REVISING A PAPER.

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Poverty and Its Impact on Children's Health

Introduction

Just by the word itself, poverty is seen as a very major disaster and human crisis. Poverty in the economic terms is defined as the state of economy whereby an individual cannot be able to meet the basic needs of their family effectively as well as that of their children. These needs include shelter that is housing, food as well as clothing. Poverty causes so much harm and damage on the lives of children, destroys life chances and opportunities and damages the entire society as a whole. Poverty is considered a major economic crisis that has affected millions and millions of life’s all across the globe leading people to live in a lot of human suffering as well as misery. The effects of health on human life are very many and very broad. However in this paper we are going to put our focus on the issue of poverty, how it rates to the children and we will particularly focus on how the poverty that children experience affects their health status.

The prevalence of poverty among children is real and staring at our faces in the communities that we live in. The prevalence of poverty among the children is commonly referred to as child poverty. Child poverty is defined as the state whereby the amount of income cannot effectively meet the needs of a child that their family makes. Children poverty can also be defined as the situation where a child lives in a family whose income per day is below the national poverty line which means that their basic needs cannot be catered for. This issue is very saddening manly because children do not choose in what kind of families to be born it is one only considered as a social or a political issue, child poverty is considered as an ethical issue since it can be considered under social justice (Strelitz and Ruth, 10).

According to statistics that were carried out in the United States, the rate of child poverty is seen to be rising very rapidly over the years. “The statistics showed that in 1973 the proportion of child poverty was at 14% and by 1995 the level of child poverty had risen all the way up to 21%. Statistics also showed that among the whole proportion of children, who are poor, 15% of them are not only just poor but they are chronically poor.” (Rita Paul-Sen Gupta, Margaret L de Wit, and David McKeown, NCBI). By chronically poor, it means that these children are living at almost the starvation rate. The main contributor to child poverty is the level of income that a family earns. Low-income families are the families that makeup the highest proportion of children poverty rates. Low-quality education or lack of education again being the main causes of the low-income levels that these families experience. Over the years, the level of poverty among families has one up, and this only goes to show that the level of children poverty has also been shooting upwards. Other causes of child poverty include the presence of so many families that are being led by a single parent, cases which have become almost common in our society today.

The statistics presented above are indications of how serious the issue of children poverty. However, as if not enough, children poverty has been greatly linked to the health status and health well-being of children. This has been confirmed by numerous studies that have indicated that children from low-income families are more prone to diseases as compared to their counterparts who are born and brought up well up families. There is no denying it that there is a very strong and extensive link between poverty and the health of children. This means that each and every single aspect that relates to health is usually worse for the children living in low-income families as compared to those who live in affluence. This is a very major and serious public health issue since it not only unfair but also very saddening that health differences between children of the same age are very great just because of the differences in their social status. For example, take an incidence of disease that is equally prevalent in all social classes say for example fibrosis, the child living in affluence has better chances of surviving than the poor child just by the definition of the social status factor. The more worrying thing is the fact the effects of child poverty on health are not short term, but they will continue to affect children even in their adult ages.

The following section will discuss the effects that children poverty or social disadvantage has on various aspects of the health of a child. The paper will synthesize the different effects which could be physical emotional or even cognitive at different stages of the child’s development.

The impacts of child poverty on the health of the children

Research conducted in Canada has indicated that the outcome on health for poor children is way worse as compared to the outcomes of health for those who live in affluence. The impacts that poverty has on health include first Outcomes of pregnancy. The outcome of pregnancy that is during birth acts as a major indicator or pointer on to how the health of a child will be in the future. Poor mothers are more likely to experience poor outcomes out of the pregnancy as compared to the affluent mothers. The most common poor pregnancy outcomes that the poor experience includes low birth weights and poor health for the mothers.

Low birth weight refers to the state where a baby is born with a very low weight than they are expected to. Certain natural reasons lead to this, and they include premature birth. However, many cases of a mother delivering at the right time giving birth to children who are way below the minimum weight that a child ought to be born with. These instances are mainly prevalent among poor mothers. This is mainly because these mothers strain to get even their daily bread. This means that the mother sometimes goes without feeding, feeds on too little or feeds on unbalanced foods which affected the development of the child in the womb in terms of gaining weight. The low birth weights among poor mother may also be as a result of premature births since most of them strain too much and are even forced to do hard labor during their pregnancy period so as to be able to survive which could lead premature births. Children born with low birth weights face so may health complications and also the risk of death especially during their firs days. Statistics have shown that the children who are born with low birth weights also show characteristics such as a higher and more rapid rate of hospitalization, poor growth that is growth that is below the normal growth rates, physical limitations that are related to health, greater cases of childhood illnesses as well neurological and developmental problems later on in the future (Strully, Rehkopf, and Xuan, 535).

Due to poor feeding habits among poor mothers, they are highly prone to complications when giving birth. This renders them unable to take proper care of their newborn babies for example through feeding them and increases the incidence of disease for children as well as weakness which could lead to death. Furthermore, due to the fact that poor mothers usually seek the help of a midwife during delivery due to inability to pay the expensive hospital bills, the mothers as well as the child lack proper prenatal care which could lead to the above mentioned complications during pregnancy and also poor postnatal care which further increases the incidence of disease and health complications in children. Complications that arise as a result of low birth weights during birth have been proven to extend to the adulthood years of a child, and this increasingly causes health complication for the lifetime of the child.

The second impact of child poverty is mortality. Child mortality in the world is at a very high level of 49.4% (Tamm, 45). The rate of infant mortality in a country acts as a major indicator of the health status of society. The poor populations are highly characterized by a very high rate of infant mortality, and this only goes to show that health of these poor children is very low. The rate of child mortality is higher for poor families than in the affluent families.

