are being made across the world today to remove poverty, but the problem is that it does not take the name of ending. This problem affects a human's economic and daily life. Poverty teaches man to live like a slave in which he has to change the place over time, in this situation due to the lack of education of the poor, his nature and speech also make a difference. Living in a world of poor people has become a curse. Getting enough money to get food is like getting relief from a curse for the poor, that's why they do not have access to education.

Reasons of Poverty

There are many reasons that have continued with carrying it for a long time. Because of this,  freedom, mental and physical fitness, and lack of security in a person remains. It is very important that in order to live a normal life, the country and the whole world will have to work together to bring proper physical and mental health, complete education, a home for everyone, and other important things.

In today's time, there is the problem of poverty which gives all the pain, pain, and despair to the poor. Due to the lack of money from poverty, I show the lack of many things. Poverty makes children spend life in compulsion. If forced to make bread, sometimes in bringing children's books. At that time he is also unable to raise children.

We can tell poverty in many ways like it has become a common thing in India. Most of the people here are unable to get the things they need. Here a vast section of the population is illiterate, hungry, and forced to live without clothes and a home. About half of India's population suffers from this epidemic of poverty.

A poor person lives his life without possession of basic things like food for two times, clean water, house, clothes, proper education, etc. There are many reasons for poverty in India. Incorrect distribution of national income is also a reason. People in the low-income group are much poorer than those in the high-income group. Children of poor families never get proper education, nutrition, and a happy childhood environment. The main cause of poverty is illiteracy, corruption, growing population, weak agriculture, the growing gap between rich and poverty, etc.

Measures to Control Poverty

Corruption has to be erased.

Unemployed will have to give proper employment

A growing population will have to be stopped

Farmers have to be given proper facilities for farming

Education should be provided to children for proper education

Poverty is not just a human problem but it is a national problem. It should be solved by implementing some effective methods on a quick basis. Every person should be united by ending corruption. A problem has been created in which he does not get even the basics. That is why at present, many measures are being taken to prevent poverty so that the standard of living of people around the world can be improved.

Short Essays on Poverty

Poverty is akin to being a slave, as a person cannot achieve anything he desires. It has various faces that alter depending on who you are, where you are, and when. It can be defined in various ways depending on how a person feels or experiences it.

Poverty is a state that no one wants to be in, but it must be removed owing to cultural norms, natural disasters, or a lack of adequate education. The individual who is experiencing it frequently wishes to flee. Poverty is a call for poor people to earn enough money to eat, have access to education, have adequate shelter, dress appropriately, and take steps to protect themselves from social and political violence.

It's a problem that goes unnoticed yet significantly impacts a person's social life. Poverty is an entirely avoidable problem, but there are various reasons why it has persisted in the past.

Poverty robs people of their freedom, mental health, physical well-being, and security. Everyone must strive to eradicate poverty from the country and the world, ensuring appropriate physical and mental health, full literacy, a home for all, and other necessities for living a simple life.

When a person cannot do anything according to his will, he is said to be in poverty. Many different faces alter depending on who you are, where you are, and time. It can be characterized in a variety of ways, depending on how the person feels or what they have achieved. Poverty is a circumstance that no one wants to be in, even if it is forced upon them due to a lack of experience, nature, natural disasters, or a lack of suitable education. Humans have won it, but they prefer to stay away from it. Poverty is a call for needed clothing and protection against social and political violence for the poor to earn enough money to buy food, receive an education, and find a suitable place to live.

This is an unseen problem that harms a person's social life. Even though numerous factors have contributed to its long-term persistence, poverty is a perfectly preventable problem. As a result, a person's freedom, mental and physical well-being, and sense of security are all compromised. It is critical to bring poverty and poverty from worldwide to work together to live everyday life, provide adequate physical and mental health, complete education, a home for everyone, and other essential things.

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FAQs on Poverty Essay for Students in English

1. What are the Effects of Poverty?

When people are not able to afford their basic necessities. For example medications and hospital fees are impossible to afford for that means they choose crook ways of obtaining money i.e. stealing, robbery, etc.  

2. What are the Possible Ways to Remove Poverty?

Since India is a developing country, eliminating poverty here is much tougher than in other countries but still some measures can be taken and government assistance would be much helpful in this step which requires some relevant planning and policies for those who fall under the poverty line. Another major factor of poverty is illiteracy and unemployment. Therefore education is the most efficient tool to confine the poverty line in the country. 

3. What is the Poverty Line?

The Below Poverty Line (BPL) signifies the state of people who fall under poverty status. It also symbolizes an economic drawback. In addition, it is used for people who are in need of help and assistance from the government.

4. What are the causes of poverty?

Poverty has several causes, including a lack of access to essentials such as water, food, shelter, education, and healthcare. Poverty is also caused by inequities such as gender or ethnic discrimination, bad governance, conflict, exploitation, and domestic violence. These disparities not only cause a person or a society to fall into poverty, but they can also prevent people from receiving social assistance that could help them get out of it. Due to political upheaval, past or present conflict, corrupt authorities, and lousy infrastructure that restricts access to education, clean water, healthcare, and other essentials, children and communities in fragile states confront greater poverty rates.

5. What can we do to put an end to extreme poverty?

We can aid in the eradication of extreme poverty by determining what causes it in a particular community and then determining what needs to change. Because poverty manifests itself differently in different regions and is caused by different circumstances, the work to end extreme poverty differs depending on the situation. More economic resources are needed to assist people in increasing their income and better providing for themselves and their families. To ensure that poverty does not return, the work must be sustainable, regardless of the solution. As a result, the community must be involved at every stage.

6. What criteria are used to assess poverty?

Each country's government determines poverty levels by conducting home surveys of its citizens. The World Bank, for example, assists and may conduct their surveys, although data collecting is time-consuming and slow. New high-frequency surveys are being created and tested, leveraging estimations and mobile phone technologies. If you want to learn more about these topics, download the Vedantu App that has been specifically designed and curated for students by experts.

7. What is the poverty cycle?

Poverty can be a catch-22 situation. To escape poverty, a person requires access to possibilities such as education, clean water, local medical services, and financial means. Poverty creates a generational cycle if these critical factors are not there. If parents cannot afford to take their children to school, they will struggle to find work when they grow up. Even natural disasters and conflicts can exacerbate the poverty cycle by bringing more people.

8. What are the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)?

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are a set of goals for countries worldwide to work together in a global partnership for the benefit of people, the environment, and prosperity. The Sustainable Development Goals aim to abolish extreme poverty for all people everywhere by 2030 and to reduce the proportion of people living in poverty in all forms by at least half. In September 2015, the United Nations member states accepted this objective as one of 17 to end extreme poverty.

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Linda Tirado photographed by Scott Suchman near her home in Washington DC for the Observer New Revie

‘Poor people don’t plan long-term. We’ll just get our hearts broken’

Why do so many poor people eat junk food, fail to budget properly, show no ambition? Linda Tirado knew exactly why… because she was one of them. Here, in an extract from her book, Hand to Mouth, she tells her story in her own words

  • Q&A with Linda Tirado

I n the autumn of 2013 I was in my first term of school in a decade. I had two jobs; my husband, Tom, was working full-time; and we were raising our two small girls. It was the first time in years that we felt like maybe things were looking like they’d be OK for a while.

After a gruelling shift at work, I was unwinding online when I saw a question from someone on a forum I frequented: Why do poor people do things that seem so self-destructive? I thought I could at least explain what I’d seen and how I’d reacted to the pressures of being poor. I wrote my answer to the question , hit post, and didn’t think more about it for at least a few days. This is what it said:

Why I make terrible decisions, or, poverty thoughts

There’s no way to structure this coherently. They are random observations that might help explain the mental processes. But often, I think that we look at the academic problems of poverty and have no idea of the why. We know the what and the how, and we can see systemic problems, but it’s rare to have a poor person actually explain it on their own behalf. So this is me doing that, sort of.

Rest is a luxury for the rich. I get up at 6am, go to school (I have a full course load, but I only have to go to two in-person classes), then work, then I get the kids, then pick up my husband, then have half an hour to change and go to Job 2. I get home from that at around 12.30am, then I have the rest of my classes and work to tend to. I’m in bed by 3am. This isn’t every day, I have two days off a week from each of my obligations. I use that time to clean the house and soothe Mr Martini [her partner], see the kids for longer than an hour and catch up on schoolwork.

Those nights I’m in bed by midnight, but if I go to bed too early I won’t be able to stay up the other nights because I’ll fuck my pattern up, and I drive an hour home from Job 2 so I can’t afford to be sleepy. I never get a day off from work unless I am fairly sick. It doesn’t leave you much room to think about what you are doing, only to attend to the next thing and the next. Planning isn’t in the mix.

When I was pregnant the first time, I was living in a weekly motel for some time. I had a mini-fridge with no freezer and a microwave. I was on WIC [government-funded nutritional aid for women, infants and children]. I ate peanut butter from the jar and frozen burritos because they were 12 for $2. Had I had a stove, I couldn’t have made beef burritos that cheaply. And I needed the meat, I was pregnant. I might not have had any prenatal care, but I am intelligent enough to eat protein and iron while knocked up.

I know how to cook. I had to take Home Ec to graduate from high school. Most people on my level didn’t. Broccoli is intimidating. You have to have a working stove, and pots, and spices, and you’ll have to do the dishes no matter how tired you are or they’ll attract bugs. It is a huge new skill for a lot of people. That’s not great, but it’s true. If you fuck it up, you could make your family sick.

We have learned not to try too hard to be middle class. It never works out well and always makes you feel worse for having tried and failed yet again. Better not to try. It makes more sense to get food that you know will be palatable and cheap and that keeps well. Junk food is a pleasure that we are allowed to have; why would we give that up?

We have very few of them.

The closest Planned Parenthood [family planning clinic] to me is three hours. That’s a lot of money in gas. Lots of women can’t afford that, and even if you live near one you probably don’t want to be seen coming in and out in a lot of areas. We’re aware that we are not “having kids”, we’re “breeding”. We have kids for much the same reasons that I imagine rich people do. Urge to propagate and all. Nobody likes poor people procreating, but they judge abortion even harder.

Convenience food is just that. And we are not allowed many conveniences. Especially since the Patriot Act [aimed at strengthening domestic security in the war against terrorism] was passed, it’s hard to get a bank account. But without one, you spend a lot of time figuring out where to cash a cheque and get money orders to pay bills. Most motels now have a no-credit-card-no-room policy. I wandered around San Francisco for five hours in the rain once with nearly a thousand dollars on me and could not rent a room even if I gave them a $500 cash deposit and surrendered my cellphone to the desk to hold as surety.

Nobody gives enough thought to depression. You have to understand that we know that we will never not feel tired. We will never feel hopeful. We will never get a vacation.

Patients without medical insurance flock to a free dentistry event in Los Angeles.

Ever. We know that the very act of being poor guarantees that we will never not be poor. It doesn’t give us much reason to improve ourselves. We don’t apply for jobs because we know we can’t afford to look nice enough to hold them. I would make a super legal secretary but I’ve been turned down more than once because I “don’t fit the image of the firm”, which is a nice way of saying “gtfo, pov”. I am good enough to cook the food, hidden away in the kitchen, but my boss won’t make me a server because I don’t “fit the corporate image”. I am not beautiful. I have missing teeth and skin that looks like it will when you live on B12 and coffee and nicotine and no sleep. Beauty is a thing you get when you can afford it, and that’s how you get the job that you need in order to be beautiful. There isn’t much point trying.

Cooking attracts roaches. Nobody realises that. I’ve spent hours impaling roach bodies and leaving them out on toothpick spikes to discourage others from entering. It doesn’t work, but is amusing.

“Free” only exists for rich people. It’s great that there’s a bowl of condoms at my school, but most poor people will never set foot on a college campus. We don’t belong there. There’s a clinic? Great! There’s still a copay [cost levied by health insurance companies]. We’re not going. Besides, all they’ll tell you at the clinic is you need to see a specialist, which, seriously? Might as well be located on Mars for how accessible it is. “Low cost” and “sliding scale” sound like “money you have to spend” to me, and they can’t help you anyway.

I smoke. It’s expensive. It’s also the best option. You see, I am always, always exhausted. It’s a stimulant. When I am too tired to walk one more step, I can smoke and go for another hour. When I am enraged and beaten down and incapable of accomplishing one more thing, I can smoke and I feel a little better, just for a minute. It is the only relaxation I am allowed. It is not a good decision, but it is the only one that I have access to. It is the only thing I have found that keeps me from collapsing or exploding.

I make a lot of poor financial decisions. None of them matter, in the long term. I will never not be poor, so what does it matter if I don’t pay a thing and a half this week instead of just one thing? It’s not like the sacrifice will result in improved circumstances; the thing holding me back isn’t that I blow five bucks at Wendy’s. It’s that now that I have proven that I am a Poor Person that is all that I am or ever will be. It is not worth it to me to live a bleak life devoid of small pleasures so that one day I can make a single large purchase. I will never have large pleasures to hold on to.

There’s a certain pull to live what bits of life you can while there’s money in your pocket, because no matter how responsible you are you will be broke in three days anyway. When you never have enough money it ceases to have meaning. I imagine having a lot of it is the same thing.

Poverty is bleak and cuts off your long-term brain. It’s why you see people with four different babydaddies instead of one. You grab a bit of connection wherever you can to survive. You have no idea how strong the pull to feel worthwhile is. It’s more basic than food. You go to these people who make you feel lovely for an hour that one time, and that’s all you get. You’re probably not compatible with them for anything long term, but right this minute they can make you feel powerful and valuable. It does not matter what will happen in a month. Whatever happens in a month is probably going to be just about as indifferent as whatever happened today or last week. None of it matters. We don’t plan long term because if we do we’ll just get our hearts broken. It’s best not to hope. You just take what you can get as you spot it.

I am not asking for sympathy. I am just trying to explain, on a human level, how it is that people make what look from the outside like awful decisions. This is what our lives are like, and here are our defence mechanisms, and here is why we think differently. It’s certainly self-defeating, but it’s safer. That’s all. I hope it helps make sense of it.

While I was thinking that maybe a couple of people would read my essay, lightning struck. A lot of people started to share it. Someone suggested that I submit it for posting on the main page of the website we hung out on. That wasn’t uncommon, so I did. The next thing I knew, the world had turned upside down. The Huffington Post ran my essay on its front page , Forbes  ran it, the Nation  ran it.

After the original piece went viral, I got a lot of emails from people who told me that they did not agree; they did not cope in the same ways. That’s fair, and true. Keep it in mind.

What was neither fair nor true was the criticism I received inferring that I was the wrong sort of poor. A lot of this criticism seemed to centre on the fact that I was not born into poverty, as though that were the only way someone might find herself unable to make rent. And yet we have a term for it: downward mobility. We have homeless PhDs and more than one recently middle-class person on food stamps. Poverty is a reality to more people than we’re willing to admit.

Overall, though, the response was overwhelmingly one of solidarity. I got thousands of emails from people saying they understood exactly what I was trying to describe, that they felt the same way. They told me their stories – the things that bothered them and how they were dealing with life. It’s not just me who feels this way, not by a long shot. Poor people talk about these things but no one’s listening to us. We don’t usually get a chance to explain our own logic. The original piece that you just read was simply that: an explanation.

I am doing what I can to walk you through what it is to be poor. To be sure, this is only one version. There are millions of us; our experiences and reactions to them are as varied as our personalities and backgrounds.

I haven’t had it worse than anyone else, and actually, that’s kind of the point. This is just what life is for roughly one-third of Americans and one in five people in Great Britain. We all handle it in our own ways, but we all work in the same jobs, live in the same places, feel the same sense of never quite catching up. We’re not any happier about exploding welfare costs than anyone else is, believe me. It’s not like everyone grows up and dreams of working two essentially meaningless part-time jobs while collecting food stamps.

It’s just that there aren’t many other options for a lot of people. In fact, the Urban Institute found that half of Americans will experience poverty at some point before they’re 65. Most will come out of it after a relatively short time, 75% in four years. But that still leaves 25% who don’t get out quickly, and the study also found that the longer you stay in poverty, the less likely it becomes that you will ever get out. Most people who live near the bottom go through cycles of being in poverty and just above it – sometimes they’re just OK and sometimes they’re underwater. It depends on the year, the job, how healthy you are. What I can say for sure is that downward mobility is like quicksand. Once it grabs you, it keeps constraining your options until it’s got you completely. I slid to the bottom through a mix of my own decisions and some seriously bad luck. I think that’s true of most people.

While it can seem like upward mobility is blocked by a lead ceiling, the layer between lower-middle class and poor is horrifyingly porous from above. A lot of us live in that spongy divide.

I got here in a pretty average way: I left home at 16 for college, promptly behaved as well as you’d expect a teenager to, and was estranged from my family for over a decade. I quit college when it became clear that I was taking out loans to no good effect; I wasn’t ready for it yet. I chased a career simply because it was the first opportunity available rather than because it was sensible. I also had medical bills. I had bouts of unemployment, I had a drunken driver total my car. I had everything I owned destroyed in a flood.

Demonstrators face tear-gas during protests in Ferguson, Missouri.

So it’s not just one or the other: nature or nurture, poor or not poor. Poverty is a potential outcome for all of us.

