Poverty and Hunger by the Numbers

Resources for Teachers

Background

 

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Poverty And Its Impact On Students’ Education

National Association of Secondary School Principals

www.nassp.org/poverty-and-its-impact-on-students-education/

[accessed 5 April 2021]

The purpose of this position statement is to highlight the impact poverty has on students and their ability to succeed in the classroom as well as offer policy recommendations on how to best support the academic, social, emotional, and physical success of these students.

Poor Students Need Homework

Robert Pondiscio, The Atlantic, September 19, 2013

www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2013/09/poor-students-need-homework/279566/

[accessed 5 April 2021]

If affluent kids stopped doing homework, they'd be fine. But for students who are struggling to catch up, it remains indispensable.

Parents who are concerned about too much homework would also be on firmer ground if they questioned the validity, not just the volume of homework.  The proper debate about homework – now and always – should not be “how much” but “what kind” and “what for?”  Using homework merely to cover material there was no time for in class is less helpful, for example, than “distributed practice”: reinforcing and reviewing essential skills and knowledge teachers want students to perfect or keep in long-term memory.  Independent reading is also important.

The best and wisest parents may have a good grasp of what their children want.  But they may not be the best judges of what other people’s children need.

World Hunger and Poverty

Anup Shah, Global Issues, 22 August 2010

www.globalissues.org/issue/6/world-hunger-and-poverty

[accessed 24 March 2021]

World hunger is a terrible symptom of world poverty. If efforts are only directed at providing food, or improving food production or distribution, then the structural root causes that create hunger, poverty and dependency would still remain. And so while continuous effort, resources and energies are deployed to relieve hunger through these technical measures, the political causes require political solutions as well.

Causes of Hunger are related to Poverty           

Solving World Hunger Means Solving World Poverty

Population and Feeding the World

Food and Agriculture Issues

Food Dumping [Aid] Maintains Poverty 

Causes of Poverty

World hunger related links for more information 

This Book Started a Food Revolution in 1971—And It’s Never Felt More Relevant

Jonathan Kauffman, bonappetit, 23 March 2021

www.bonappetit.com/story/diet-for-a-small-planet-anniversary

[accessed 24 March 2021]

Diet For a Small Planet argued that plant-centered eating is better for ourselves and our planet. Fifty years later, that idea is still shaping how we eat.

When Frances Moore Lappé called cattle “a protein factory in reverse” in her 1971 book Diet for a Small Planet, she wasn’t just arguing that meat was an inefficient way to feed humans, though it is. Nor did she set out to turn millions of Americans vegetarian and help the natural foods movement find its political voice, though she did. For the 26-year-old researcher, Diet was an act of radical hope.

One of the ambient stories circulating at the time was that Earth was so overpopulated it could no longer feed itself. So Lappé descended into Berkeley’s Agricultural Economics Library, armed with a slide rule, to analyze crop reports and nutritional studies. She calculated that hunger wasn’t caused by a scarcity of food. It was a problem of food distribution. If we grew crops for humans instead of for livestock, ethanol, or high-fructose corn syrup, the United States alone could feed every famine-afflicted person on earth.

Reading Peter Singer's ‘Famine, Affluence, and Morality’ 50 years later

Paige Cromley, The Daily Princetonian, 18 February 2021

www.dailyprincetonian.com/article/2021/02/peter-singer-famine-affluence-morality-fifty-years

[accessed 19 February 2021]

Singer’s famous drowning child example displays his logic on the matter: If any of us were to walk by a pond in which a child was drowning, we “ought to wade in and pull the child out.” Our shoes might get muddy, but the cost of a new pair would be far outweighed by the life of the child in front of us.

In such a situation, we would feel morally obliged to save that child’s life. While the child’s mother might thank us for wading into the pool and pulling the child out of the water, it seems more an act of duty than of charity. Anyone who walked by and did nothing, letting the child drown, would be despised as a morally evil person.

Singer contends that we should feel just as duty-bound to save the life of a child living in poverty thousands of miles away as we do to save the life of the child in the pool. He notes in his essay that “the fact that a person is physically near to us, so that we have personal contact with him, may make it more likely that we shall assist him, but this does not show that we ought to help him rather than another who happens to be further away.”

Study of relationship between poverty and mental health shows cash support can help

Bob Yirka , Medical Xpress, 15 December 2020

medicalxpress.com/news/2020-12-relationship-poverty-mental-health-cash.html

[accessed 16 December 2020]

Prior research has shown that there is a link between mental health and poverty for some people. Research has also shown that it is not always easy to determine whether mental health problems lead to poverty, or vice versa. In either case, the researchers begin their paper by wondering why people who live in poverty suffer disproportionately from mental illnesses such as anxiety depression, and explore whether government and societal intervention could improve the situation.

How the Hepatitis B Vaccine Reduces Global Poverty

Brooklyn Quallen, Borgen Magazine, 7 December 2020

www.borgenmagazine.com/hepatitis-b-vaccine-reduces-poverty/

[accessed 8 December 2020]

LOOKING AHEAD -- To break the cycle of medical impoverishment, vaccinations against every preventable disease—not just hepatitis B—need to be made available for all people in developing countries. The smallpox vaccine is an example of success in this area. The WHO inoculated hundreds of millions of people in developing countries against the disease. By 1977, 10 years after the launch of the Intensive Eradication Program, the last case of smallpox was recorded in Somalia. Eradication of this disease has improved the quality of life in developing countries and decreased medical impoverishment.

