The world has a population of eight billion and about a two-thirds of that population either live under a five-dollar income or unable to receive occupation, education, and healthcare. A person who is unable to have access to job, health care and education, is considered that they are living under the line of poverty. Poverty is perceived differently because of its impact on the population of a country, but widely, poverty is the state or condition of having little or no money and goods. Every year in the developing world 12.2 million children under five years old die, most of them from causes which could be prevented for just a few US cents per child (World Bank). They die largely because of world indifference, but most of all they die because they lack nutrition, healthcare, and government support. Every year, less than 1% of what the world spent on national defense is needed to put every child into school and currently, there were no reports of progress and change. Banki-Moon, Secretary General of the United Nations quoted: “Saving our planet, lifting people out of poverty, advancing economic growth... these are one and the same fight. We must connect the dots between climate change, water scarcity, energy shortages, global health, food security and women's empowerment. Solutions to one problem must be solutions for all”. Many organizations whose objective is to aid the poor around the world and provide them with access to health care, food, shelter, and education but does not have enough support or money to help every child in the world . Poverty is a major, global issue that needs to be eradicated because it is a major contributor to mental illness, malnutrition/starvation, death, and lack of sanitation in the environment which breeds desperation, violence, revolution and leads the poor into wasted lives.

General facts about poverty:

-Some people have misconceptions about what poverty really is. It is the lack of those necessities that the custom of the country renders it indecent for creditable people, even of the lowest order, to be without.

-2 billion people live on less than $1.25 a day, and 2.56 billion live on less than $2 a day. Moreover, 5.05 billion people (more than 80 percent of the world's population) live on less than $10 a day.

-Every day, poverty kills more than 500,000 innocent people

- 200 million every year.

-Extreme poverty is increasingly concentrated in fragile states and territories, defined as those with very weak institutions and poor policies. These areas are home to 9 percent of the population living in developing countries, but nearly 27 percent of the extreme poor. These places are often sources of war, terrorism and refugee crises.

-It is estimated that 684,000 child deaths worldwide could be prevented by increasing access to vitamin A and zinc.

-Globally, the four major killers of children under age 5 are pneumonia (18%), diarrheal diseases (15%), preterm birth complications (12%) and birth asphyxia (9%). -Children are particularly vulnerable; food aid organizations estimate that 250,000 children a week, almost 1500 an hour, die from inadequate diets and starvation, and the illnesses and diseases that thrive on malnourished body

Poverty has many faces, changing from place to place and across time, and has been described in many ways. Most often poverty is a situation people want to escape. So poverty is a call to action - for the poor and the wealthy alike - a call to change the world so that many more may have enough to eat, adequate shelter, access to education and protection from violence. Unfortunately, poverty is often an invisible problem. The voices of the poor are seldom heard. The reason to write this is the unwillingness of our society to deal with this preventable problem and how politicians who rule the country pretend that poverty is simply a given human existence - a force of nature - unstoppable and eternal.

Aristotle once said, “poverty is the parent of revolution and crime”. People who are under the poverty line, they are likely to engage in illegal and violent activities because they have nothing else to live with. They commit crimes and revolutions out of their greed and desperation, seeing the rest of the world having what they desire frustrate them which drives them to engage in violent activities. Beggars abound in poor countries; in some cases they are even organized as a business. Some who are deprived of good things turn to criminal activities—burglary, holdups, prostitution, or drug running. There are conflicts that need to be resolved not only by the government but also by the people. Poverty can’t be eradicated without a strong support by the people. Studies have shown that adolescent that are in poverty does not receive health insurance and preventive treatment such as checkups on a regular basis (AAOP, 1997). Decreased health-insurance coverage in families living in poverty is a result of changes in society, the economy, and health-care systems, including increases in managed care and decreased funding to public hospitals. Because of these changes, impoverished families are more likely to be uninsured, have less access to subsidized services, and less access to primary care (Commonwealth Fund, 1998). Adolescents and their families can learn to advocate for services in their communities such mental health services. Lack of mental health services can lead to negative consequences including extreme acts of violence, increased dropout rates, and suicides. Unfortunately, adolescents who are poor are frequently the ones receiving the least support, while often the most in need of mental health services (Lewin Group, 2000). Social workers, too, can play a vital role in ensuring that all adolescents have access to quality healthcare, regardless of their financial status. People can’t rely on the government and organizations to take care of the work by themselves, because in order to achieve world stability, people of the world should contribute to organizations that aid those who are impoverished.