This is a huge societal problem, and we’re just starting to come to grips with all the ways that a technological revolution and globalisation have vastly increased inequality. You cannot blame your average citizen for those things. Nor can you blame individual companies – it is how we, collectively, have decided to do things. We got here partially because of bad policy decisions and partially because of factors nobody could have foreseen. Telling an individual company to do better is like telling a poor individual to save more – true and helpful, but not so easy in practice. Most companies, like most people, aren’t the top 1%. They are following the market, not driving it. Besides which, any asshole with money can buy and run a company. They’re not all smart enough to figure out long-term investments in human capital.

I am not, for all my frustration, opposed to capitalism. Most westerners, poor ones included, aren’t. We like the idea that anyone can succeed. What I am opposed to is the sort of capitalism that sucks the life out of a whole bunch of the citizenry and then demands that they do better with whatever they have left. If we could just agree that poor people are doing the necessary grunt work and that there is dignity in that too, we’d be able to make it less onerous.

Put another way: I’m not saying that someone doesn’t have to scrub the toilets around here. All I’m saying is that maybe instead of being grossed out by the very idea of toilets, you could thank the people doing the cleaning, because if not for them, you’d have to do it your damn self.

Working for the minimum wage

Working for minimum wage means that making a long-term budget is an exercise in wishful thinking. You just have however much money you have until you run out, and you pay whatever bill is most overdue first. When I was working in Ohio at a fast-food joint, I’d generally get about 25 hours in a week. That was paid at $7.50, making my weekly cheque $187.50.

My husband, working 40 hours at the same place, brought home $300. We made about $25,000 or so between us, working every week of the year. That’s a little over $9,000 above the poverty line for a family of two, or an extra $200 or so a week. We made ends meet, but barely. Not well enough to ever really feel comfortable or rest or take a day off without feeling guilty. And we were at the top of the bottom third of households that year, meaning that approximately one-third of the American population is living on the same sort of budget.

Or, for some, a much smaller one. The yearly income of a 40-hour-a-week minimum-wage worker is $15,080. So if you’re paying half of that for housing, you’re left with $7,540 to live on.

That’s $628 per month, or $314 per paycheck, for everything else – food, clothes, car payments, gas. If you’re lucky, you get all that money to live on. But who’s lucky all of the time, or even most of the time? Maybe you get sick and lose your job. Even if you land a new job, that measly $314 is all you’ve got to last you until your paychecks at the new place start up. Or what if, God forbid, the car breaks down or you break a bone?

This is what it comes down to: the math doesn’t fucking work. You can’t thrive on this sort of money. Period. You can survive.

Temporary work

There is something even worse than minimum wage. It’s called temp work. I bet that the majority of people – unless they’ve experienced it for themselves – would be shocked to find out that companies regularly hire temps to work full-time hours but because they hire these workers through temporary work agencies they have to pay no benefits and offer no job security. To save a buck, companies will regularly hire such workers for years. And they do it because it’s cheaper than hiring labour directly, and they are legally entitled to do so. The laws in America are so weak that we’re actually way behind South Korea (!) in temp worker protections.

So when financially comfortable people with health insurance and paid sick leave and all kinds of other benefits that pad their wallets and make their lives easier and healthier think that the poor are poor because somehow we lack the get up and go to change our circumstances… well, I’m not sure my reaction is printable.

One factory I lived near used to hire a revolving number of temp workers whom they laid off after 90 days – the point at which a temp worker is supposed to get permanent job status. Then after three weeks of unemployment, the plant hired them again.

That factory isn’t in town any more. It had gotten a break from the local government, making its first years there tax free.

And wouldn’t you know it, after the tax break expired, the company decided that the plant wasn’t profitable enough and closed it. A temporary factory that hired temporary workers.

Who says capitalism isn’t cruel?

Having no job security – and getting fired

We all know that a lot of folks think that poor people are lazy and incompetent. They think we get fired from jobs because we don’t know how to behave, or we’re always late, or we just don’t care. But what rich people don’t realise is how unbelievably easy it is to get fired. And a lot of times what gets you fired is that you’re working more than one job.

Whenever you are working for the kind of place that has a corporate office, you’re typically given the fewest possible hours – definitely less than full-time, because then they’d have to pay you benefits. But even though your employer might schedule you for 20 hours a week, you might wind up working 10, or 30. It depends on how busy it is – when it’s slow, they send you home, and when it’s busy, they expect you to stay late. They also expect you to be able to come in to cover someone’s shift if a co-worker gets sick at the last minute. Basically, they’re expecting you to be available to work all the time. Scheduling is impossible.

At one chain I was required to sign a contract stating that I was an at-will employee, that I would be part-time with no benefits, and that if I took another job without permission I would be subject to termination because the company expected me to be able to come in whenever they found it necessary.

And yes, this is legal.

So let’s break this down: you’re poor, so you desperately need whatever crappy job you can find, and the nature of that crappy job is that you can be fired at any time. Meanwhile, your hours can be cut with no notice, and there’s no obligation on the part of your employer to provide severance regardless of why, how or when they let you go. And we wonder why the poor get poorer?

Not feeling valued

Once I’m home from my shift, I try not to be short-tempered with my husband, whose fault my bad mood decidedly isn’t. In turn, he tries not to be short-tempered with me. Working at a low-wage job means getting off work and having just enough mental energy to realise what you could be doing with your life … if only you could work up the will to physically move.

And honestly, I wouldn’t even mind the degradations of my work life so much if the privileged and powerful were honest about it. If they just admitted that this is simply impossible.

Instead, we’re told to work harder and be grateful we have jobs, food and a roof over our heads. And for fuck’s sake, we are. But in exchange for all that work we’re doing, and all our miserable work conditions, we’re not allowed to demand anything in return. No sense of accomplishment, or respect from above, or job security. We are expected not to feel entitled to these things. Being poor while working hard is fucking crushing.

It’s living in a nightmare where the walls just never stop closing in on you.

Fast-food workers protest outside a California branch of McDonald’s.

I resent the fuck out of it every time my schedule’s been cut and then I’ve been called in for tons of extra hours, as though my time weren’t worth anything, just so that my boss can be sure not to pay me for a minute that I’m not absolutely necessary.

I resent signing away my ability to get a second job and being told that I can’t work more than 28 hours a week either.

The result of all of this? I just give up caring about work. I lose the energy, the bounce, the willingness. I’ll perform as directed but no more than that. I’ve rarely had a boss who gave me any indication that he valued me more highly than my uniform – we were that interchangeable – so I don’t go out of my way for my bosses either. The problem I have isn’t just being undervalued – it’s that it feels as though people go out of their way to make sure you know how useless you are.

I’d been working for one company for over a year when I injured myself at work in November and had to go on leave for two months because I couldn’t stand for long. So I wasn’t invited to the company Christmas party. I went as a co-worker’s date and watched as everyone got their Christmas bonuses. I didn’t get one; I was technically not in the managerial position and thus didn’t qualify. The fact that I’d worked the rest of the year didn’t count.

What really got me, though, was when the owner of the company thanked the woman who was filling in for me for working so hard all year. He didn’t recognise me at all.

Unpaid Internships

Here’s another thing the poor can’t afford: unpaid internships. I’ve had to turn down offers that might have improved my circumstances in the long run because I just couldn’t afford to work for nothing. Again, the people who can afford unpaid internships are getting help from home – in my world, everyone else has to work for a living. And this means that we’re being cut out of all that potential networking too. That’s at least one reason why I’ve never had much of a professional network: I never had the chance to build one. Accepting an unpaid internship, or one of those internships that basically pays you lunch money, is for people who don’t have to pay the rent.

Because I’ve always been in a take-what-you-can-get situation, I’ve wound up working the sorts of jobs that people consider beneath them. And yet people still wonder why we, working at the bottom, aren’t putting our souls into our jobs.

In turn, I wonder about people who think that those who are poor shouldn’t demand reciprocity from their employers. We should devote ourselves to something that doesn’t benefit us more than it absolutely has to? We’re meant to care about their best interests, but they don’t have to care about ours? If you’re going to put as little as possible into my training and wages, if you’re going to make sure that I can’t get enough hours to survive in order to avoid giving me healthcare, and generally make sure that I’m as uncomfortable as possible at any given time just to make sure I know my place, then how can you expect me to care about your profit margin?

Remember, you get what you pay for.

We all cope in our own special ways. I smoke. My friend drinks. In fact, I’m highly confident in betting that you and many of your friends cope by drinking as well. Come home from a long day at work, and what do you do? Pop open a beer? Or a bag of potato chips? Or maybe you take a Valium when you’re feeling stressed out. Or get a massage. Or go to your gym and sit in the sauna room.

Why are other people’s coping mechanisms better than poor people’s? Because they’re prettier. People with more money drink better wine out of nicer glasses. And maybe they get a prescription for benzodiazepines from their own personal on-call psychiatrist instead of buying a pack of cigarettes. They can buy whatever they like and it’s OK, because retail therapy is a recognised course of treatment for the upper classes. Poor people don’t have those luxuries. We smoke because it’s a fast, quick hit of dopamine. We eat junk because it’s cheap and it lights up the pleasure centres of our brain. And we do drugs because it’s an effective way to feel good or escape something.

I get that poor people’s coping mechanisms aren’t cute. Really, I do. But what I don’t get is why other people feel so free in judging us for them. As if our self-destructive behaviours therefore justify and explain our crappy lives.

Newsflash: it goes both ways. Sometimes the habits are a reaction to the situation.

And unless you’re prepared to convince me that smoking and smoking alone keeps me poor, then please, spare me the lecture. I know it’s bad for me. I’m addicted, not addled.

This is an extract from Hand to Mouth by Linda Tirado, to be published at £14.99 by Virago on 2 October. Click here to buy it for £11.99 with free UK p&p

  • The Observer
  • Autobiography and memoir
  • Social exclusion

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I Grew Up Poor — Here's How It Changed My Life

Why judging the poor isn’t actually helping anybody.

When I was 11, I kept a box full of moments, a written record of all the times I thought my mom was being a bad mom for being poor.

My mother was poor and imperfect, but she wasn’t poor because she was imperfect.

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The Realities Of Being Poor

poor life essay

“Poor” is such a subjective term. To those who are homeless or starving, someone living in Section 8 housing with government assistance probably seems downright well-off. But by most people’s typical, comfortable American standards, I spent a substantial portion of my life at a financial disadvantage. After my parents’ acrimonious divorce when I was 9, all the way through my early adult years, I lived well below the poverty line: that imaginary threshold separating the haves from the have-nots. My mom worked two jobs to make ends meet (though sometimes those ends didn’t meet at all), and some years were leaner than others, but my reality was a constant state of never quite enough.

To me, poor is the burning mortification I felt when my fifth-grade crush, behind me in line at the grocery store, snickered as he witnessed my mom paying with food stamps. It’s the oppressive cloak of sticky summer heat in our un-air conditioned one-room apartment, and how the hard, squeaky springs of the thrift-store sofa bed I shared with my mom poked into my back no matter how I positioned myself. It’s the rumble of emptiness from my stomach that seemed to echo into our equally-empty cabinets, and the tastes and textures of powdered milk and generic peanut butter and government cheese that comes from a box.

Being poor is pawning, out of desperation, anything you may still have with any sort of value, and cashing in pennies. It’s filling every receptacle you’ve got — bathtub, sink, buckets, pitchers — while you still have water because you know yours is about to be shut off. It’s staying in an empty apartment with no electricity and an eviction notice on the door, because you know there’s a 30-day grace period, and if you don’t figure something out by then, you’ll be on the street. It’s watching your own blood depart your body from a thin tube as you give plasma for the second time in a week and already calculating when you’ll be eligible to give again, because hey, that’s 30 bucks.

Being poor is using the restroom at the gas station down the street and stuffing your pockets with toilet paper because you’re out at home. It’s the scornful glances, the treatment you receive, because it must be all your fault you’re poor, you lazy ass — just get your shit together.

Why does happiness depend on money? Why is it money and not something else? I wrote in my journal when I was 18, from my first independent apartment where I was living with my boyfriend (who would later become my husband). Because nothing else keeps the bills paid. Nothing else says whether we have food or a phone or electricity or transportation. Just a couple of weeks ago our power was shut off, and during those 7 or 8 days it was cold and we had no heat, no light, no stove to cook on. Then when we finally got it turned back on, our phone got disconnected. While the power was out the refrigerator defrosted, and what food we had in there spoiled. Now there is literally nothing to eat. Even our staple foods like rice and sugar have all been used and we have no money to buy more. Today I’ve eaten two crackers, that’s all, and it’s 3:30. We can’t do laundry — no quarters, no soap. We’ve been out of toilet paper for the past three days, so we’ve been using napkins — but just today, we ran out of napkins too.

Poor is a state of being, but it’s also a feeling; an invisible but oppressive mantle you carry around your neck at all times. It’s feeling beaten down, every damn day, even on “good” days when you don’t notice it as much. It’s the unrelenting stress of putting out proverbial fires, deciding which is more important when you finally get a few bucks: Paying your rent, your utilities, or getting some food? It’s knowing your credit is ruined indefinitely because you can’t afford to repay this or that, or anything at all, really. It’s the disheartening knowledge that you must endlessly chase dollars, sometimes doing things that are illegal or at the very least unpleasant, things that go against your very nature, just to watch those dollars slip through your fingers as they keep a roof over your head for another month. But hey, it’s a shame about that empty fridge.

Nobody understands poor people unless they’ve been there, and it’s hard enough to be poor without also being misunderstood. As someone who has walked more than a mile in those (raggedy-ass) shoes, I’d like to clear up a few things.

Not everyone on welfare is “working the system.”

I want to clarify this right now because it’s a biggie. Sure, we’ve all heard stories of people who take advantage of government assistance because they’re lazy or faking a disability. But there are also people, like my mother and countless others, who use this type of assistance as a hand-up, not a handout. When I would complain about having to use food stamps, my mom would squeeze my hand and assure me that she hated it, too, that this was only temporary, that we would only use them until we could provide for ourselves — even if that meant only having the bare minimum.

Poverty is not self-imposed.

There’s a sense of blame around poor people, like they actually, actively choose this lifestyle. Nobody says “Hey! Let’s struggle to obtain even the most basic of needs!” People are poor for many reasons, and financial devastation can happen to anyone. Before my parents’ marriage fell apart, we were an average middle-class family, with a home and two vehicles, going out to eat, watching our cable TV, and enjoying weekend trips. Afterward, I was the child of a single mother, getting my dinner from a food bank instead of a restaurant. Nobody asks for this type of circumstance. Nobody .

Poverty is not easy to escape.

If “poverty is self-imposed” were a train, then “Why don’t they just do something about it?” would be the caboose; one always follows the other. Being poor is like being at the bottom of a deep, dirty hole. You may find an occasional foothold, a root to grab here or there, but the soil crumbles beneath your weight or the root snaps — and when you fall, you often find that the hole is deeper than before.

When you get your water turned back on so you can bathe and flush and cook your ramen noodles, your car dies. When you get your car fixed, you lose your job. You’re so busy scraping together money to live on and to patch the leaky holes (literal and figurative) that are popping up in every area of your life, it can be impossible to gain enough financial traction to actually get ahead. There’s no room for long-term planning when you have trouble getting by on a daily basis. There’s no saving when there’s nothing left to save.

People who aren’t poor cannot possibly “get it.”

Even if you’re an openminded and nonjudgmental person who feels like you can effectively see things from another person’s perspective, there are facets of poverty that you’ll likely never think of. Like what happens when you’re about to start your period, but feminine hygiene products are fucking expensive and you have five bucks to your name and you’d also like to eat. Or you’ve got to choose between tampons and diapers.

“Luxuries” are an important part of life.

So often, I hear people who have never experienced poverty grouse about things like, “If they’re so poor, how come they can afford cigarettes/phones/coffee/fast food?” The best way I can explain it is this: There’s a reason that people refer to shopping as “retail therapy” — sometimes it makes you feel better. When you’re poor, your entire life is lived laboring under a weighted blanket of stress, of judgment, of never having enough or being good enough. It is human nature to want — no, need — the occasional splurge, no matter how destitute you are. Don’t begrudge a poor person one of the only things that makes them feel a little closer to the rest of society.

It costs money to be poor.

I am admittedly no economist, but the way companies try to get extra money from people who don’t have any is something that has baffled me since childhood. Say you overdraw your bank account by $20. The bank then charges you a $35 overdraft fee, on top of the negative balance — so once you do manage to scrape up $50 to deposit, you’re still $5 short. Forget about buying anything in bulk, which is typically cheaper in the long run. Same with sales: You can’t take advantage of a lower price if you don’t have the money while the sale’s going on. There’s no good in a “buy one, get one free” if you can’t even buy one in the first place.

Poor people don’t need sympathy; they need compassion.

If you were holding up a heavy weight, and your arms were burning and trembling, which would you be more grateful for: someone who came along and said, “Tsk, so sorry you’re holding that weight,” or someone who came along and helped take some of the burden off? Poor people don’t need anybody else to feel sorry for them. What they do need is someone to realize that they’re not poor because they’re lazy or stupid or bad — that they’re humans, just like anybody else , with the same needs and desires and hopes. They need people to donate and lend support to the programs that help them because there are far too many voices scoffing that they’re “just taking advantage.” They don’t need saviors — people who publicize what generous benefactors they are to make themselves look better. They need quiet understanding, and a willingness to share the resources that come so much more easily to people above the poverty line.