Children who are born in low-income families are at a higher risk of dying during the first few years of their life as compared to those in affluent families. This is because the children in the poor families lack basic necessity in life, for example, enough food or well-balanced diet which leads to conditions such as malnutrition. Children at the early years of their life also require very great and constant hospital care due to their high level of vulnerability to environmental factors. Due to financial constraints in the low-income families, this become impossible most of the times, and this exposes children to greater diseases incidence with no medical care or improper medical care, and this is a cause of the high mortality rate. According to the NCBI, the total rate of child mortality is 1000 children daily and about 70% of these children come from poor families (Rita, Margaret, and David).

Infant mortality is not the only type of mortality that is caused by poverty and ill health. Perinatal mortality is another type of mortality that is very prevalent among poor populations whereby due to complications that are experienced by poor mothers during delivery mainly due to delivery under poor conditions or by inexperienced or unknowledgeable people, the mother dies. The death of the mother during delivery can have very great effects on the health of the newborn child which could even lead to the death of the child. First, a mother breast milk acts as the main source of food for a new born child and on the incidence of death, the child may not have access to the required feed during the first 6 months and this leads to malnutrition and weakness among children which can cause death or poor development of a child which carries through to their adult years.

The third effect is Lack of education. Children who are born in low-income families lack the opportunity to attend school right from the first school level. This is mainly due to financial constraints in the family. Such children lack access to the most important form of education which is the basic education. Basic education plays a very major part in a child’s life since children acquire important knowledge about certain basics of life such as hygiene. Lack of this education for the poor children leads them to live very low-quality life, not in financial terms but general hygiene terms. He lacks the knowledge of simple hygiene practices such as washing of hands after visiting a toilet, and this put them in more and more dangers of diseases such as cholera, typhoid among many other that affect their overall health conditions. Such basics may also not matter to their parents since most of them are mainly uneducated and thus the risk of disease incidence increases. Such cases are very rare for the affluent children because they have the chance to receive this knowledge from the basic school levels and also from their parents.

Lack of education also makes children take up manual labor at a very tender age with the aim of trying to help their parent and also as a means of survival, and this does so much harm for their bodies due to the strain caused. Girls from underdeveloped countries especially in developing countries report to marriage and giving birth at a very tender. Since their bodies are not prepared for such tear at this age, they start to develop health complication at their adolescence ages.

The forth and very serious impact is the Confluence of risks. One of the main consequences of poverty is poor housing and poor living environments. As a result, poor children suffer the health risks as a result of the environments that they live in. More than half of the poor population in a country usually lives in very remote settlement mostly referred to as slums. These settlements pose a lot of health risks to children due to the kind of conditions that prevail in these areas.

First, the environments in these settlements are highly polluted with dump sites as well as the dumpy area. These dirty conditions act as a means of attracting pests and insects such as mosquitos which cause diseases for example malaria among children. These settlements areas characterized by a lot of congestion a factor that increases the incidence of disease because it makes the transmission of communicable diseases even easier. They also lack proper sanitation leading to high prevalence of diseases such as cholera and bilharzia among children. Finally, children in such settlements also lack access safe drinking water due to the immense dumping, and this causes a high prevalence of water-borne diseases.

The final impact of child poverty is on the mental health of the children. Mental health conditions of any individuals are mainly influenced by their social orientation among many other factors. Studies have indicated that children from low-income families have shown a lower level of physical development, intelligence as well educational achievements. All these factors act as reflections of the poor mental health of conditions of children due to poor social interaction practices. Their mindset is very negatively influenced by the conditions that they see around, and they carry this mindset for the rest of their life (Abernathy, Webster, and Vermeulen, 60). This is a very different form the mentality of children from affluent families which are most positive. Studies also showed that children from low-income families are more likely to suffer greater emotional disorders such as anxiety which is mainly caused by the stress and the hardships that they have to go through growing up. In general the social interactions, social set up as well as the poor functioning of low-income families negatively affect the cognitive development of a child and this brings about the great difference that is recorded in academic performance compared to the performance of the rich children (Tamm, 76).

Conclusion

Poverty is highly prevalent in most parts of the globe, and the evidence above shows that it has a very great impact on the health of children. Child poverty has recorded an increasing rate despite the fact that poverty levels of certain countries such as the United States are said to be going down, and this is mainly because as the level goes down poverty is quantitatively increasing in some poor areas. Without proper intervention measures being put in place these children will continue to suffer even in the future as a result of their childhood poverty and may also carry forward the vicious cycle of poverty. Governmental and economic interventions thus need to be put in place as a measure of curbing child poverty and the discussed measures that come with it.

Work Cited

Abernathy, Thomas, Webster, Greg, and Vermeulen, Marian. The relationship between poverty and health among adolescents. ProQuest Social Science Journals, 2002. Print.

Rita Paul-Sen Gupta, Margaret L de Wit, and David McKeown. The impact of poverty on the current and future health status of children. US National Library of Medicine. National Institutes of Health, 2007, Print. Retrieved from: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2528796/

Strelitz, Jason, and Ruth Lister. Why money matters: family income, poverty and children's lives. London: Save the Children, 2008. Print.

Strully, Kate, Rehkopf, David and Xuan, Ziming. Effect of the prenatal health of infant Health State earned income tax credits and birth weight. American Sociological Review Journals, 2010. Print.

Tamm, Marcus. The poverty of children in Germany and its impact on children's health and educational outcomes. Bochum: Univ.-Bibliothek, 2007. Print.