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Poverty: a Global Issue

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POVERTY: A GLOBAL ISSUE
Charles Williams
Introduction to Sociology – SOC100
October 29, 2011

1. Describe how society defines poverty.
Poverty is a condition in which a person or community is deprived of, or lacks the essentials for a minimum standard of well-being and life. Since poverty is understood in many senses, these essentials may be material resources such as food, safe drinking water, and shelter, or they may be social resources such as access to information, education, health care, social status, political power, or the opportunity to develop meaningful connections with other people in society. Poverty is the state for the majority of the world’s people and nations. Behind the increasing interconnectedness promised by globalization are global decisions, policies, and practices. These are typically influenced, driven, or formulated by the rich and powerful. These can be leaders of rich countries or other global actors such as multinational corporations, institutions, and influential people. In the face of such enormous external influence, the governments of poor nations and their people are often powerless. As a result, in the global context, a few get wealthy while the majority struggle. Poverty is also characterized by a chronic shortage of economic, social and political participation, relegating individuals to exclusion as social beings, preventing access to the benefits of economic and social development and thereby limiting their cultural development (Blanco, 2002).
In the US individuals believe that the poor are in that state due to undesirable traits that they posses, they believe that traits such as laziness have made these individuals poor, this laziness is associated with situations where individuals refuse to work, individuals do not complete school or fail to achieve better grades. The American’s have also developed a scapegoat

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