Fill a box with the things you take for granted: Coffee, candy, tampons, fabric softener, fuzzy socks . Rolls of quarters. Toilet paper. Take it to a shelter or a food bank or a poverty center. “Adopt” a family for the holidays, but don’t let your support stop when the holidays are over. Find ways to help all year long, even if it’s just little things.

Because for those in dire financial straits, even the little things are priceless.

This article was originally published on Oct. 24, 2017

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Essay on the Life of Poor People!

E.M. Foster says, ‘We are not concerned with the very poor. They are unthinkable, and only to be approached by the statistician or the poet.’ Generally, or in common parlance, a ‘poor’ is that person who does not have sufficient amount of money to purchase food to keep him and the members of his family alive and the necessary clothing and a shelter in the form of a house.

These are the persons who do not have a proper diet, no shelter or have depleted shelter, live in insanitary conditions, and have a lower life expectancy than the majority of population. Their house is often overcrowded.

Many of them sleep on streets, subways, footpaths, doorways or park benches under the open sky. In extreme winter, they sometimes freeze to death in certain areas. In rural areas, they live in mud thatched small huts and in urban areas in ghettos (slums), devoid of all basic utilities—water, latrines, bathrooms, electricity, etc. Thus, such persons must be defined as poor, no matter whether society recognizes their poverty or not.

Most poor people are either engaged in low-paying jobs or are without jobs. Some are too ill or disabled to work and others are living alone (aged, widowed), who cannot earn enough to support themselves and their children, if any. The poor cannot get loans for self-employment.

They cannot seek employment where work is available. They also pay more for most of what they buy. Most of their incomes, if any, are spent on food. Moreover, the commodities they purchase from nearby grocery shop are often of low quality, adulterated and stale devoid of any nutritive value.

The situation becomes more grim when the earning member of a poor family loses his/her job even for a short period or dies. The poor have no assets to protect them from the collapse of their precarious financial situation. They thus have hand-to-mouth existence at such times.

The nature of poverty has undergone considerable change over the years. Who the poor are today is quite different from those called poor in an earlier period. In the 19th century and even more than half of the 20th century, people living in villages (in India about 70 per cent of the population lives in villages) depended directly or indirectly mostly on agriculture (as landless labour or small farmers) for their livelihood, having a very small mud thatched hut, were regarded as poor.

According to UNDP report (1996), 39 per cent of the rural population was living below the poverty line or earning less than Rs 2,444 per person per year. This figure might have changed a bit due to the implementation of many rural development and Garibi Hatao (poverty eradi­cation) programmes but still most of the village India is suffering the consequences of poverty.

The change in technology has changed the face of poverty. There is a great exodus of population from villages to urban areas in search of jobs. The use of electricity, tractors, and many machines in agricultural pursuits, along with the improved hybrid seeds and method of cultivation, has forced many people to leave villages.

This change in technology has made many people poor while a meagre (i.e., big farmers and zamindars) affluent. Technology often displaces workers by abolishing their jobs, while creating other, better paying ones for people more technically trained.

This happens to both rural and urban workers. Thus, loss of job by technological change is but one factor—a very important factor—in accounting for the poor. The use of computers in banks, railways, colleges and schools and in many government and private sector organizations has not only thrown many persons out of job and but also lessened the opportunities for jobs. People who do not have technical education today have less and less opportunities in the job market.

Related Articles:

  • Essay on The Conditions of the Urban Poor in India
  • Why are the Poor Still Poor?

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poor life essay

Poverty Essay

In this poverty essay, we had describe poverty, its effects & measures to control poverty.

Poverty is the condition of a person when he cannot fulfil his basic necessities of life such as food, clothing and shelter.

Essay on Poverty 100 words:

Poverty is the condition of any person being very poor.

It is an extreme condition when a person feels a lack of essential commodities such as shelter, adequate food, clothing, medicines, etc. to continue life.

Some common causes of poverty are overgrowth, fatal and epidemic diseases, and natural disasters.

Low agricultural production, lack of employment, casteism, illiteracy, gender inequality, environmental problems in the country.

Changing trends of the economy in the country, lack of proper education, untouchability, limited or inadequate access to people’s own rights, political violence, organized crime, Corruption, lack of motivation, laziness, old social beliefs, etc.

Poverty in India can be reduced after effective solutions, but the individual efforts of all citizens are needed.

Poverty Essay 150 words:

We can define poverty as a lack of food, proper shelter, clothing, medicines, education and equal human rights.

Poverty forces a person to starve, without shelter, without clothing, education and proper rights.

There are various causes of poverty in the country, although there are solutions, due to lack of proper unity among Indian citizens to follow the solutions, poverty is getting worse day by day.

The spread of epidemic diseases is the cause of poverty in any country because poor people cannot take care of their health status.

Poverty makes people unable to go to the doctor, go to school, study, speak properly, eat three meals a day, dress in need, buy own house, get a proper salary for a job, etc.

A person can go towards illness due to drinking unclean water, living in dirty places and eating inappropriate food.

Poverty causes powerlessness and lack of freedom.

Essay on Poverty

Essay on Poverty 200 words:

Poverty is like a slave situation when a person is unable to do anything he wishes, which change according to person, place and time.

It can be described in many ways that a person feels it or is living it.

Poverty is a condition that no one wants to live, but it has to be taken away due to custom, nature, natural disaster, or lack of proper education.

The person lives it, usually wants to escape.

It is an invisible problem that badly affects a person and his social life in many ways.

Poverty is a completely preventable problem, but there are many reasons that have persisted since the past.

Poverty causes a person to lack freedom, mental well-being, physical welfare and security.

It is very important for everyone to work together to remove poverty from the country and the world to bring about proper physical health, mental health, full literacy, home for all, and other essential things to lead a simple life.

Essay on Indian Poverty 250 words:

Poverty is a human condition that brings despair, grief and pain in human life.

Poverty is the lack of money and all that is necessary to live life properly.

Poverty makes a child unable to enter school in childhood and lives his childhood in an unhappy family.

Poverty is a shortage of few rupees for arranging two times daily bread and butter, buying textbooks for children, the grief of parents responsible for taking care of children, etc.

We can define poverty in many ways.

It is very common to see poverty in India because most of the people here cannot meet the basic needs of life.

A large percentage of the population here is illiterate, hungry and without homes and clothes.

This is the main reason for the poor Indian economy.

Almost half of the population in India is living a miserable life due to poverty.

Poverty creates a situation in which people fail to get sufficient income so they cannot buy essential things.

A poor man lives his life without any facilities, such as two meals a day, clean drinking water, clothes, home, proper education, etc. Existence.

There are various reasons for poverty in India, but the distribution of national income is also a reason.

People in the lower-income group tend to be relatively poorer than the higher income group.

Children from poor families never get proper schooling, proper nutrition and happy childhood.

The most important causes of poverty are illiteracy, corruption, increasing population, poor agriculture, the difference between poor and rich, etc.

Poverty Essay

Poverty Essay 300 words:

Poverty represents poor quality of life, illiteracy, malnutrition, lack of basic needs, low human resource development etc.

This is the biggest challenge for the developing country, especially in India.

It is a phenomenon in which a section of the society cannot meet the basic needs of its life.

It has seen some decline in the poverty level in the last five years (from 26.1% in 1999–2000, from 35.97% in 1993–94).

It has also declined at the state level such that it decreased to 47.15% to 48.56% in Orissa, 43.42% to 37.43% in Madhya Pradesh, 31.15% to 40.85% in UP and 27.6% to 35.66% in West Bengal.

Instead of some decline in poverty in India, it is not a pleasure because the Indian BPL is still a very large number (26 crores).

Poverty in India can be eradicated by the use of some effective programs, although a combined effort by the government is needed for all.

The Government of India should formulate some effective strategies to develop the poor social sector through key components like primary education, population control, family welfare, employment generation etc., especially in rural areas. Also, read poverty essay in 400 words .

Effects of Poverty:

Illiteracy: Poverty makes people unable to get a proper education due to lack of money.

Nutrition and Diet: Poverty leads to inadequate availability of diet and inadequate nutrition which brings many fatal diseases and deficiency diseases.

Child labour: This gives rise to a huge level of illiteracy as the future of the country becomes involved in child labour at an early age.

Unemployment: Unemployment causes poverty because it creates a shortage of money which affects the daily life of the people.

It forces people against their will to live an incomplete life.

Social stress: It creates social tension due to income inequality between rich and poor.

Housing problems: This creates a bad situation for people to stay outside the house on sidewalks, roadways, other open spaces, multiple members in one room, etc.

Disease: It gives rise to various epidemic diseases because people with money shortage cannot maintain proper sanitation and hygiene.

Apart from this, they cannot afford a doctor for proper treatment of any disease.

Poverty alleviation: Poverty affects the lives of women to a great extent due to gender inequality and deprives them of proper diet, nutrition, medicines and treatment.

poverty

Essay on Poverty 400 words:

Poverty is a condition in which people are deprived of the basic necessities of life such as inadequacy of food, clothes and shelter.

Most people in India cannot get their two-time meals properly, sleep on the side of the road and wear dirty and old clothes.

They do not get proper and healthy nutrition, medicines, and other essential things.

Poverty is increasing in urban India due to an increase in urban population as people from rural areas prefer to migrate to cities and towns to get employment or to do some financial activity.

The income of about 8 crore urban people is below the poverty line and 4.5 crore urban people are at the threshold level of the poverty level.

A large number of people live in slums which are illiterate.

Despite some initiatives, no satisfactory results have been shown regarding poverty reduction. Also, read poverty essay FAQ .

Reasons for Poverty:

  • The main causes of poverty in India are increasing population, poor agriculture, corruption, old customs, a huge gap between poor and rich people, unemployment, illiteracy, epidemic diseases etc.
  • A large percentage of people in India depend on agriculture which is poor.
  • People usually face food shortages due to poor agriculture and unemployment.
  • The ever increasing population is also the cause of poverty in India; more population means more food, money and houses.
  • In the lack of basic facilities, poverty increases rapidly, becoming extra rich and extra poor creates a huge gap between rich and poor people.
  • Rich people are getting rich and poor people are becoming poor which creates an economic difference.

Impact of Poverty:

Poverty affects people’s lives in many ways.

  • Poverty has various effects such as illiteracy, poor diet and nutrition, child labour, poor housing, poor lifestyle, unemployment, poor sanitation, the feminization of poverty, etc.
  • Poor people cannot arrange a healthy diet, nor maintain a good lifestyle, home, good clothes, proper education etc., due to lack of money which creates a huge difference between rich and poor.
  • This difference leads to underdeveloped countries.
  • Poverty forces young children to work at a low cost and help their family financially rather than going to school.

Also, read 1. Indian Education System Essay 2. Indian Culture Essay 3. Essay on Education

Control Measures for Poverty:

  • It is very important to solve the problem of poverty on a crucial basis for the good of humanity on this planet.
  • Some measures that can play a big role in solving the problem of poverty are:
  • Farmers should get proper and necessary facilities for good agriculture as well as to make it profitable.
  • Those who are illiterate should be given necessary training for the betterment of life.
  • Family planning should be followed by people to check for the increasing population and thus poverty.
  • Corruption should be eliminated worldwide to reduce poverty.
  • Every child should go to school and take proper education.
  • There should be employment opportunities where people from all categories can work together. Also, read poverty essay conclusion .

Conclusion:

Poverty is not just an individual problem but is a national problem; this should be solved on an instant basis by implementing some effective solutions.

Various steps have been taken by the government to reduce poverty but there are no clear results.

Eradication of poverty is essential for sustainable and inclusive development of the people, economy, society and country.

Poverty can be eliminated effectively by the combined efforts of each and every individual.

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Essay on Poverty for Children and Students

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Essay on Poverty: Poverty is defined as the financial condition of a person, insufficient to sustain the vital needs of his/her own family. Any person of family which is unable to provide a square meal to the members or educate its children for the want of money is termed as poor and suffering from poverty. It is curse to the society and restricts the economical and social growth of a nation. Poverty eradication in a highly populous country as India could be a herculean task; though, it could be achieved through will power of the government and society. In the world scenario, poverty is great concern in the developing, under developed and the third world nations. Poverty also results in several diseases, law and order situations and very low standard of living.

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Long and Short Essay on Poverty in English

We have provided below various essay on poverty in order to help students.

Now-a-days, essays or paragraphs writing are common strategy followed by the teachers in the schools and colleges in order to enhance the skill and knowledge of students about any topic.

All the poverty essay are written using very simple words under various words limit according to the need and requirement of students.

They can select any of the essays given below according to their need and requirement in the class, any competition or exam.

Poverty Essay 1 (100 words)

Poverty is the state for any person of being extremely poor. It is the extreme situation when a person feels lack of essential items required to continue the life such as shelter, adequate food, clothing, medicines, etc. Some of the common reasons of poverty are like overpopulation, lethal and epidemic diseases, natural disasters, low agricultural output, lack of employment, casteism in country, illiteracy, gender inequality, environmental problems, changing trends of economy in the country, lack of proper education, untouchability, limited or inadequate access of people to their rights, political violence, organized crime, corruption, lack of motivation, idleness, old social beliefs, etc. Poverty in India can be reduced by following effective solutions however needs individual efforts of all the citizens.

Poverty Essay 2 (150 words)

We can define poverty as the lack of food, proper shelter, clothing, medicines, education, and equal human rights. Poverty forces a person to remain hungry, without shelter, without clothes, education and proper rights. There are various causes of poverty in the country however solutions too but because of the lack of proper unity among Indian citizens to follow solutions, poverty is increasing badly day by day. Spread of epidemic diseases in any country is the reason of poverty as poor people cannot take care of their health and hygienic condition.

Poverty makes people unable to go to doctor, to go to school, how to read, to speak properly, to eat three times meal, to wear needed clothes, to purchase own house, to get paid properly for job, etc. Poverty forces a person to go towards illness as they drink unclean water, lives at dirty places, and eat improper meal. Poverty causes powerlessness and lack of freedom.

Poverty Essay 3 (200 words)

Poverty is just like a condition of slave when a person becomes unable to do anything according to his/her wish. It has many faces which changes according to the person, place and time. It can be described in many ways a person feel it or live it. Poverty is a situation which no one wants to live however has to carry it by custom, nature, natural disaster, or lack of proper education. The person lives it, generally wants to escape. Poverty is a call to action to the poor people to earn enough money to eat, have access to education, get adequate shelter, wear needed clothes, and protection from the social and political violence.

It is an invisible problem which affects a person and his/her social life very badly in many ways. Poverty is completely preventable problem however there are many reasons which carry and continue it from the past time. Poverty keeps a person lack of freedom, mental well-being, physical well-being, and security. It is very necessary for everyone to work jointly in order to remove poverty from the country and world to bring proper physical health, mental health, complete literacy, home for everyone, and other needed things to live a simple life.

Poverty Essay 4 (250 words)

Poverty is a human condition which brings despair, grief and pain in the human life. Poverty is the lack of money and all the things required to live a life in proper manner. Poverty makes a child unable to enter to the school in childhood and lives his/her childhood in an unhappy family. Poverty is the lack of few rupees to arrange bread and butter of two times daily, buy text books for kids, grief of parents responsible for the care of children, etc. We can define poverty in many ways. It is very common to see poverty in India because most people here cannot fulfill their basic necessities of the life. A huge percentage of population here is uneducated, hungry and without home and clothe. It is the main reason of the poor Indian economy. Because of the poverty, around half population in India is living a miserable life.

Poverty creates a situation in which people fail to get sufficient income so they cannot purchase necessary things. A poor man lives his/her life without any command over basic needs such as two times food, clean drinking water, clothing, house, proper education, etc. People who fail to maintain the minimum standard of living such as consumption and nutrition required for existence. There are various reasons of poverty in India however mal distribution of national income is also a reason. Low income group people are relatively poorer than the high income group. Children of the poor family never get chance of proper schooling, proper nutrition and happy childhood. The most important reasons of the poverty are illiteracy, corruption, growing population, poor agriculture, gap between poor and rich, etc.

Poverty Essay 5 (300 words)

Poverty represents poor quality of life, illiteracy, malnutrition, lack of basic needs, low human resource development, etc. It is a biggest challenge to the developing country especially in India. It is a phenomenon in which a section of people in the society cannot fulfill their basic necessities of life. It has seen some decline in the poverty level in the last five years (26.1% in 1999-2000 from 35.97% in 1993-94). It has also declined at state level such as in Orissa it has been declined to 47.15% from 48.56%, in Madhya Pradesh 37.43% from 43.52%, in UP 31.15% from 40.85%, and in West Bengal 27.02% from 35.66%. Instead of some decline in the poverty in India it is not the matter of happiness because the Indian BPL is still very large number (26 crore).

Poverty in India can be eradicated by the use of some effective programmes, however need a joint effort by everyone not by the government only. Government of India should make some effective strategies aiming to develop poor social sector through key components like primary education, population control, family welfare, job creation, etc especially in the rural areas.