The process proves that universal vaccination is feasible, especially with technological advancements making vaccine distribution easier. Additionally, it is cost-effective since combination vaccines and advances in packaging have made vaccines cheaper and a good investment for national economies. A country free of epidemics is less at risk of overburdening their medical system, businesses save money when workers take fewer sick days and the economy grows because more people are healthy enough to work.

Over 1 billion people live in poverty hotspots

Raj M. Desai, Homi Kharas, and Selen ÖzdoğanWednesday, The Brookings Institution, 2 December 2020

www.brookings.edu/blog/future-development/2020/12/02/over-1-billion-people-live-in-poverty-hotspots/

[accessed 3 December 2020]

This has important implications for those concerned with the Leave No One Behind agenda. For international donors, it suggests that providing money to governments of countries that are poor on average does not guarantee that the money will trickle down to improving the lot of poor people living in poor places. Better geotargeting of projects is required. For governments, it means facing trade-offs that balance the desire for faster growth through agglomeration in larger centers of economic activity and more inclusive growth that reaches far-flung areas. For everyone, it points to the need to manage growth spillovers, either positive or negative, across regions and contiguous countries. For the more than 1 billion people still living in poverty hotspots, it points to migration, both domestic and international, as the surest means of escaping poverty.

Capitalism and the great fall of global poverty

John Stossel, Opinion Columnist, The Orange County Register

www.ocregister.com/2020/12/02/capitalism-and-the-drastic-fall-of-global-poverty/

[accessed 3 December 2020]

Many of us will give money to charity this month. Americans give more than any other people in the world.   Good for us.

56 years ago, because American charities hadn’t ended poverty, politicians said they would end it. They declared a “war on poverty.”   That “war,” so far, has cost $27 trillion.

Some people were helped. But the handouts also had a bad effect.  That’s why charity is better. Charities are free to help people who truly need help while giving a push to people who need “a kick in the butt.” Government’s one-size-fits-all rules discourage that.

Persistent Poverty Linked to Increased Risk of Dying from Cancer

The American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine, Inc. ("A4M"), 30 November 2020

worldhealth.net/news/persistent-poverty-linked-increased-risk-dying-cancer/

[accessed 1 December 2020]

A new study by NCI researchers and their colleagues delves more deeply into the links between poverty and cancer deaths in the United States.

The study found that people who live in counties in the United States that experience persistent poverty are more likely to die from cancer than people in other counties. This risk was over and above the heightened risk seen in areas experiencing current—but not persistent—poverty, said study investigator Robert Croyle, Ph.D., director of NCI’s Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences (DCCPS).

Poverty and honesty are not opposites

WZB Berlin Social Science Center, PHYS.org, 30 November 2020

phys.org/news/2020-11-poverty-honesty-opposites.html

[accessed 30 November 2020]

Does poverty cause lying? An international research team led by behavioral economist Agne Kajackaite from the WZB Berlin Social Science Center, Suparee Boonmanunt (Mahidol University, Bangkok) and Stephan Meier (Columbia Business School) examined whether poverty-stricken individuals were especially prone to acts of dishonesty. The researchers ran a field experiment with rice farmers in Thailand which incentivized cheating during a card game. They found that poverty itself did not cause individuals to act dishonestly.

5 Innovations that Impact Poverty

Rachel Hernandez, Borgen Magazine, Tacoma Washington, 30 November 2020

www.borgenmagazine.com/five-innovations-that-impact-poverty/

[accessed 30 November 2020]

Over the past decades, poverty impacted millions of people around the world. Approximately 736 million live under the international poverty line. Most of these people reside in Southern Asia and sub-Saharan African. Though it has been a slow process, there have been improvements. Since 2010, the world poverty rate decreased by 16%. In 2018, about 55% of the world’s population received fewer cash benefits than in previous years. These cash benefits often lead to innovations that impact poverty in a positive way.

The head of the World Bank reiterates his call to forgive the debts of the poor countries

Economy News, 5 October 2020

www.fr24news.com/a/2020/10/the-head-of-the-world-bank-reiterates-his-call-to-forgive-the-debts-of-the-poor-countries-economy-news.html

[accessed 6 October 2020]

David Malpass says private banks, investment funds are not doing enough to help countries struggling with coronavirus.

The coronavirus pandemic could trigger a debt crisis in some countries, so investors should be prepared to provide some form of relief that could also include debt forgiveness, World Bank President David Malpass said. .“It is obvious that some countries are unable to repay the debt they have incurred. We must therefore also reduce the level of debt. It can be called debt relief or debt cancellation, ”Malpass told the Handelsblatt business daily in an interview on Sunday.

“It is important that the amount of debt is reduced by restructuring,” added Malpass.

Malpass warned in August that the pandemic could push 100 million people into extreme poverty. In his final comments, he reiterated his call for private banks and investment funds to get involved as well.

Connecting the Unconnected: What It Takes to Get Households to Connect to Sewerage Networks

World Bank, 19 November 2020

[Long URL]

Related Video:: www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-_wgR1egBU&feature=emb_logo

[accessed 26 November 2020]

For all too many people across the world, such a vision is sadly a daily reality. This is because, despite the great progress made in providing sewerage infrastructure in urban areas, a huge amount of people – including 28 percent of urban residents in Latin America and the Caribbean - are still not connected to the sewer lines that run in front of their houses. That is to say, despite the immediate proximity to this vital infrastructure, too many households have not connected to the system and therefore are more likely to suffer from illnesses such as diarrhea, lose days to work because of those illnesses and live without the comfort and privacy that comes with not having access to safely managed sanitation. And wider societal public health and environmental benefits will not be realized if all households are not connected to the sewers running down their streets.