Poverty in Canada
Causes and Impacts of Poverty
Causes of Poverty
When talking about the causes of poverty there are many different factors which influence poverty, though these factors can be narrowed down into five main factors.
One main cause of poverty is ignorance. Ignorance, meaning the lack of knowledge or information. This is not to be confused with stupidity or foolishness. Having an education is a key part in becoming successful in todays world and many people in Canada are unfortunately not given the opportunity to further their education. This can easily set someone back from the rest in Canada because they are not able to expand their knowledge and understanding due to lack of opportunity.
Another big factor of poverty in Canada is disease. When an area has a higher rate of mental and physical disease this can lead to low productivity, a higher rate of absentees, and overall will decrease the wealth in the area. Along with diseases comes large amounts of discomort and even death. Having a death in a family can dramatically lower a households income and can therefore drive communities deep into poverty. Because of this disease and death are obvious factors which contribute towards poverty.
Apathy is another one of the five main factors influencing poverty. Apathy is when a person loses hope and no longer cares; they feel so powerless that they give up on most things in their life. Apathy works as a contributing factor towards poverty because apathy "breeds" apathy. Meaning that when one person has reached this point of losing hope they can easily spread the apathy to someone else. When apathy spreads it can cause a whole different set of problems such as depression and even job loss and therefore it is a contributing factor towards poverty in Canada.
Another large contributing factor of poverty in Canada is dishonesty. Dishonesty among people in power and very trusted people is a large cause of poverty. When wealthy people in power divert money from a community into their own pockets a community can be largely impacted by this. Removing money from a community can lower the overall wealth of an area, which harms everyone. One way it harms people is by slowing the circulation of money in the community. When money is not circulating fluidly through a community business can be harmed because people are not spending money. When money is not being spent it can cause a downward spiral in a community.
The fifth main cause of poverty is dependency. Dependency is caused when one is on the receiving end of some sort of “charity”. An example of this dependency would be employment insurance. Dependency such as this can work well in a short term situation but in the long run the recipient of the “charity” may be driven even deeper into poverty. The reason that you can be driven even deeper into poverty is because the recipient may get accustomed to not working. When a person gets accustomed to not working they can lose all motivation to work and therefore will never get a job again. Because these people have no jobs they can be easily driven into poverty and because of this, dependency is a contributing factor to poverty in Canada.
All five of these factors can not only contribute to poverty by themselves but they can also cause secondary problems. Examples of these secondary problems would be lack of markets, under employment, lack of skills, lack of capital, and many others.
Impacts of Poverty in Canada
One way that poverty can impact a country would be in the amount of crime committed. The amount of crime in a country can vary from area to area but one consistent factor in crime rates is poverty. The amount of poverty in an area can easily affect the amount of crime in the same area. Also, in the same way, the amount of crime in an area can directly affect the level of poverty an area is in.
Another thing that poverty affects in Canada would be the society itself. Having areas of high class and other areas of lower class (communities in poverty) can cause a strong social tension in a country, which can threaten to divide the nation. This kind of social tension is caused when the wealth in an area is poorly distributed, or in other words, when a small minority of a community has all of the wealth. In Western culture countries such as Canada, the divide between rich and poor is beginning to become more immense, and the “middle class” is beginning to be lost. This can be very dangerous because many people can be forced into poverty and once they are in poverty it is near impossible for them to come out of poverty.
Poverty not only impacts adults, instead it can impact children too. Since the 1960’s the number of children in poverty has begun to climb higher and higher. Children are very vulnerable because they do not have a large amount of choice or ability to change things happening around them. A young child can do almost nothing to help their family in poverty because they are only a child. Because of this helplessness, children are beginning to become more susceptible to problems such as poverty.
One more thing that is affected by poverty would be the environment. Poverty does not have a very large impact on the environment and there is not much proof that shows that poverty causes environmental problems, though there are small factors that can hurt the environment. One small factor would be that middle to upper class people tend to be the ones who do not recycle and reuse many objects, while on the other hand, lower class people tend to use everything they are given to the full extent.
The final way that poverty impacts Canadians would be in their health. It is no surprise, not only in Canada, that poorer communities fare worse (health wise) than rich communities. There is no question about it, a persons mental and physical health can be altered drastically by a life in poverty. Many different mental and physical illnesses can come up from living a life with so little and because of this it is statistically known that people who live in poverty tend to live shorter lives.