What are Effects of Poverty

Some of the effects of poverty are like:

  • Illiteracy: poverty makes people unable to get proper education because of the lack of money.
  • Nutrition and diet: poverty causes insufficient availability of diet and inadequate nutrition which brings lots of lethal diseases and deficiency diseases.
  • Child labor: it gives rise to the huge level illiteracy as the future of the country gets involved in the child labor at very low cost in their early age.
  • Unemployment: unemployment causes poverty as it creates the lack of money which affects people’s daily life. It forces people to live unfulfilled life against their will.
  • Social tensions: it creates social tension due to the income disparity between rich and poor.
  • Housing problems: it creates the bad condition for people to live without home on the footpath, roadside, other open places, many members in one room, etc.
  • Diseases: it gives rise to the various epidemic diseases as people with lack of money cannot maintain proper hygiene and sanitation. Also they cannot afford a doctor for the proper treatment of any disease.
  • Feminization of poverty: poverty affects women’s life to a great extent because of the gender-inequality and keeps them deprived of the proper-diet, nutrition, medicines and treatment facility.

Poverty Essay 6 (400 words)

Introduction

Poverty is a situation in which people remain deprived of basic necessities of life such as inadequacy of food, clothes, and shelter. Most of the people in India cannot get their two times meal properly, sleep at roadside and wear dirty and old clothes. They do not get proper and healthy nutrition, medicines, and other necessary things. Poverty in the urban India is increasing because of the increase in urban population as people from rural areas like to migrate to the cities and towns to get employment or do some financial activity. The income of around 8 crore urban people is below poverty line and 4.5 crore urban people is on borderline of poverty level. A huge number of people live in slum become illiterate. In spite of some initiatives there is no any satisfactory results shown regarding reduction of poverty.

Causes of Poverty

The main causes of poverty in India are growing population, poor agriculture, corruption, old customs, huge gap between poor and rich people, unemployment, illiteracy, epidemic diseases, etc. A huge percentage of people in India depend on agriculture which is poor and cause poverty. Generally people face shortage of food because of poor agriculture and unemployment. Ever growing population is also the reason of poverty in India. More population means more food, money and houses. In the lack of basic facilities, poverty grows more rapidly. Becoming extra rich and extra poor creates a huge widening gap between the rich and the poor people. Rich people are growing richer and poor people are growing poorer which creates an economic gap between the two.

Effects of Poverty

Poverty affects people’s life in many ways. There are various effects of poverty such as illiteracy, poor diet and nutrition, child labor, poor housing, poor life style, unemployment, poor hygiene, feminization of poverty, etc. Poor people cannot arrange a healthy diet, maintain good life style, home, nice clothes, proper education, etc because of the lack of money which creates a huge difference between rich and poor. This difference leads to the undeveloped country. Poverty forces small children to do work at low cost and help their family financially instead of going to the school.

Solutions to Eradicate Poverty

It is very necessary to solve the problem of poverty on urgent basis for the goodness of humanity on this planet. Some of the solutions that can play great role in solving the problem of poverty are:

  • Farmers should get proper and required facilities for good agriculture as well as to make it profitable.
  • Adult people who are illiterate should be given required training for the betterment of life.
  • Family planning should be followed by the people in order to check the ever-rising population and thus poverty.
  • Corruption should be ended all over the world to reduce the poverty.
  • Each and every child should go to the school and take proper education.
  • There should be ways of employment where people of all categories can work together.

Poverty is not only the problem of a person however it is a national problem. It must be solved on urgent basis by implementing some effective solutions. Variety of steps has been taken by the government to reduce poverty however no clear results are seen. Eradication of poverty is necessary for the sustainable and inclusive growth of people, economy, society and country. Eradication of poverty can be done effectively by the unite effort of each and every person.

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Sat / act prep online guides and tips, bad college essays: 10 mistakes you must avoid.

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College Essays

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Just as there are noteworthy examples of excellent college essays that admissions offices like to publish, so are there cringe-worthy examples of terrible college essays that end up being described by anonymous admissions officers on Reddit discussion boards.

While I won't guarantee that your essay will end up in the first category, I will say that you follow my advice in this article, your essay most assuredly won't end up in the second. How do you avoid writing a bad admissions essay? Read on to find out what makes an essay bad and to learn which college essay topics to avoid. I'll also explain how to recognize bad college essays—and what to do to if you end up creating one by accident.

What Makes Bad College Essays Bad

What exactly happens to turn a college essay terrible? Just as great personal statements combine an unexpected topic with superb execution, flawed personal statements compound problematic subject matter with poor execution.

Problems With the Topic

The primary way to screw up a college essay is to flub what the essay is about or how you've decided to discuss a particular experience. Badly chosen essay content can easily create an essay that is off-putting in one of a number of ways I'll discuss in the next section.

The essay is the place to let the admissions office of your target college get to know your personality, character, and the talents and skills that aren't on your transcript. So if you start with a terrible topic, not only will you end up with a bad essay, but you risk ruining the good impression that the rest of your application makes.

Some bad topics show admissions officers that you don't have a good sense of judgment or maturity , which is a problem since they are building a class of college students who have to be able to handle independent life on campus.

Other bad topics suggest that you are a boring person , or someone who doesn't process your experience in a colorful or lively way, which is a problem since colleges want to create a dynamic and engaged cohort of students.

Still other bad topics indicate that you're unaware of or disconnected from the outside world and focused only on yourself , which is a problem since part of the point of college is to engage with new people and new ideas, and admissions officers are looking for people who can do that.

Problems With the Execution

Sometimes, even if the experiences you discuss could be the foundation of a great personal statement, the way you've structured and put together your essay sends up warning flags. This is because the admissions essay is also a place to show the admissions team the maturity and clarity of your writing style.

One way to get this part wrong is to exhibit very faulty writing mechanics , like unclear syntax or incorrectly used punctuation. This is a problem since college-ready writing is one of the things that's expected from a high school graduate.

Another way to mess this up is to ignore prompt instructions either for creative or careless reasons. This can show admissions officers that you're either someone who simply blows off directions and instructions or someone who can't understand how to follow them . Neither is a good thing, since they are looking for people who are open to receiving new information from professors and not just deciding they know everything already.

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College Essay Topics To Avoid

Want to know why you're often advised to write about something mundane and everyday for your college essay? That's because the more out-there your topic, the more likely it is to stumble into one of these trouble categories.

Too Personal

The problem with the overly personal essay topic is that revealing something very private can show that you don't really understand boundaries . And knowing where appropriate boundaries are will be key for living on your own with a bunch of people not related to you.

Unfortunately, stumbling into the TMI zone of essay topics is more common than you think. One quick test for checking your privacy-breaking level: if it's not something you'd tell a friendly stranger sitting next to you on the plane, maybe don't tell it to the admissions office.

  • Describing losing your virginity, or anything about your sex life really. This doesn't mean you can't write about your sexual orientation—just leave out the actual physical act.
  • Writing in too much detail about your illness, disability, any other bodily functions. Detailed meaningful discussion of what this physical condition has meant to you and your life is a great thing to write about. But stay away from body horror and graphic descriptions that are simply there for gratuitous shock value.
  • Waxing poetic about your love for your significant other. Your relationship is adorable to the people currently involved in it, but those who don't know you aren't invested in this aspect of your life.
  • Confessing to odd and unusual desires of the sexual or illegal variety. Your obsession with cultivating cacti is wonderful topic, while your obsession with researching explosives is a terrible one.

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Too Revealing of Bad Judgment

Generally speaking, leave past illegal or immoral actions out of your essay . It's simply a bad idea to give admissions officers ammunition to dislike you.

Some exceptions might be if you did something in a very, very different mindset from the one you're in now (in the midst of escaping from danger, under severe coercion, or when you were very young, for example). Or if your essay is about explaining how you've turned over a new leaf and you have the transcript to back you up.

  • Writing about committing crime as something fun or exciting. Unless it's on your permanent record, and you'd like a chance to explain how you've learned your lesson and changed, don't put this in your essay.
  • Describing drug use or the experience of being drunk or high. Even if you're in a state where some recreational drugs are legal, you're a high school student. Your only exposure to mind-altering substances should be caffeine.
  • Making up fictional stories about yourself as though they are true. You're unlikely to be a good enough fantasist to pull this off, and there's no reason to roll the dice on being discovered to be a liar.
  • Detailing your personality flaws. Unless you have a great story of coping with one of these, leave deal-breakers like pathological narcissism out of your personal statement.

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Too Overconfident

While it's great to have faith in your abilities, no one likes a relentless show-off. No matter how magnificent your accomplishments, if you decide to focus your essay on them, it's better to describe a setback or a moment of doubt rather that simply praising yourself to the skies.

  • Bragging and making yourself the flawless hero of your essay. This goes double if you're writing about not particularly exciting achievements like scoring the winning goal or getting the lead in the play.
  • Having no awareness of the actual scope of your accomplishments. It's lovely that you take time to help others, but volunteer-tutoring a couple of hours a week doesn't make you a saintly figure.

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Too Clichéd or Boring

Remember your reader. In this case, you're trying to make yourself memorable to an admissions officer who has been reading thousands of other essays . If your essay makes the mistake of being boring or trite, it just won't register in that person's mind as anything worth paying attention to.

  • Transcribing your resume into sentence form or writing about the main activity on your transcript. The application already includes your resume, or a detailed list of your various activities. Unless the prompt specifically asks you to write about your main activity, the essay needs to be about a facet of your interests and personality that doesn't come through the other parts of the application.
  • Writing about sports. Every athlete tries to write this essay. Unless you have a completely off-the-wall story or unusual achievement, leave this overdone topic be.
  • Being moved by your community service trip to a third-world country. Were you were impressed at how happy the people seemed despite being poor? Did you learn a valuable lesson about how privileged you are? Unfortunately, so has every other teenager who traveled on one of these trips. Writing about this tends to simultaneously make you sound unempathetic, clueless about the world, way over-privileged, and condescending. Unless you have a highly specific, totally unusual story to tell, don't do it.
  • Reacting with sadness to a sad, but very common experience. Unfortunately, many of the hard, formative events in your life are fairly universal. So, if you're going to write about death or divorce, make sure to focus on how you dealt with this event, so the essay is something only you could possibly have written. Only detailed, idiosyncratic description can save this topic.
  • Going meta. Don't write about the fact that you're writing the essay as we speak, and now the reader is reading it, and look, the essay is right here in the reader's hand. It's a technique that seems clever, but has already been done many times in many different ways.
  • Offering your ideas on how to fix the world. This is especially true if your solution is an easy fix, if only everyone would just listen to you. Trust me, there's just no way you are being realistically appreciative of the level of complexity inherent in the problem you're describing.
  • Starting with a famous quotation. There usually is no need to shore up your own words by bringing in someone else's. Of course, if you are writing about a particular phrase that you've adopted as a life motto, feel free to include it. But even then, having it be the first line in your essay feels like you're handing the keys over to that author and asking them to drive.
  • Using an everyday object as a metaphor for your life/personality. "Shoes. They are like this, and like that, and people love them for all of these reasons. And guess what? They are just like me."

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Too Off-Topic

Unlike the essays you've been writing in school where the idea is to analyze something outside of yourself, the main subject of your college essay should be you, your background, your makeup, and your future . Writing about someone or something else might well make a great essay, but not for this context.

  • Paying tribute to someone very important to you. Everyone would love to meet your grandma, but this isn't the time to focus on her amazing coming of age story. If you do want to talk about a person who is important to your life, dwell on the ways you've been impacted by them, and how you will incorporate this impact into your future.
  • Documenting how well other people do things, say things, are active, while you remain passive and inactive in the essay. Being in the orbit of someone else's important lab work, or complex stage production, or meaningful political activism is a fantastic learning moment. But if you decide to write about, your essay should be about your learning and how you've been influenced, not about the other person's achievements.
  • Concentrating on a work of art that deeply moved you. Watch out for the pitfall of writing an analytical essay about that work, and not at all about your reaction to it or how you've been affected since. Check out our explanation of how to answer Topic D of the ApplyTexas application to get some advice on writing about someone else's work while making sure your essay still points back at you.

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(Image: Pieter Christoffel Wonder [Public domain] , via Wikimedia Commons)

poor life essay

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Too Offensive

With this potential mistake, you run the risk of showing a lack of self-awareness or the ability to be open to new ideas . Remember, no reader wants to be lectured at. If that's what your essay does, you are demonstrating an inability to communicate successfully with others.

Also, remember that no college is eager to admit someone who is too close-minded to benefit from being taught by others. A long, one-sided essay about a hot-button issue will suggest that you are exactly that.

  • Ranting at length about political, religious, or other contentious topics. You simply don't know where the admissions officer who reads your essay stands on any of these issues. It's better to avoid upsetting or angering that person.
  • Writing a one-sided diatribe about guns, abortion, the death penalty, immigration, or anything else in the news. Even if you can marshal facts in your argument, this essay is simply the wrong place to take a narrow, unempathetic side in an ongoing debate.
  • Mentioning anything negative about the school you're applying to. Again, your reader is someone who works there and presumably is proud of the place. This is not the time to question the admissions officer's opinions or life choices.

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College Essay Execution Problems To Avoid

Bad college essays aren't only caused by bad topics. Sometimes, even if you're writing about an interesting, relevant topic, you can still seem immature or unready for college life because of the way you present that topic—the way you actually write your personal statement. Check to make sure you haven't made any of the common mistakes on this list.

Tone-Deafness

Admissions officers are looking for resourcefulness, the ability to be resilient, and an active and optimistic approach to life —these are all qualities that create a thriving college student. Essays that don't show these qualities are usually suffering from tone-deafness.

  • Being whiny or complaining about problems in your life. Is the essay about everyone doing things to/against you? About things happening to you, rather than you doing anything about them? That perspective is a definite turn-off.
  • Trying and failing to use humor. You may be very funny in real life, but it's hard to be successfully funny in this context, especially when writing for a reader who doesn't know you. If you do want to use humor, I'd recommend the simplest and most straightforward version: being self-deprecating and low-key.
  • Talking down to the reader, or alternately being self-aggrandizing. No one enjoys being condescended to. In this case, much of the function of your essay is to charm and make yourself likable, which is unlikely to happen if you adopt this tone.
  • Being pessimistic, cynical, and generally depressive. You are applying to college because you are looking forward to a future of learning, achievement, and self-actualization. This is not the time to bust out your existential ennui and your jaded, been-there-done-that attitude toward life.

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(Image: Eduard Munch [Public Domain] , via Wikimedia Commons)

Lack of Personality

One good question to ask yourself is: could anyone else have written this essay ? If the answer is yes, then you aren't doing a good job of representing your unique perspective on the world. It's very important to demonstrate your ability to be a detailed observer of the world, since that will be one of your main jobs as a college student.

  • Avoiding any emotions, and appearing robot-like and cold in the essay. Unlike essays that you've been writing for class, this essay is meant to be a showcase of your authorial voice and personality. It may seem strange to shift gears after learning how to take yourself out of your writing, but this is the place where you have to put as much as yourself in as possible.
  • Skipping over description and specific details in favor of writing only in vague generalities. Does your narrative feel like a newspaper horoscope, which could apply to every other person who was there that day? Then you're doing it wrong and need to refocus on your reaction, feelings, understanding, and transformation.

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Off-Kilter Style

There's some room for creativity here, yes, but a college essay isn't a free-for-all postmodern art class . True, there are prompts that specifically call for your most out-of-left-field submission, or allow you to submit a portfolio or some other work sample instead of a traditional essay. But on a standard application, it's better to stick to traditional prose, split into paragraphs, further split into sentences.

  • Submitting anything other than just the materials asked for on your application. Don't send food to the admissions office, don't write your essay on clothing or shoes, don't create a YouTube channel about your undying commitment to the school. I know there are a lot of urban legends about "that one time this crazy thing worked," but they are either not true or about something that will not work a second time.
  • Writing your essay in verse, in the form of a play, in bullet points, as an acrostic, or any other non-prose form. Unless you really have a way with poetry or playwriting, and you are very confident that you can meet the demands of the prompt and explain yourself well in this form, don't discard prose simply for the sake of being different.
  • Using as many "fancy" words as possible and getting very far away from sounding like yourself. Admissions officers are unanimous in wanting to hear your not fully formed teenage voice in your essay. This means that you should write at the top of your vocabulary range and syntax complexity, but don't trade every word up for a thesaurus synonym. Your essay will suffer for it.

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Failure to Proofread

Most people have a hard time checking over their own work. This is why you have to make sure that someone else proofreads your writing . This is the one place where you can, should—and really must—get someone who knows all about grammar, punctuation and has a good eye for detail to take a red pencil to your final draft.

Otherwise, you look like you either don't know the basic rules or writing (in which case, are you really ready for college work?) or don't care enough to present yourself well (in which case, why would the admissions people care about admitting you?).

  • Typos, grammatical mistakes, punctuation flubs, weird font/paragraph spacing issues. It's true that these are often unintentional mistakes. But caring about getting it right is a way to demonstrate your work ethic and dedication to the task at hand.
  • Going over the word limit. Part of showing your brilliance is being able to work within arbitrary rules and limitations. Going over the word count points to a lack of self-control, which is not a very attractive feature in a college applicant.
  • Repeating the same word(s) or sentence structure over and over again. This makes your prose monotonous and hard to read.

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Bad College Essay Examples—And How to Fix Them

The beauty of writing is that you get to rewrite. So if you think of your essay as a draft waiting to be revised into a better version rather than as a precious jewel that can't bear being touched, you'll be in far better shape to correct the issues that always crop up!

Now let's take a look at some actual college essay drafts to see where the writer is going wrong and how the issue could be fixed.