Because children’s brain are more sensitive than the adults, poverty could cause negative long-term effects for kids such as outward aggression, depression, lead poisoning, and growth stunt (Children and the long-term effects on poverty). Adolescents who experience poverty are most likely to engage in drug and alcohol use, engage in crimes, and sexual activities. (Goosby). Children who are poor face daunting psychosocial, physical, and mental conditions. Children from low-income families has no access to books and computers. The author Gary Evans, wrote a journal talks about how an impoverished environment can affect the children’s lives and childhood and what do they do to make a living: “Low-income parents are less involved in their children’s school activities, the air and water poor children consume are more polluted, and homes are more crowded, noisier, and of lower quality...The accumulation of multiple environmental risks rather than singular risk exposure may be an especially pathogenic aspect of childhood poverty” (Evans) Researchers from different departments of University of Pennsylvania worked together on observing children with low and high socioeconomic status (SES) and how poverty affects one of their intelligence and academic performances. They “administered a battery of tasks designed to tax specific neurocognitive systems to healthy low and middle SES children screened for medical history and matched for age, gender and ethnicity”. From their study, “kindergarteners found that language ability, including vocabulary, syntactic ability and phonological awareness, is associated with SES, consistent with a body of literature on language development in poor and middle class children”. Researchers from different departments of University of Pennsylvania worked together on observing children with low and high socioeconomic status (SES) and how poverty affects one of their intelligence and academic performances. They “administered a battery of tasks designed to tax specific neurocognitive systems to healthy low and middle SES children screened for medical history and matched for age, gender and ethnicity”. From their study, “kindergarteners found that language ability, including vocabulary, syntactic ability and phonological awareness, is associated with SES, consistent with a body of literature on language development in poor and middle class children”. Children under the poverty line has been proven from research studies, that environmental factors affected by poverty has a negative impact on the children’s brain, their speech, and their intellect. These factors decreases their chances to succeed in breaking the cycle of poverty. Poverty in childhood is a root cause of poverty in adulthood. Impoverished children often grow up to be impoverished parents who in turn bring up their own children in poverty. In order to break the generational cycle, poverty reduction must begin with children (UNICEF). The key to break the cycle of poverty is education. To achieve breaking the cycle with education, the individual has to be able to finish through from Pre-K to college in order to earn the career that provides them more than what they have. But to earn an education, the individual must have a strong support from the family and continuous encouragement that motivates the individual to succeed. Education is key to success and the key to break the cycle.

Poverty is a major global issue today because the world has slowly lost its focus on the children who have lost opportunities because of the state or condition in which they live. The future generation can determine what the nation and the state of the world will be if the national government, organizations and the United Nations strengthen their focus in helping every child in every developing countries to have access to education and most importantly, health care because the lives of the people should not be neglected. Developed countries like South Korea, U.S.A, and United Kingdom together can unite to help impoverished kids around the world prosper. Poverty happens everywhere but that can be solved if people of nations come together to eradicate the issue and help make the world a better place for the future. 

Works Cited

Brooks-Gunn, Jeanne, et Greg J. Duncan. "The Effects of Poverty on Children." The Future of Children, July-Aug. 1997. Web. 10 Sept. 2014.

Evans, Gary W. "The Environment of Childhood Poverty." American Psychologist 59.2 (2004): 77-92. Web. 17 Sept. 2014. .

Farah, Martha J., David M. Shera, Jessica H. Savage, Laura Betancourt, Joan M. Giannetta, Nancy L. Brodsky, Elsa K. Malmud, and Hallam Hurt. "Childhood Poverty: Specific Associations with Neurocognitive Development." Brain Research 1110.1 (2006): 166-74. Science Direct. ELSEVIER, 1 Aug. 2006. Web. 22 Sept. 2014. Jensen, Robert. "Poverty - A Short History." Design Quarterly No. 110.Ivan Chermayeff: A Design Anatomy (1979): 4-7. Tristat, 1979. Web. 12 Nov. 2014. . Lewin Group. (2000). Enhancing youth services. Retrieved April 21, 2003, from Wood, David. “Effect of Child and Family Poverty on Child Health in the United States” PEDIATRICS. 1 Sept. 2003. Web. 10 Sept. 2014.