Essay #1: The "I Am Writing This Essay as We Speak" Meta-Narrative

Was your childhood home destroyed by a landspout tornado? Yeah, neither was mine. I know that intro might have given the impression that this college essay will be about withstanding disasters, but the truth is that it isn't about that at all.

In my junior year, I always had in mind an image of myself finishing the college essay months before the deadline. But as the weeks dragged on and the deadline drew near, it soon became clear that at the rate things are going I would probably have to make new plans for my October, November and December.

Falling into my personal wormhole, I sat down with my mom to talk about colleges. "Maybe you should write about Star Trek ," she suggested, "you know how you've always been obsessed with Captain Picard, calling him your dream mentor. Unique hobbies make good topics, right? You'll sound creative!" I played with the thought in my mind, tapping my imaginary communicator pin and whispering "Computer. Tea. Earl Grey. Hot. And then an Essay." Nothing happened. Instead, I sat quietly in my room wrote the old-fashioned way. Days later I emerged from my room disheveled, but to my dismay, this college essay made me sound like just a guy who can't get over the fact that he'll never take the Starfleet Academy entrance exam. So, I tossed my essay away without even getting to disintegrate it with a phaser set on stun.

I fell into a state of panic. My college essay. My image of myself in senior year. Almost out of nowhere, Robert Jameson Smith offered his words of advice. Perfect! He suggested students begin their college essay by listing their achievements and letting their essay materialize from there. My heart lifted, I took his advice and listed three of my greatest achievements - mastering my backgammon strategy, being a part of TREE in my sophomore year, and performing "I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major-General" from The Pirates of Penzance in public. And sure enough, I felt inspiration hit me and began to type away furiously into the keyboard about my experience in TREE, or Trees Require Engaged Environmentalists. I reflected on the current state of deforestation, and described the dichotomy of it being both understandable why farmers cut down forests for farmland, and how dangerous this is to our planet. Finally, I added my personal epiphany to the end of my college essay as the cherry on the vanilla sundae, as the overused saying goes.

After 3 weeks of figuring myself out, I have converted myself into a piece of writing. As far as achievements go, this was definitely an amazing one. The ability to transform a human being into 603 words surely deserves a gold medal. Yet in this essay, I was still being nagged by a voice that couldn't be ignored. Eventually, I submitted to that yelling inner voice and decided that this was not the right essay either.

In the middle of a hike through Philadelphia's Fairmount Park, I realized that the college essay was nothing more than an embodiment of my character. The two essays I have written were not right because they have failed to become more than just words on recycled paper. The subject failed to come alive. Certainly my keen interest in Star Trek and my enthusiasm for TREE are a great part of who I am, but there were other qualities essential in my character that did not come across in the essays.

With this realization, I turned around as quickly as I could without crashing into a tree.

What Essay #1 Does Well

Here are all things that are working on all cylinders for this personal statement as is.

Killer First Sentence

Was your childhood home destroyed by a landspout tornado? Yeah, neither was mine.

  • A strange fact. There are different kinds of tornadoes? What is a "landspout tornado" anyway?
  • A late-night-deep-thoughts hypothetical. What would it be like to be a kid whose house was destroyed in this unusual way?
  • Direct engagement with the reader. Instead of asking "what would it be like to have a tornado destroy a house" it asks "was your house ever destroyed."

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Gentle, Self-Deprecating Humor That Lands Well

I played with the thought in my mind, tapping my imaginary communicator pin and whispering "Computer. Tea. Earl Grey. Hot. And then an Essay." Nothing happened. Instead, I sat quietly in my room wrote the old-fashioned way. Days later I emerged from my room disheveled, but to my dismay, this college essay made me sound like just a guy who can't get over the fact that he'll never take the Starfleet Academy entrance exam. So, I tossed my essay away without even getting to disintegrate it with a phaser set on stun.

The author has his cake and eats it too here: both making fun of himself for being super into the Star Trek mythos, but also showing himself being committed enough to try whispering a command to the Enterprise computer alone in his room. You know, just in case.

A Solid Point That Is Made Paragraph by Paragraph

The meat of the essay is that the two versions of himself that the author thought about portraying each fails in some way to describe the real him. Neither an essay focusing on his off-beat interests, nor an essay devoted to his serious activism could capture everything about a well-rounded person in 600 words.

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(Image: fir0002 via Wikimedia Commons .)

Where Essay #1 Needs Revision

Rewriting these flawed parts will make the essay shine.

Spending Way Too Long on the Metanarrative

I know that intro might have given the impression that this college essay will be about withstanding disasters, but the truth is that it isn't about that at all.

After 3 weeks of figuring myself out, I have converted myself into a piece of writing. As far as achievements go, this was definitely an amazing one. The ability to transform a human being into 603 words surely deserves a gold medal.

Look at how long and draggy these paragraphs are, especially after that zippy opening. Is it at all interesting to read about how someone else found the process of writing hard? Not really, because this is a very common experience.

In the rewrite, I'd advise condensing all of this to maybe a sentence to get to the meat of the actual essay .

Letting Other People Do All the Doing

I sat down with my mom to talk about colleges. "Maybe you should write about Star Trek ," she suggested, "you know how you've always been obsessed with Captain Picard, calling him your dream mentor. Unique hobbies make good topics, right? You'll sound creative!"

Almost out of nowhere, Robert Jameson Smith offered his words of advice. Perfect! He suggested students begin their college essay by listing their achievements and letting their essay materialize from there.

Twice in the essay, the author lets someone else tell him what to do. Not only that, but it sounds like both of the "incomplete" essays were dictated by the thoughts of other people and had little to do with his own ideas, experiences, or initiative.

In the rewrite, it would be better to recast both the Star Trek and the TREE versions of the essay as the author's own thoughts rather than someone else's suggestions . This way, the point of the essay—taking apart the idea that a college essay could summarize life experience—is earned by the author's two failed attempts to write that other kind of essay.

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Leaving the Insight and Meaning Out of His Experiences

Both the Star Trek fandom and the TREE activism were obviously important life experiences for this author—important enough to be potential college essay topic candidates. But there is no description of what the author did with either one, nor any explanation of why these were so meaningful to his life.

It's fine to say that none of your achievements individually define you, but in order for that to work, you have to really sell the achievements themselves.

In the rewrite, it would be good to explore what he learned about himself and the world by pursuing these interests . How did they change him or seen him into the person he is today?

Not Adding New Shades and Facets of Himself Into the Mix

So, I tossed my essay away without even getting to disintegrate it with a phaser set on stun.

Yet in this essay, I was still being nagged by a voice that couldn't be ignored. Eventually, I submitted to that yelling inner voice and decided that this was not the right essay either.

In both of these passages, there is the perfect opportunity to point out what exactly these failed versions of the essay didn't capture about the author . In the next essay draft, I would suggest subtly making a point about his other qualities.

For example, after the Star Trek paragraph, he could talk about other culture he likes to consume, especially if he can discuss art forms he is interested in that would not be expected from someone who loves Star Trek .

Or, after the TREE paragraph, the author could explain why this second essay was no better at capturing him than the first. What was missing? Why is the self in the essay shouting—is it because this version paints him as an overly aggressive activist?

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Essay #2: The "I Once Saw Poor People" Service Trip Essay

Unlike other teenagers, I'm not concerned about money, or partying, or what others think of me. Unlike other eighteen year-olds, I think about my future, and haven't become totally materialistic and acquisitive. My whole outlook on life changed after I realized that my life was just being handed to me on a silver spoon, and yet there were those in the world who didn't have enough food to eat or place to live. I realized that the one thing that this world needed more than anything was compassion; compassion for those less fortunate than us.

During the summer of 2006, I went on a community service trip to rural Peru to help build an elementary school for kids there. I expected harsh conditions, but what I encountered was far worse. It was one thing to watch commercials asking for donations to help the unfortunate people in less developed countries, yet it was a whole different story to actually live it. Even after all this time, I can still hear babies crying from hunger; I can still see the filthy rags that they wore; I can still smell the stench of misery and hopelessness. But my most vivid memory was the moment I first got to the farming town. The conditions of it hit me by surprise; it looked much worse in real life than compared to the what our group leader had told us. Poverty to me and everyone else I knew was a foreign concept that people hear about on the news or see in documentaries. But this abject poverty was their life, their reality. And for the brief ten days I was there, it would be mine too. As all of this realization came at once, I felt overwhelmed by the weight of what was to come. Would I be able to live in the same conditions as these people? Would I catch a disease that no longer existed in the first world, or maybe die from drinking contaminated water? As these questions rolled around my already dazed mind, I heard a soft voice asking me in Spanish, "Are you okay? Is there anything I can do to make you feel better?" I looked down to see a small boy, around nine years of age, who looked starved, and cold, wearing tattered clothing, comforting me. These people who have so little were able to forget their own needs, and put those much more fortunate ahead of themselves. It was at that moment that I saw how selfish I had been. How many people suffered like this in the world, while I went about life concerned about nothing at all?

Thinking back on the trip, maybe I made a difference, maybe not. But I gained something much more important. I gained the desire to make the world a better place for others. It was in a small, poverty-stricken village in Peru that I finally realized that there was more to life than just being alive.

What Essay #2 Does Well

Let's first point out what this draft has going for it.

Clear Chronology

This is an essay that tries to explain a shift in perspective. There are different ways to structure this overarching idea, but a chronological approach that starts with an earlier opinion, describes a mind changing event, and ends with the transformed point of view is an easy and clear way to lay this potentially complex subject out.

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(Image: User:Lite via Wikimedia Commons)

Where Essay #2 Needs Revision

Now let's see what needs to be changed in order for this essay to pass muster.

Condescending, Obnoxious Tone

Unlike other teenagers, I'm not concerned about money, or partying, or what others think of me. Unlike other eighteen year-olds, I think about my future, and haven't become totally materialistic and acquisitive.

This is a very broad generalization, which doesn't tend to be the best way to formulate an argument—or to start an essay. It just makes this author sound dismissive of a huge swath of the population.

In the rewrite, this author would be way better off just concentrate on what she want to say about herself, not pass judgment on "other teenagers," most of whom she doesn't know and will never meet.

I realized that the one thing that this world needed more than anything was compassion; compassion for those less fortunate than us.

Coming from someone who hasn't earned her place in the world through anything but the luck of being born, the word "compassion" sounds really condescending. Calling others "less fortunate" when you're a senior in high school has a dehumanizing quality to it.

These people who have so little were able to forget their own needs, and put those much more fortunate in front of themselves.

Again, this comes across as very patronizing. Not only that, but to this little boy the author was clearly not looking all that "fortunate"—instead, she looked pathetic enough to need comforting.

In the next draft, a better hook could be making the essay about the many different kinds of shifting perspectives the author encountered on that trip . A more meaningful essay would compare and contrast the points of view of the TV commercials, to what the group leader said, to the author's own expectations, and finally to this child's point of view.

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Vague, Unobservant Description

During the summer of 2006, I went on a community service trip to rural Peru to help build an elementary school for kids there. I expected harsh conditions, but what I encountered was far worse. It was one thing to watch commercials asking for donations to help the unfortunate people in less developed countries, yet it was a whole different story to actually live it. Even after all this time, I can still hear babies crying from hunger; I can still see the filthy rags that they wore; I can still smell the stench of misery and hopelessness.

Phrases like "cries of the small children from not having enough to eat" and "dirt stained rags" seem like descriptions, but they're really closer to incurious and completely hackneyed generalizations. Why were the kids were crying? How many kids? All the kids? One specific really loud kid?

The same goes for "filthy rags," which is both an incredibly insensitive way to talk about the clothing of these villagers, and again shows a total lack of interest in their life. Why were their clothes dirty? Were they workers or farmers so their clothes showing marks of labor? Did they have Sunday clothes? Traditional clothes they would put on for special occasions? Did they make their own clothes? That would be a good reason to keep wearing clothing even if it had "stains" on it.

The rewrite should either make this section more specific and less reliant on cliches, or should discard it altogether .

The conditions of it hit me by surprise; it looked much worse in real life than compared to the what our group leader had told us. Poverty to me and everyone else I knew was a foreign concept that people hear about on the news or see in documentaries. But this abject poverty was their life, their reality.

If this is the "most vivid memory," then I would expect to read all the details that have been seared into the author's brain. What did their leader tell them? What was different in real life? What was the light like? What did the houses/roads/grass/fields/trees/animals/cars look like? What time of day was it? Did they get there by bus, train, or plane? Was there an airport/train station/bus terminal? A city center? Shops? A marketplace?

There are any number of details to include here when doing another drafting pass.

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Lack of Insight or Maturity

But this abject poverty was their life, their reality. And for the brief ten days I was there, it would be mine too. As all of this realization came at once, I felt overwhelmed by the weight of what was to come. Would I be able to live in the same conditions as these people? Would I catch a disease that no longer existed in the first world, or maybe die from drinking contaminated water?

Without a framing device explaining that this initial panic was an overreaction, this section just makes the author sound whiny, entitled, melodramatic, and immature . After all, this isn't a a solo wilderness trek—the author is there with a paid guided program. Just how much mortality is typically associated with these very standard college-application-boosting service trips?

In a rewrite, I would suggest including more perspective on the author's outsized and overprivileged response here. This would fit well with a new focus on the different points of view on this village the author encountered.

Unearned, Clichéd "Deep Thoughts"

But I gained something much more important. I gained the desire to make the world a better place for others. It was in a small, poverty-stricken village in Peru that I finally realized that there was more to life than just being alive.

Is it really believable that this is what the author learned? There is maybe some evidence to suggest that the author was shaken somewhat out of a comfortable, materialistic existence. But what does "there is more to life than just being alive" even really mean? This conclusion is rather vague, and seems mostly a non sequitur.

In a rewrite, the essay should be completely reoriented to discuss how differently others see us than we see ourselves, pivoting on the experience of being pitied by someone who you thought was pitiable. Then, the new version can end by on a note of being better able to understand different points of view and other people's perspectives .

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The Bottom Line

  • Bad college essays have problems either with their topics or their execution.
  • The essay is how admissions officers learn about your personality, point of view, and maturity level, so getting the topic right is a key factor in letting them see you as an aware, self-directed, open-minded applicant who is going to thrive in an environment of independence.
  • The essay is also how admissions officers learn that you are writing at a ready-for-college level, so screwing up the execution shows that you either don't know how to write, or don't care enough to do it well.
  • The main ways college essay topics go wrong is bad taste, bad judgment, and lack of self-awareness.
  • The main ways college essays fail in their execution have to do with ignoring format, syntax, and genre expectations.

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Anna scored in the 99th percentile on her SATs in high school, and went on to major in English at Princeton and to get her doctorate in English Literature at Columbia. She is passionate about improving student access to higher education.

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Essay on Poor And Rich Lifestyle

Students are often asked to write an essay on Poor And Rich Lifestyle in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Poor And Rich Lifestyle

Differences in daily life.

Rich and poor people live very different lives. Rich folks often have big houses and fancy cars. They eat food from all over the world and wear expensive clothes. Poor people might share small spaces with others and use buses or walk. They eat simpler meals and wear basic clothes.

Education and Opportunities

Rich children can go to private schools with many resources. They also have access to tutors and technology. Poor children might attend crowded public schools. They may not have extra help or new computers.

Health and Well-being

Wealthy people can pay for good doctors and health treatments. They might exercise in gyms or play sports in clubs. Poor people may rely on less expensive and busy clinics. They often can’t afford sports or gym fees.

Leisure and Entertainment

People with money might travel, see movies, or dine out for fun. They can afford hobbies like painting or horse riding. Poor families might enjoy free parks or watch television. Their hobbies usually cost less or nothing.

Future Possibilities

Rich people often save money and plan for the future. They might invest or start businesses. Poor people may live day by day, finding it hard to save. Their focus is often on current needs, not future plans.

250 Words Essay on Poor And Rich Lifestyle

Introduction.

There are many people in the world, and they live in different ways. Some have a lot of money and things, while others have very little. This essay talks about how the lives of rich and poor people are different.

Money and Things

Rich people can buy what they want, like big houses, nice cars, and fancy clothes. They can also go to good schools and travel to new places. Poor people might not have enough money for these things. They often live in smaller homes and use old things because they can’t afford new ones.

Food and Health

Rich people can choose from many different foods and can go to the doctor when they are sick. Poor people sometimes do not have enough food and may not be able to see a doctor easily. This can make it hard for them to stay healthy.

In their free time, rich people might play sports or have hobbies that cost money. Poor people might also have fun, but they might choose things that do not need much money, like playing outside.

Education and Work

Rich people often have better chances to learn in good schools. This can help them get good jobs later. Poor people might not go to school for long, and they might work in hard jobs that do not pay much.

In the end, whether someone is rich or poor can change a lot about their life. But it is important to remember that being happy does not only come from money. People, rich or poor, can find joy in their friends, family, and the things they love to do.

500 Words Essay on Poor And Rich Lifestyle

When we talk about poor and rich lifestyles, we are looking at how different people live based on the money they have. Rich people have a lot of money, so they can buy many things, live in big houses, and eat fancy food. Poor people do not have much money, so they might live in small houses or apartments, and sometimes they struggle to buy enough food.

Rich families often have cars, and sometimes more than one. They can travel to different places easily, go on vacations, and send their children to schools with many resources. Poor families might not have a car, making it hard to travel far. Their children might go to schools that do not have as many books or computers.

Food is another big difference. Rich people can choose to eat fresh fruits, vegetables, and meat because they can afford it. They also have the chance to go to doctors regularly and get medicine if they are sick.

Poor people might not have enough money for healthy food all the time. They might eat more processed food because it is cheaper. Going to the doctor can be hard for them, too, because it costs money. This can mean they are sick more often or cannot get better quickly when they are sick.

Free Time and Fun

Rich people have more choices for fun. They can go to movies, play sports, and buy books or games. They might have hobbies like painting or playing an instrument, which can cost a lot of money for lessons and materials.

Poor people might not have money for these things. They often find free or cheap ways to have fun. They might play soccer with a homemade ball or spend time with family and friends talking and laughing.

Opportunities for the Future

Rich people often have more chances to do well in the future. They can go to college or start a business because they have the money to pay for it. This can lead to jobs that pay well, which means they can stay rich or become even richer.

Poor people face a harder time finding good jobs because they might not be able to afford college or training. They often have to work in jobs that do not pay much money, making it difficult to save money or get ahead.

Feelings and Stress

Being rich or poor can affect how people feel. Rich people might feel safe because they know they have money for food, a home, and health care. They might not worry as much about the future.

Poor people might feel worried a lot. Not having enough money can be very stressful. They might be concerned about paying for food or rent, and they might feel sad that they cannot buy things that other people have.

In conclusion, being rich or poor can make a big difference in how people live. It changes what they can buy, the fun they can have, and the chances they get in life. It is important to understand these differences because it helps us see how we can help each other and make the world a fairer place for everyone.

That’s it! I hope the essay helped you.

If you’re looking for more, here are essays on other interesting topics:

  • Essay on Polygamy Is Better Than Monogamy
  • Essay on Politics And Society
  • Essay on Political Socialization

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The Loss of Things I Took for Granted

Ten years into my college teaching career, students stopped being able to read effectively..

Recent years have seen successive waves of book bans in Republican-controlled states, aimed at pulling any text with “woke” themes from classrooms and library shelves. Though the results sometimes seem farcical, as with the banning of Art Spiegelman’s Maus due to its inclusion of “cuss words” and explicit rodent nudity, the book-banning agenda is no laughing matter. Motivated by bigotry, it has already done demonstrable harm and promises to do more. But at the same time, the appropriate response is, in principle, simple. Named individuals have advanced explicit policies with clear goals and outcomes, and we can replace those individuals with people who want to reverse those policies. That is already beginning to happen in many places, and I hope those successes will continue until every banned book is restored.

If and when that happens, however, we will not be able to declare victory quite yet. Defeating the open conspiracy to deprive students of physical access to books will do little to counteract the more diffuse confluence of forces that are depriving students of the skills needed to meaningfully engage with those books in the first place. As a college educator, I am confronted daily with the results of that conspiracy-without-conspirators. I have been teaching in small liberal arts colleges for over 15 years now, and in the past five years, it’s as though someone flipped a switch. For most of my career, I assigned around 30 pages of reading per class meeting as a baseline expectation—sometimes scaling up for purely expository readings or pulling back for more difficult texts. (No human being can read 30 pages of Hegel in one sitting, for example.) Now students are intimidated by anything over 10 pages and seem to walk away from readings of as little as 20 pages with no real understanding. Even smart and motivated students struggle to do more with written texts than extract decontextualized take-aways. Considerable class time is taken up simply establishing what happened in a story or the basic steps of an argument—skills I used to be able to take for granted.

Since this development very directly affects my ability to do my job as I understand it, I talk about it a lot. And when I talk about it with nonacademics, certain predictable responses inevitably arise, all questioning the reality of the trend I describe. Hasn’t every generation felt that the younger cohort is going to hell in a handbasket? Haven’t professors always complained that educators at earlier levels are not adequately equipping their students? And haven’t students from time immemorial skipped the readings?

The response of my fellow academics, however, reassures me that I’m not simply indulging in intergenerational grousing. Anecdotally, I have literally never met a professor who did not share my experience. Professors are also discussing the issue in academic trade publications , from a variety of perspectives. What we almost all seem to agree on is that we are facing new obstacles in structuring and delivering our courses, requiring us to ratchet down expectations in the face of a ratcheting down of preparation. Yes, there were always students who skipped the readings, but we are in new territory when even highly motivated honors students struggle to grasp the basic argument of a 20-page article. Yes, professors never feel satisfied that high school teachers have done enough, but not every generation of professors has had to deal with the fallout of No Child Left Behind and Common Core. Finally, yes, every generation thinks the younger generation is failing to make the grade— except for the current cohort of professors, who are by and large more invested in their students’ success and mental health and more responsive to student needs than any group of educators in human history. We are not complaining about our students. We are complaining about what has been taken from them.

If we ask what has caused this change, there are some obvious culprits. The first is the same thing that has taken away almost everyone’s ability to focus—the ubiquitous smartphone. Even as a career academic who studies the Quran in Arabic for fun, I have noticed my reading endurance flagging. I once found myself boasting at a faculty meeting that I had read through my entire hourlong train ride without looking at my phone. My colleagues agreed this was a major feat, one they had not achieved recently. Even if I rarely attain that high level of focus, though, I am able to “turn it on” when demanded, for instance to plow through a big novel during a holiday break. That’s because I was able to develop and practice those skills of extended concentration and attentive reading before the intervention of the smartphone. For children who were raised with smartphones, by contrast, that foundation is missing. It is probably no coincidence that the iPhone itself, originally released in 2007, is approaching college age, meaning that professors are increasingly dealing with students who would have become addicted to the dopamine hit of the omnipresent screen long before they were introduced to the more subtle pleasures of the page.

The second go-to explanation is the massive disruption of school closures during COVID-19. There is still some debate about the necessity of those measures, but what is not up for debate any longer is the very real learning loss that students suffered at every level. The impact will inevitably continue to be felt for the next decade or more, until the last cohort affected by the mass “pivot to online” finally graduates. I doubt that the pandemic closures were the decisive factor in themselves, however. Not only did the marked decline in reading resilience start before the pandemic, but the students I am seeing would have already been in high school during the school closures. Hence they would be better equipped to get something out of the online format and, more importantly, their basic reading competence would have already been established.

Less discussed than these broader cultural trends over which educators have little control are the major changes in reading pedagogy that have occurred in recent decades—some motivated by the ever-increasing demand to “teach to the test” and some by fads coming out of schools of education. In the latter category is the widely discussed decline in phonics education in favor of the “balanced literacy” approach advocated by education expert Lucy Calkins (who has more recently come to accept the need for more phonics instruction). I started to see the results of this ill-advised change several years ago, when students abruptly stopped attempting to sound out unfamiliar words and instead paused until they recognized the whole word as a unit. (In a recent class session, a smart, capable student was caught short by the word circumstances when reading a text out loud.) The result of this vibes-based literacy is that students never attain genuine fluency in reading. Even aside from the impact of smartphones, their experience of reading is constantly interrupted by their intentionally cultivated inability to process unfamiliar words.

For all the flaws of the balanced literacy method, it was presumably implemented by people who thought it would help. It is hard to see a similar motivation in the growing trend toward assigning students only the kind of short passages that can be included in a standardized test. Due in part to changes driven by the infamous Common Core standards , teachers now have to fight to assign their students longer readings, much less entire books, because those activities won’t feed directly into students getting higher test scores, which leads to schools getting more funding. The emphasis on standardized tests was always a distraction at best, but we have reached the point where it is actively cannibalizing students’ educational experience—an outcome no one intended or planned, and for which there is no possible justification.

We can’t go back in time and do the pandemic differently at this point, nor is there any realistic path to putting the smartphone genie back in the bottle. (Though I will note that we as a society do at least attempt to keep other addictive products out of the hands of children.) But I have to think that we can, at the very least, stop actively preventing young people from developing the ability to follow extended narratives and arguments in the classroom. Regardless of their profession or ultimate educational level, they will need those skills. The world is a complicated place. People—their histories and identities, their institutions and work processes, their fears and desires—are simply too complex to be captured in a worksheet with a paragraph and some reading comprehension questions. Large-scale prose writing is the best medium we have for capturing that complexity, and the education system should not be in the business of keeping students from learning how to engage effectively with it.

This is a matter not of snobbery, but of basic justice. I recognize that not everyone centers their lives on books as much as a humanities professor does. I think they’re missing out, but they’re adults and they can choose how to spend their time. What’s happening with the current generation is not that they are simply choosing TikTok over Jane Austen. They are being deprived of the ability to choose—for no real reason or benefit. We can and must stop perpetrating this crime on our young people.

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The Lure of Divorce

Seven years into my marriage, i hit a breaking point — and had to decide whether life would be better without my husband in it..

Portrait of Emily Gould

This article was featured in One Great Story , New York ’s reading recommendation newsletter. Sign up here to get it nightly.

In the summer of 2022, I lost my mind. At first, it seemed I was simply overwhelmed because life had become very difficult, and I needed to — had every right to — blow off some steam. Our family was losing its apartment and had to find another one, fast, in a rental market gone so wild that people were offering over the asking price on rent. My husband, Keith, was preparing to publish a book, Raising Raffi, about our son, a book he’d written with my support and permission but that, as publication loomed, I began to have mixed feelings about. To cope with the stress, I asked my psychiatrist to increase the dosage of the antidepressant I’d been on for years. Sometime around then, I started talking too fast and drinking a lot.

I felt invincibly alive, powerful, and self-assured, troubled only by impatience with how slowly everyone around me was moving and thinking. Drinking felt necessary because it slightly calmed my racing brain. Some days, I’d have drinks with breakfast, lunch, and dinner, which I ate at restaurants so the drink order didn’t seem too unusual. Who doesn’t have an Aperol spritz on the way home from the gym in the morning? The restaurant meals cost money, as did the gym, as did all the other random things I bought, spending money we didn’t really have on ill-fitting lingerie from Instagram and workout clothes and lots of planters from Etsy. I grew distant and impatient with Keith as the book’s publication approached, even as I planned a giant party to celebrate its launch. At the party, everyone got COVID. I handed out cigarettes from a giant salad bowl — I had gone from smoking once or twice a day to chain-smoking whenever I could get away with it. When well-meaning friends tried to point out what was going on, I screamed at them and pointed out everything that was wrong in their lives. And most crucially, I became convinced that my marriage was over and had been over for years.

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I built a case against my husband in my mind. This book of his was simply the culmination of a pattern: He had always put his career before mine; while I had tended to our children during the pandemic, he had written a book about parenting. I tried to balance writing my own novel with drop-offs, pickups, sick days, and planning meals and shopping and cooking, most of which had always been my primary responsibility since I was a freelancer and Keith had a full-time job teaching journalism. We were incompatible in every way, except that we could talk to each other as we could to no one else, but that seemed beside the point. More relevant: I spent money like it was water, never budgeting, leaving Keith to make sure we made rent every month. Every few months, we’d have a fight about this and I’d vow to change; some system would be put in place, but it never stuck. We were headed for disaster, and finally it came.

Our last fight happened after a long day spent at a wedding upstate. I’d been drinking, first spiked lemonade at lunch alone and then boxed wine during the wedding reception, where I couldn’t eat any of the food — it all contained wheat, and I have celiac disease. When we got back, late, to the house where we were staying, I ordered takeout and demanded he go pick it up for me. Calling from the restaurant, he was incensed. Did I know how much my takeout order had cost? I hadn’t paid attention as I checked boxes in the app, nor had I realized that our bank account was perilously low — I never looked at receipts or opened statements. Not knowing this, I felt like he was actually denying me food, basic sustenance. It was the last straw. I packed a bag as the kids played happily with their cousins downstairs, then waited by the side of the road for a friend who lived nearby to come pick me up, even as Keith stood there begging me to stay. But his words washed over me; I was made of stone. I said it was over — really over. This was it, the definitive moment I’d been waiting for. I had a concrete reason to leave.

A few days later, still upstate at my friend’s house, I had a Zoom call with my therapist and my psychiatrist, who both urged me in no uncertain terms to check myself into a psychiatric hospital. Even I couldn’t ignore a message that clear. My friend drove me to the city, stopping for burgers along the way — I should have relished the burger more, as it was some of the last noninstitutional food I would eat for a long time — and helped me check into NYU Langone. My bags were searched, and anything that could be used as a weapon was removed, including my mascara. I spent my first night there in a gown in a cold holding room with no phone, nothing but my thoughts. Eventually, a bed upstairs became free and I was brought to the psych ward, where I was introduced to a roommate, had blood drawn, and was given the first of many pills that would help me stop feeling so irrepressibly energetic and angry. They started me on lithium right away. In a meeting with a team of psychiatrists, they broke the news: I had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder; they weren’t sure which kind yet. They gave me a nicotine patch every few hours plus Klonopin and Seroquel and lithium.

I wasn’t being held involuntarily, which meant I could write letters on an official form explaining why I ought to be released, which the psychiatrists then had three days to consider. I attached extra notebook pages to the letters explaining that I was divorcing my husband and was terrified I would never be able to see my kids again if I was declared unfit because I was insane. These letters did not result in my release; if anything, they prolonged my stay. I got my phone back — it would soon be revoked again, wisely — but in that brief interim, I sent out a newsletter to my hundreds of subscribers declaring that I was getting a divorce and asking them to Venmo me money for the custody battle I foresaw. In this newsletter, I also referenced Shakespeare. The drugs clearly had not kicked in yet. I cycled through three different roommates, all of whom were lovely, though I preferred the depressed one to the borderline ones. We amused ourselves during the day by going to art therapy, music therapy, and meetings with our psychiatrists. I made a lot of beaded bracelets.

In the meetings with the shrinks, I steadfastly maintained that I was sane and that my main problem was the ending of my marriage. I put Keith, and my mother, on a list of people who weren’t allowed to visit me. Undaunted, Keith brought me gluten-free egg sandwiches in the morning, which I grudgingly ate — anything for a break from the hospital food. My parents came up from D.C. and helped Keith take care of our children. I was in the hospital for a little more than three weeks, almost the entire month of October, longer than I’d ever been away from my kids before in their lives. I celebrated my 41st birthday in the hospital and received a lot of very creative cards that my fellow crazies had decorated during art therapy. Eventually, the drugs began to work: I could tell they were working because instead of feeling energetic, I suddenly couldn’t stop crying. The tears came involuntarily, like vomit. I cried continuously for hours and had to be given gabapentin in order to sleep.

poor life essay

On the day I was released, I didn’t let anyone pick me up. I expected the superhuman strength I’d felt for months to carry me, but it was gone, lithiumed away. Instead, I felt almost paralyzed as I carried my bags to a cab. When I arrived at my apartment, I couldn’t figure out where I should sleep. It didn’t feel like my home anymore. We couldn’t afford to live separately, even temporarily, but the one thing that our somewhat decrepit, inconveniently located new apartment had in its favor was two small attic bedrooms and one larger bedroom downstairs. I claimed this downstairs room for myself and began to live there alone, coming into contact with Keith only when we had to be together with our children.

You might assume that my fixation on divorce would have subsided now that my mental health had stabilized and I was on strong antipsychotic medication. But I still did not want to stay in my marriage. If anything, I felt a newfound clarity: Keith and I had fundamentally incompatible selves. Our marriage had been built on a flaw. My husband was older, more established and successful in his career. These were the facts, so it had to be my job to do more of the work at home. Unless, of course, I decided to take myself and my work as seriously as he took his. But that was unappealing; I had managed to publish three books before turning 40, but I didn’t want to work all the time, like he does.

I wondered if my marriage would always feel like a competition and if the only way to call the competition a draw would be to end it.

We picked the kids up from school and dropped them off, or really mostly Keith did. I appeared at meals and tried to act normal. I was at a loss for what to do much of the time. I attended AA meetings and the DBT meetings required by the hospital outpatient program, and I read. I read books about insanity: Darkness Visible, The Bell Jar, An Unquiet Mind, Postcards From the Edge. I tried to understand what was happening to me, but nothing seemed to resonate until I began to read books about divorce. I felt I was preparing myself for what was coming. The first book I read was Rachel Cusk’s Aftermath, which has become the go-to literary divorce bible since its 2012 publication. In it, Cusk describes the way her life shattered and recomposed after the dissolution of her marriage, when her daughters were still very young. She makes the case for the untenability of her relationship by explaining that men and women are fundamentally unequal. She posits that men and women who marry and have children are perpetually fighting separate battles, lost to each other: “The baby can seem like something her husband has given her as a substitute for himself, a kind of transitional object, like a doll, for her to hold so that he can return to the world. And he does, he leaves her, returning to work, setting sail for Troy. He is free, for in the baby the romance of man and woman has been concluded: each can now do without the other.”

At our relationship’s lowest moments, this metaphor had barely been a metaphor. I remembered, the previous winter, Keith going off on a reporting trip to Ukraine at the very beginning of the war, leaving me and the kids with very little assurance of his safety. I had felt okay for the first couple of days until I heard on the news of bombing very close to where he was staying. After that, I went and bummed a cigarette from a neighbor, leaving the kids sleeping in their beds in order to do so. It was my first cigarette in 15 years. Though that had been the winter before my mania began, I believe the first seeds of it were sown then: leaving the children, smoking the cigarette, resenting Keith for putting himself in harm’s way and going out into the greater world while I tended to lunches, homework, and laundry as though everything were normal.

In Nora Ephron’s Heartburn, as in Aftermath, I found an airtight case for divorce. The husband was the villain and the wife the wronged party, and the inevitable result was splitting up. I felt an echo of this later on when I read Lyz Lenz’s polemic This American Ex-Wife, out this month, marketed as “a deeply validating manifesto on the gender politics of marriage (bad) and divorce (actually pretty good!).” The book begins by detailing how Lenz’s husband rarely did household chores and hid belongings of hers that he didn’t like — e.g., a mug that said WRITE LIKE A MOTHERFUCKER — in a box in the basement. “I didn’t want to waste my one wild and precious life telling a grown man where to find the ketchup,” Lenz writes. “What was compelling about my marriage wasn’t its evils or its villains, but its commonplace horror.”

This was not quite the way I felt. Even though I could not stand to see my husband’s face or hear his voice, even though I still felt the same simmering resentment I had since I entered the hospital, I also found myself feeling pangs of sympathy for him. After all, he was going through this too. When we were inevitably together, at mealtimes that were silent unless the children spoke, I could see how wounded he was, how he was barely keeping it together. His clothes hung off his gaunt frame. And at night, when we passed in the kitchen making cups of tea that we would take to our respective rooms, he sometimes asked me for a hug, just a hug. One time I gave in and felt his ribs through his T-shirt. He must have lost at least 15 pounds.

It began to seem like I only ever talked to friends who had been through divorces or were contemplating them. One friend who didn’t know whether to split up with her husband thought opening their marriage might be the answer. Another friend described the ease of sharing custody of his young daughter, then admitted that he and his ex-wife still had sex most weekends. In my chronically undecided state, I admired both of these friends who had found, or might have found, a way to split the difference. Maybe it was possible to break up and remain friends with an ex, something that had never happened to me before in my entire life. Maybe it was possible to be married and not married at the same time. Then I went a little further in my imagination, and the idea of someone else having sex with my husband made me want to gag with jealousy. Maybe that meant something. I was so confused, and the confusion seemed to have no end.

I read more books about divorce. I received an early copy of Sarah Manguso’s Liars, marketed as “a searing novel about being a wife, a mother, and an artist, and how marriage makes liars out of us all.” In it, John, a creative dilettante, and Jane, a writer, meet and soon decide to marry. Liars describes their marriage from beginning to end, a span of almost 15 years, and is narrated by Jane. The beginning of their relationship is delirious: “I tried to explain that first ferocious hunger and couldn’t. It came from somewhere beyond reason.” But the opening of that book also contains a warning. “Then I married a man, as women do. My life became archetypal, a drag show of nuclear familyhood. I got enmeshed in a story that had already been told ten billion times.” I felt perversely reassured that I was merely adding another story to the 10 billion. It made it seem less like it was my fault.

The beginning of my relationship with my husband wasn’t that dramatic or definitive. I thought I was getting into something casual with someone I didn’t even know if I particularly liked, much less loved, but was still oddly fascinated by. I wanted to see the way he lived, to see if I could emulate it and become more like him. He lived with roommates in his 30s — well, that was the price you paid if you wanted to do nothing but write. I wanted what he had, his seriousness about his work. We went on dates where we both sat with our laptops in a café, writing, and this was somehow the most romantic thing I’d ever experienced. On our third date, we went to his father’s home on Cape Cod to dog-sit for a weekend, and it was awkward in the car until we realized we were both thinking about the same Mary Gaitskill story, “A Romantic Weekend,” in which a couple with dramatically mismatched needs learn the truth about each other through painful trial and error. Our weekend was awkward, too, but not nearly as awkward as the one in the story. On the way home, I remember admiring Keith’s driving, effortless yet masterful. I trusted him in the car completely. A whisper of a thought: He would make a good father.

In Liars, cracks begin to form almost immediately, even before John and Jane get engaged; she is accepted to a prestigious fellowship and he isn’t, and he is forthright about his fear that she will become more successful than he is: “A moment later he said he didn’t want to be the unsuccessful partner of the successful person. Then he apologized and said that he’d just wanted to be honest. I said, It was brave and considerate to tell me. ”

Through the next few years, so gradually that it’s almost imperceptible, John makes it impossible for Jane to succeed. He launches tech companies that require cross-country moves, forcing Jane to bounce between adjunct-teaching gigs. And then, of course, they have a baby. The problem with the baby is that Jane wants everything to be perfect for him and throws herself into creating a tidy home and an ideal child-development scenario, whereas John works more and more, moving the family again as one start-up fails and another flourishes. Jane begins to wonder whether she has created a prison for herself but pacifies herself with the thought that her situation is normal: “No married woman I knew was better off, so I determined to carry on. After all, I was a control freak, a neat freak, a crazy person.” The story John tells her about herself becomes her own story for a while. For a while, it’s impossible to know whose story is the truth.

I thought about Keith’s side of the story when I read Liars. Maybe it was the lack of alcohol’s blur that enabled me to see this clearly for the first time — I began to see how burdened he had been, had always been, with a partner who refused to plan for the future and who took on, without being asked, household chores that could just as easily have been distributed evenly. Our situation had never been as clear-cut as it was for Lyz Lenz; Keith had never refused to take out the trash or hidden my favorite mug. But he worked more and later hours, and my intermittent book advances and freelance income could not be counted on to pay our rent. As soon as we’d had a child, he had been shunted into the role of breadwinner without choosing it or claiming it. At first, I did all the cooking because I liked cooking and then, when I stopped liking cooking, I did it anyway out of habit. For our marriage to change, we would have needed to consciously decide to change it, insofar as our essential natures and our financial situation would allow. But when were we supposed to have found the time to do that? It was maddening that the root of our fracture was so commonplace and clichéd — and that even though the problem was ordinary, I still couldn’t think my way out of it.

Splinters: Another Kind of Love Story, by Leslie Jamison , is in some ways the successor to Aftermath — the latest divorce book by a literary superstar. It is mostly an account of Jamison’s passionate marriage to a fellow writer, C., and the way that marriage fell apart after her career accelerated and they had a child together. It then details her first months of life as a single mother and her forays into dating. In it, she is strenuously fair to C., taking much of the blame for the dissolution of their marriage. But she can’t avoid describing his anger that her book merits an extensive tour, while his novel — based on his relationship with his first wife, who had died of leukemia — fails commercially. “It didn’t get the reception he had hoped for,” Jamison writes, and now, “I could feel him struggling. He wanted to support me, but there was a thorn in every interview.” C. grows distant, refusing to publicly perform the charming self that Jamison fell in love with. “I wished there was a way to say, Your work matters, that didn’t involve muting my own,” Jamison writes.

For all my marriage’s faults, we never fought in public. Friends encouraged us to reconcile, saying, “You always seemed so good together.” (As if there were another way to seem! Standing next to each other at a party, it had always been easy to relax because we couldn’t fight.) And we never did anything but praise each other’s work. Until this last book of my husband’s, that is. I had read Raising Raffi for the first time six months before it was published, while I was out of town for the weekend. I had, at that time, enjoyed reading it — it was refreshing, in a way, to see someone else’s perspective on a part of my own life. I even felt a certain relief that my child’s early years, in all their specificity and cuteness, had been recorded. This work had been accomplished, and I hadn’t had to do it! There had been only a slight pang in the background of that feeling that I hadn’t been the one to do it. But as publication drew nearer, the pang turned into outright anger . The opening chapter described my giving birth to our first son, and I didn’t realize how violated I felt by that until it was vetted by The New Yorker ’s fact-checker after that section was selected as an excerpt for its website. Had a geyser of blood shot out of my vagina? I didn’t actually know. I had been busy at the time. I hung up on the fact-checker who called me, asking her to please call my husband instead. (In case you’re wondering, Keith has read this essay and suggested minimal changes.)

I related to the writers in Splinters trying to love each other despite the underlying thrum of competing ambitions. But most of all, Jamison’s book made me even more terrified about sharing custody. “There was only one time I got on my knees and begged. It happened in our living room, where I knelt beside the wooden coffee table and pleaded not to be away from her for two nights each week,” she writes. Envisioning a future in which we shared custody of our children made me cringe with horror. It seemed like absolute hell. At the time we separated, our younger son was only 4 years old and required stories and cuddles to get to bed. Missing a night of those stories seemed like a punishment neither of us deserved, and yet we would have to sacrifice time with our kids if we were going to escape each other, which seemed like the only possible solution to our problem. Thanksgiving rolled around, and I cooked a festive meal that we ate without looking at each other. Whenever I looked at Keith, I started to cry.

We decided to enter divorce mediation at the beginning of December. On Sixth Avenue, heading to the therapist’s office, we passed the hospital where I’d once been rushed for an emergency fetal EKG when I was pregnant with our first son. His heart had turned out to be fine. But as we passed that spot, I sensed correctly that we were both thinking of that moment, of a time when we had felt so connected in our panic and desperate hope, and now the invisible cord that had bound us had been, if not severed, shredded and torn. For a moment on the sidewalk there, we allowed ourselves to hold hands, remembering.

The therapist was a small older woman with short curly reddish hair. She seemed wise, like she’d seen it all and seen worse. I was the one who talked the most in that session, blaming Keith for making me go crazy, even though I knew this wasn’t technically true or possible: I had gone crazy from a combination of sky-high stress and a too-high SSRI prescription and a latent crazy that had been in me, part of me, since long before Keith married me, since I was born. Still, I blamed his job, his book, his ambition and workaholism, which always surpassed my own efforts. I cried throughout the session; I think we both did. I confessed that I was not the primary wronged person in these negotiations, and to be fair I have to talk about why. Sometime post–Last Fight and pre-hospitalization, I had managed to cheat on my husband. I had been so sure we were basically already divorced that I justified the act to myself; I couldn’t have done it any other way. I had thought I might panic at the last minute or even throw up or faint, but I had gone through with it thanks to the delusional state I was in. There aren’t many more details anyone needs to know. It was just one time, and it was like a drug I used to keep myself from feeling sad about what was really happening. Anyway, there’s a yoga retreat center I’ll never be able to go to again in my life.

At the end of the session, we decided to continue with the therapist but in couples therapy instead of divorce mediation. It was a service she also provided, and as a bonus, it was $100 cheaper per session. She didn’t say why she made this recommendation, but maybe it was our palpable shared grief that convinced her that our marriage was salvageable. Or maybe it was that, despite everything I had told her in that session, she could see that, even in my profound sadness and anger, I looked toward Keith to complete my sentences when I was searching for the right word and that he did the same thing with me. As broken as we were, we were still pieces of one once-whole thing.

My husband would have to forgive me for cheating and wasting our money. I would have to forgive him for treading on my literary territory: our family’s life, my own life. My husband would have to forgive me for having a mental breakdown, leaving him to take care of our family on his own for a month, costing us thousands of uninsured dollars in hospital bills. I would have to forgive him for taking for granted, for years, that I would be available on a sick day or to do an early pickup or to watch the baby while he wrote about our elder son. I would have to forgive him for taking for granted that there would always be dinner on the table without his having to think about how it got there. He would have to forgive me for never taking out the recycling and never learning how to drive so that I could move the car during alternate-side parking. I would have to forgive him for usurping the time and energy and brain space with which I might have written a better book than his. Could the therapist help us overcome what I knew to be true: that we’d gone into marriage already aware that we were destined for constant conflict just because of who we are? The therapist couldn’t help me ask him to do more if I didn’t feel like I deserved it, if I couldn’t bring myself to ask him myself. I had to learn how to ask.

No one asked anything or forgave anything that day in the couples therapist’s office. After what felt like months but was probably only a few days, I was watching Ramy on my laptop in my downstairs-bedroom cave after the kids’ bedtime when some moment struck me as something Keith would love. Acting purely on impulse, I left my room and found him sitting on the couch, drinking tea. I told him I’d been watching this show I thought was funny and that he would really like it. Soon, we were sitting side by side on the couch, watching Ramy together. We went back to our respective rooms afterward, but still, we’d made progress.

After a few more weeks and a season’s worth of shared episodes of Ramy, I ventured for the first time upstairs to Keith’s attic room. It smelled alien to me, and I recognized that this was the pure smell of Keith, not the shared smell of the bedrooms in every apartment we’d lived in together. I lay down next to him in the mess of his bed. He made room for me. We didn’t touch, not yet. But we slept, that night, together. The next night, we went back to sleeping alone.

Pickups and drop-offs became evenly divided among me and Keith and a sitter. Keith learned to make spaghetti with meat sauce. He could even improvise other dishes, with somewhat less success, but he was improving. I made a conscious effort not to tidy the house after the children left for school. I made myself focus on my work even when there was chaos around me. Slowly, I began to be able to make eye contact with Keith again. At couples therapy, we still clutched tissue boxes in our hands, but we used them less. Our separate chairs inched closer together in the room.

That Christmas, we rented a tiny Airbnb near his dad’s house in Falmouth. It had only two bedrooms, one with bunk beds for the kids and one with a king-size bed that took up almost the entirety of the small room. We would have to share a bed for the duration of the trip. The decision I made to reach across the giant bed toward Keith on one of the last nights of the trip felt, again, impulsive. But there were years of information and habit guiding my impulse. Sex felt, paradoxically, completely comfortable and completely new, like losing my virginity. It felt like sleeping with a different person and also like sleeping with the same person, which made sense, in a way. We had become different people while somehow staying the same people we’d always been.

Slowly, over the course of the next months, I moved most of my things upstairs to his room, now our room. We still see the therapist twice a month. We talk about how to make things more equal in our marriage, how not to revert to old patterns. I have, for instance, mostly given up on making dinner, doing it only when it makes more sense in the schedule of our shared day or when I actually want to cook. It turns out that pretty much anyone can throw some spaghetti sauce on some pasta; it also turns out that the kids won’t eat dinner no matter who cooks it, and now we get to experience that frustration equally. Keith’s work is still more stable and prestigious than mine, but we conspire to pretend that this isn’t the case, making sure to leave space for my potential and my leisure. We check in to make sure we’re not bowing to the overwhelming pressure to cede our whole lives to the physical and financial demands, not to mention the fervently expressed wants, of our children. It’s the work that we’d never found time to do before, and it is work. The difference is that we now understand what can happen when we don’t do it. I’m always surprised by how much I initially don’t want to go to therapy and then by how much lighter I feel afterward. For now, those sessions are a convenient container for our marriage’s intractable defects so that we get to spend the rest of our time together focusing on what’s not wrong with us.

The downstairs bedroom is now dormant, a place for occasional guests to stay or for our elder son to lie in bed as he plays video games. Some of my clothes from a year earlier still fill the drawers, but none of it seems like mine. I never go into that room if I can help it. It was the room of my exile from my marriage, from my family. If I could magically disappear it from our apartment, I would do it in a heartbeat. And in the attic bedroom, we are together, not as we were before but as we are now.

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Essay on Student Life: 100, 200 and 300 Words

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  • Sep 16, 2023

Essay on Student Life

Student life, a phase that encompasses the essence of youth, is a period of transformation, self-discovery, and boundless opportunities. It’s a time when a student undergoes changes and faces challenges in academics, friendships, and personal growth. In this blog, we’ll explore the multifaceted aspects of student life and provide sample essays in various word counts, giving a glimpse into this remarkable journey.

poor life essay

Also Read: English Essay Topics

Also Read: How to Write an Essay in English

Also Read: Essay on Importance of Education

Sample Essay on Student Life in 100 Words

A student’s life is an exciting ride of learning, self-discovery and experiences. It’s a blend of early-morning classes, late-night study sessions, and the thrill of making lifelong friends. This phase teaches a student to balance academics with extracurricular activities, fostering their growth as individuals. Each day is a new adventure, a chance to learn, explore, and evolve. The memories one creates during these years shape the future, moulding one into the person one aspires to become. It’s a time when a student embraces the joy of acquiring knowledge and savour the taste of independence. With the right balance of study and leisure, it becomes a cherished chapter in a student’s life.

Also Read:  Essay on Life 

Sample Essay on Student Life in 200 Words

Student life is a period of transformation and exploration. It’s a period where one transitions from childhood to adulthood, navigating through the complexities of education and personal growth. In the midst of academic challenges, students often form close bonds with peers. These friendships provide crucial support in times of stress and celebration during moments of success. However, it’s not all smooth, the pressure to excel, manage finances, and make important life decisions can be overwhelming.

The student life is a pivotal period of self-discovery and personal development. It’s not just about textbooks and lectures; it’s a journey of exploration and experimentation. From joining clubs and societies to engaging in community service, these experiences help in uncovering a student’s passions and talents. It’s a time when they build bonds that often last a lifetime, creating a support system that stands the test of time.

Sample Essay on Student Life in 350 Words

Student life, often referred to as the best years of one’s life, it’s a bundle of experiences that shape the future. It’s a time when one embarks on a journey of academic pursuits, self-discovery, and personal growth. These years are marked by hard work studying, social interactions, and a quest for independence.

The classroom becomes a second home. But student life is not just about academics; it’s a holistic experience. Friendship bonds provide the emotional support needed. The pressure to excel academically can be suffocating at times. Balancing coursework, extracurricular activities, and part-time jobs is a delicate juggling act. Financial constraints can add to the stress, making students contemplate their choices and priorities.

Despite these obstacles, student life offers a unique opportunity for self-discovery. It’s a time when young minds explore their passions, talents, and interests. It’s a period when taking risks is encouraged, and opportunities are abundant. Whether through involvement in clubs, sports, or artistic pursuits, it’s during this phase that one lays the foundation for future careers and aspirations.

Beyond academics and friendships, student life encourages us to explore the world. From educational trips to international exchanges, these experiences broaden horizons and expose one to different cultures and ideas. It’s a time when one learns to navigate the complexities of the real world. These experiences broaden one’s mindset, help in building a global outlook and enhance adaptability.

In conclusion, student life is a remarkable chapter in the books of everyone’s lives. It is a rollercoaster of experiences that challenge us, shape us, and ultimately prepare us for the world beyond. It is a time of intellectual growth, enduring friendships, and personal discovery. Despite the trials and tribulations, it is a journey worth embracing, for it is during these years that lays the groundwork for our future endeavours and aspirations,

Also Read:   Essay on Time Management for Students

Student life is a phase that bridges the gap between adolescence and adulthood. It’s a transformative journey filled with academic pursuits, personal growth, enduring friendships, and the resilience to overcome challenges. This period of life is not merely a stepping stone, it’s a phase where one lays the foundation for the future, equipping oneself with knowledge, skills, and experiences that will serve us throughout our lives

Student life is filled with growth, aspirations, self-discovery, and boundless opportunities. The student life helps an individual have an understanding of moral values and build a quality life.

The most important part of a student’s life is the management of Time. A student’s life demands discipline and routine and that will require the skill of management of time.

A student’s life is a golden life because it is a phase where a student embraces the victories, savours the taste of failure and understand the working of the world as a whole.

We hope this blog gives you an idea about how to write and present an essay on student life. For more amazing daily reads that will help you build your IQ and improve your reading and writing skills, study tuned with Leverage Edu . 

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Biden will not face charges over classified papers, says 'memory is fine'

Memory issues.

U.S. President Joe Biden delivers remarks at the White House in Washington

'INAPPROPRIATE COMMENTS'

Reporting by Andrew Goudsward and Jeff Mason, additional reporting by Alexandra Ulmer; Writing by Andy Sullivan; Editing by Scott Malone, Lisa Shumaker, Deepa Babington and Don Durfee

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Thomson Reuters

Jeff Mason is a White House Correspondent for Reuters. He has covered the presidencies of Barack Obama, Donald Trump and Joe Biden and the presidential campaigns of Biden, Trump, Obama, Hillary Clinton and John McCain. He served as president of the White House Correspondents’ Association in 2016-2017, leading the press corps in advocating for press freedom in the early days of the Trump administration. His and the WHCA's work was recognized with Deutsche Welle's "Freedom of Speech Award." Jeff has asked pointed questions of domestic and foreign leaders, including Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korea's Kim Jong Un. He is a winner of the WHCA's “Excellence in Presidential News Coverage Under Deadline Pressure" award and co-winner of the Association for Business Journalists' "Breaking News" award. Jeff began his career in Frankfurt, Germany as a business reporter before being posted to Brussels, Belgium, where he covered the European Union. Jeff appears regularly on television and radio and teaches political journalism at Georgetown University. He is a graduate of Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism and a former Fulbright scholar.

Former U.S. President Trump attends a hearing on a criminal case linked to a hush money payment in New York City

Eastern Congo residents scramble for food and safety as conflict intensifies

An intensifying conflict between Democratic Republic of Congo's (DRC) army and the Tutsi-led M23 rebels, allegedly backed by Rwanda, has disrupted food supplies to the eastern city of Goma, affecting over two million residents and displaced individuals.

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Memory Loss Requires Careful Diagnosis, Scientists Say

A federal investigator said that President Biden had “poor memory” and “diminished faculties.” But such a diagnosis would require close medical assessment, experts said.

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President Biden speaks at a podium with American flags behind him.

By Gina Kolata

A lengthy report by the Department of Justice on President Biden’s handling of classified documents contained some astonishing assessments of his well-being and mental health.

Mr. Biden, 81, was an “elderly man with a poor memory” and “diminished faculties” who “did not remember when he was vice president,” the special counsel Robert K. Hur said.

In conversations recorded in 2017, Mr. Biden was “often painfully slow” and “struggling to remember events and straining at times to read and relay his own notebook entries.” So impaired was Mr. Biden that a jury was unlikely to convict him, Mr. Hur said.

Republicans were quick to pounce, some calling the president unfit for office and demanding his removal.

But while the report disparaged Mr. Biden’s mental health, medical experts on Friday noted that its judgments were not based on science and that its methods bore no resemblance to those that doctors use to assess possible cognitive impairment.

In its simplest form, the issue is one that doctors and family members have been dealing with for decades: How do you know when an episode of confusion or a memory lapse is part of a serious decline?

The answer: “You don’t,” said David Loewenstein, director of the center for cognitive neuroscience and aging at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine.

The diagnosis requires a battery of sophisticated and objective tests that probe several areas: different types of memory, language, executive function, problem solving, and spatial skills and attention.

The tests, he said, determine if there is a medical condition, and if so, its nature and extent. Verbal stumbles are not proof, Dr. Loewenstein and other experts said.

“Forgetting an event doesn’t necessarily mean there is a problem,” said Dr. John Morris, a neurology professor at Washington University in St. Louis.

Mr. Hur, the special counsel, based his conclusions on a five-hour interview conducted over two days — the two days following Hamas’s surprise assault on Israel — and a review of interviews with a ghostwriter recorded in 2017.

But to scientifically identify a memory problem requires that doctors assess the change in a person’s cognitive function over time and ascertain that its magnitude is sufficient to reduce the patient’s ability to perform usual activities, Dr. Morris said.

The best way to determine if such a change has occurred is to compare results from a memory test today to the results from a test taken five or 10 years ago, he added. Failing that, doctors may interview someone who knows the patient well — usually a close family member — to get a sense for whether there’s been a decline.

Recall is just one aspect of cognition, noted Dr. Mary Ganguli, a professor of psychiatry, neurology and epidemiology at the University of Pittsburgh.

To make an accurate diagnosis, a geriatric psychiatrist might ask how long the patient has been having problems with the ability to plan and organize, or to express himself or herself. If the person is forgetful, what is the person forgetting, and when?

“We want to know what particular losses were observed, not just ‘memory,’” Dr. Ganguli said. “Was it a one-off when the person was tired or sick, or is it occurring consistently and increasing in frequency?”

It’s important to rule out other possible causes that may affect cognitive function, like a stroke or a head injury, or even use of certain common drugs, Dr. Ganguli added.

For example, a frequent culprit in memory lapses is diphenhydramine (sold as Benadryl and other brands). People who take it chronically to fall asleep often become forgetful as a result. (Patients often tell her they take Tylenol at night, she said, but Tylenol PM actually contains diphenhydramine.)

Alzheimer’s in particular has a distinctive pattern of memory loss, not to be confused with routine forgetfulness, Dr. Ganguli added. A person with the disease will typically forget recent events, like what he or she had for breakfast, but recall things from the distant past, like a wedding day.

A detailed exam might take an hour, Dr. Ganguli said, and might additionally involve interviews with family members. A family doctor might do a more abbreviated assessment, including quick memory tests like the Mini Mental State Examination or the Montreal Cognitive Assessment, known as MoCA.

In those tests, patients are asked the date and time and asked the location of the doctor’s office. They may be asked to draw a clock showing a specific time. They are told several words and, a short time later, asked to repeat them.

To assess cognitive status, Dr. Loewenstein often administers a much longer, more probative series of objective tests. It’s a basic tenet of the field never to diagnose a patient you have not seen in a medical setting, he said.

Dr. Loewenstein said he was outraged by pundits “who would have the audacity to make diagnoses by saying, ‘Oh, this person went to the refrigerator and forgot why,’ or ‘Oh, they substituted somebody’s name for another name when they have other things on their mind.’”

Gina Kolata reports on diseases and treatments, how treatments are discovered and tested, and how they affect people. More about Gina Kolata

Biden’s Mental Acuity Under Scrutiny

Comments about president biden’s age and memory in the special counsel’s report have captured democrats’ fears ahead of the november election and fueled republicans in their efforts to cast the president as weak..

An Age-Old Question: How old is too old to be president? The report has thrust the issue back into the spotlight  just as America seems poised to elect a commander in chief well past typical retirement age, no matter who wins in November.

Implications for 2024 Election: Why is the age issue hurting Biden  so much more than Donald Trump? Both are over 75, but voters are much less likely to worry that Trump is too old to serve .

Voter Reactions: To Americans in their 70s and 80s, the renewed questions swirling around Biden’s age have resonated in deeply personal ways . Many agree that it’s an issue, while others feel the criticism of Biden is insulting.

Rebuffing the Report: Vice President Kamala Harris and other White House officials have sought to discredit the report , suggesting that it was more of a political attack than an unbiased legal document .

The Science of Memory Loss: After the report’s release, medical experts noted that the special counsel’s judgments on Biden’s mental health did not appear to be based on science .

A Protective White House: Biden’s top aides have created a cocoon around him out of concern that his mistakes could be amplified and damage his image. The events that followed the report’s release emphasized those risks in striking ways .

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Damage, flooding spread across South Florida following afternoon of poor weather

Terrell Forney , Reporter

COOPER CITY, Fla. – Heavy rains and strong winds moved across South Florida on Sunday afternoon.

Tree branches were seen falling from the sky along 595, narrowly missing vehicles driving westbound near Pine Island Road.

A massive tree came down in Cooper City near Hiatus Road and Sheridan Street, blocking an entire road in a residential neighborhood while damaging several vehicles.

In Oakland Park, a Local 10 News viewer sent in a photo of an overturned vehicle that was resting on top of another car in front of a home.

Heavy rain also came through the Pembroke Pines area and all the way south in Kendall, causing poor visibility and some flooding.

Copyright 2024 by WPLG Local10.com - All rights reserved.

About the Author:

Terrell forney.

Terrell Forney joined Local 10 News in October 2005 as a general assignment reporter. He was born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio, but a desire to escape the harsh winters of the north brought him to South Florida.

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  1. Life Amidst Poverty

    Poverty is despair and desperation-inducing. Poverty is soul, dream and hope crushing. Poverty is like being enclosed in a prison cell with no doors or windows. It feels claustrophobic, as if there is no way out. Only the most resilient do not give up.

  2. Poverty Essay for Students and Children

    "Poverty is the worst form of violence". - Mahatma Gandhi. We can define poverty as the condition where the basic needs of a family, like food, shelter, clothing, and education are not fulfilled. It can lead to other problems like poor literacy, unemployment, malnutrition, etc.

  3. Why Poverty Persists in America

    As estimated by the federal government's poverty line, 12.6 percent of the U.S. population was poor in 1970; two decades later, it was 13.5 percent; in 2010, it was 15.1 percent; and in 2019, it ...

  4. 5 Essays About Poverty Everyone Should Know

    Poverty is one of the driving forces of inequality in the world. Between 1990-2015, much progress was made. The number of people living on less than $1.90 went from 36% to 10%. However, according to the World Bank, the COVID-19 pandemic represents a serious problem that disproportionately impacts the poor.

  5. Why poverty is not a personal choice, but a reflection of society

    About 13.5 percent of Americans are living in poverty. Many of these people do not have insurance, and efforts to help them gain insurance, be it through Medicaid or private insurance, have been...

  6. 383 Poverty Essay Topics & Free Essay Examples

    The article "The Singer Solution to World Poverty" by author Peter Singer attempts to provide a workable solution to the world poverty problem. Catholic Dealing with Poverty and Homelessness. The idea of "common good" will support many people in the world. The practice will support many people in the world.

  7. Poverty Essay for Students in English

    The causes of poverty are excessive population, fatal and contagious diseases, natural disasters, low agricultural yields, unemployment, casteism, illiteracy, gender inequality, environmental problems, changing trends in the economy of the country, untouchability, little or limited access to people's rights, Problems such as political violence, ...

  8. Poverty

    poverty, the state of one who lacks a usual or socially acceptable amount of money or material possessions. Poverty is said to exist when people lack the means to satisfy their basic needs. In this context, the identification of poor people first requires a determination of what constitutes basic needs.

  9. 'Poor people don't plan long-term. We'll just get our hearts broken

    The yearly income of a 40-hour-a-week minimum-wage worker is $15,080. So if you're paying half of that for housing, you're left with $7,540 to live on. Yearly. That's $628 per month, or $314 ...

  10. Why Poverty and Inequality are Human Rights Issues

    Human Rights Watch has long documented how, when people live in poverty, their ability to exercise all their human rights erodes. Senior Researcher Komala Ramachandra speaks about why the fight ...

  11. Growing Up Poor Poverty Middle Class Difference Essay

    Judging the poor — or pretending that rules of logic apply to something often determined by blind luck — makes all of us less human. And while empathy won't solve the problem, it's a start.

  12. The Realities Of Being Poor

    Being poor is pawning, out of desperation, anything you may still have with any sort of value, and cashing in pennies. It's filling every receptacle you've got — bathtub, sink, buckets, pitchers — while you still have water because you know yours is about to be shut off. It's staying in an empty apartment with no electricity and an ...

  13. Luisa's story

    Luisa's story - an 11 year old girl living in poverty. 27 Oct 2014. Luisa (identity protected) shares a three-roomed apartment with her mother, step-father and 9 other family members. Her step-father lost his job in construction in 2007 and her mom has been unable to find any lasting work. The family relies on a soup kitchen for food and ...

  14. Essay on the Life of Poor People

    Generally, or in common parlance, a 'poor' is that person who does not have sufficient amount of money to purchase food to keep him and the members of his family alive and the necessary clothing and a shelter in the form of a house.

  15. Helping the Poor and Needy: [Essay Example], 583 words

    The act of helping the poor and needy holds profound significance in fostering a just and compassionate society. As we navigate the complexities of modern life, it becomes increasingly imperative to address the challenges faced by marginalized individuals and communities. This essay delves into the multifaceted aspects of providing assistance ...

  16. Poverty Essay in English

    Poverty causes a person to lack freedom, mental well-being, physical welfare and security. It is very important for everyone to work together to remove poverty from the country and the world to bring about proper physical health, mental health, full literacy, home for all, and other essential things to lead a simple life.

  17. Essay on Poverty for Children and Students

    Poverty Essay 4 (250 words) Poverty is a human condition which brings despair, grief and pain in the human life. Poverty is the lack of money and all the things required to live a life in proper manner. Poverty makes a child unable to enter to the school in childhood and lives his/her childhood in an unhappy family.

  18. Bad College Essays: 10 Mistakes You Must Avoid

    This way, the point of the essay—taking apart the idea that a college essay could summarize life experience—is earned by the author's two failed attempts to write that other kind of essay. ... Essay #2: The "I Once Saw Poor People" Service Trip Essay. Unlike other teenagers, I'm not concerned about money, or partying, or what others think ...

  19. Personal Essay: Extreme Poverty In 18 Years Of My Life

    832 Words 4 Pages Open Document Essay Sample Check Writing Quality Show More In my eighteen years of life so far, my family and I have lived in extreme poverty and over the years have gradually worked our way up to middle class. I have seen hands on how the rules of the poverty class as well as the middle class play a huge role in society.

  20. Essay on Poor And Rich Lifestyle

    Students are often asked to write an essay on Poor And Rich Lifestyle in their schools and colleges. And if you're also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic. Let's take a look… 100 Words Essay on Poor And Rich Lifestyle Differences in Daily Life. Rich and poor people live very ...

  21. Literacy crisis in college students: Essay from a professor on students

    The second go-to explanation is the massive disruption of school closures during COVID-19. There is still some debate about the necessity of those measures, but what is not up for debate any ...

  22. Should I Leave My Husband? The Lure of Divorce

    Since then, I've had to decide whether life would be better without my husband in it. Emily Gould writes about the lure of divorce. Seven years into my marriage, I hit a breaking point. Since then, I've had to decide whether life would be better without my husband in it. ... -checker who called me, asking her to please call my husband ...

  23. Rich and Poor Lifestyles

    1. Rich people believe that they create their lives while poor people believe that life happens to them. Can you see why rich and successful people are able to create amazing results in their life right now? It is simply because they are in control of their lives. Get quality help now KarrieWrites Verified writer Proficient in: Lifestyle 5 (339)

  24. Essay on Student Life: 100, 200 and 300 Words

    10 shares Student life, a phase that encompasses the essence of youth, is a period of transformation, self-discovery, and boundless opportunities. It's a time when a student undergoes changes and faces challenges in academics, friendships, and personal growth.

  25. Essay on the Life of Poor People

    Generally, or in common parlance, a 'poor' is that person who does not have sufficient amount of money to purchase food to keep him and the members of his family alive and the necessary clothing and a shelter in the form of a house.

  26. Opinion

    Guest Essay. My Mother Got on a Bike. It Changed Her Life. Feb. 17, 2024. ... Those of us who view later life as a time of growth and vitality are more likely to stay healthy and to keep senility ...

  27. Biden will not face charges over classified papers, says 'memory is

    The president will not face charges for knowingly taking classified documents when he left the vice presidency in 2017. The prosecutor described him as a "well-intentioned, elderly man with a poor ...

  28. Memory Loss Requires Careful Diagnosis, Scientists Say

    A federal investigator said that President Biden had "poor memory" and "diminished faculties." But such a diagnosis would require close medical assessment, experts said.

  29. Damage, flooding spread across South Florida following afternoon of

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