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Solutions to extreme poverty
Poverty in poor countries
Poverty in poor countries
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1. Poor Kids is a documentary that highlights a major issue the United States is suffering from. This issue is known as poverty, more specifically, childhood poverty. This documentary views the world through the eyes of children that are subjected to lives of poverty due to the poor financial state that their parents are in. Life is very rough for these children and they must live their everyday lives with little to none of the luxuries most people take for granted. Poor Kids sheds light on the painful fact that there are children that starve every day in the United States.
2. As the Film Poor Kids continued on it became more and more apparent that the main issue was poverty among children in the United States. It needs to be first recognized
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The conflict approach is one that puts an emphasis on inequality and competition between social groups that leads to problems. Throughout the course of the Poor Kids documentary the conflict approach can be implemented to help explain why childhood poverty is caused. Conflict theorist can point to Brittany’s family as an example of how competition between social classes can cause poverty. Brittany’s father was working for a company that decided to scale down in order to better sustain itself during tough economic times. As a result, Brittany’s father lost his job with the company since he did not hold a high position within the company. Brittany’s family when her father had his job was not considered a high class family as far as income and luxury goes. The video did not specifically state what class family they were, but it can be inferred that they were probably a low middle class or low class family. So, because her father was not holding a high position and was not considered of high social importance, he was let go as if he was almost expendable. If he was of high social class and held a higher or more important position within the company than he probably would not have been let go. This refers back to competition between social classes (Turner). The old cliché, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer can be thought relevant in this situation. Also, the conflict approach can be applied to the part of the video in which Brittany’s dad was unsuccessful in finding a job. Her dad went online and submitted an array of applications to a multitude of different companies in hopes to get hired. Unfortunately, he didn’t hear anything back from any of the companies and was not offered a job. His lack of success in finding a job can be explained in various ways. The conflict approach would point to his social status as a key reason in why he was unsuccessful. It can said that because Brittany’s father was not of a high social class or group he wasn’t given as
This film chose to focus on very young people struggling to survive in poverty. All three of the boys are younger than 18 years old and thus are in an important developmental stage. The film gives us a view into the effects of a disadvantaged upbringing on a child’s development. These three boys grew up in situations defined by poverty and familial dysfunction and for two of them, the after effects are clear. Harley has severe anger issues and is unable to function at school. Appachey lashes out uncontrollably and has multiple diagnosed behavioral disorders. Both boys have had run-ins with the law and dealings with the juvenile court system. This solidifies the argument espoused in Marmot’s The Health Gap that children from lower socioeconomic backgrounds face significant developmental challenges. The evidence suggests that children who grow up in poverty have cognitive and developmental delays and suffer from greater risk of mental and behavioral disorders. As shown in the film, Harley and Appachey both suffer from extreme behavioral and cognitive deficits and exhibit the corresponding poor scholastic and societal performance which will serve to further negatively affect their
“Poor Kids,” by PBS Frontline is a documentary that focuses on the children of three families living in poverty. The documentary gives a better understanding on how children are affected by the poverty they are faced with. The majority of the film focuses on their lives and it shows how they are living five years after the initial recording. It gives insight on how each family faces different circumstances due to their poverty.
Environment has always played an important role on how children are raised. Throughout child developmental psychology, many different theorist’s views on how environment effects a child development differently, or if it plays any role at all in a child developing with a healthy psyche. In the film Babies (2010), we are introduced to two human babies living in distinctively different parts of the world and we are given a glimpse of their lives as they grow and develop. In the film, we are introduced to Ponijao from the rural area of Opuwo, Namibia, who lives with his mother and his siblings. In another area of the world, the urban city of San Francisco, U.S., we are introduced to Hattie, who lives with her mother and father.
Poverty has many influences on children under the age of 16. The research fined out that in recent year, an increasing number of children become poor, live under the poverty condition- childhood poverty lasted 10 years or more. So, what does the poverty exactly mean to children? According to Brook-Gunn and Duncan, The kids who live in the poverty condition have the low quality of schools; more likely to have domestic violence and become homeless; less access to friends, services, etc.
It is not difficult to document that poor children suffer a disproportionate share of deprivation, hardship, and bad outcomes. More than 16 million children in the United States – 22% of all children – live in families with incomes below the federal poverty level – $23,550 a year for a family of four. (Truman, 2005) Living in poverty rewires children 's brains and reports show that it produces prolonged effects. Also, growing up in a community with dangerous streets, gangs, confused social expectations, discouraging role models, and few connections to outsiders commanding resources becomes a burden for any child. The concern about the number of children living in poverty arises from our knowledge of the problems children face because of poverty.
In recent years, the number of children whose families fall under the line of poverty has risen at an alarming rate. Crosson-Tower (2013) postulated a reason for this increase when she said, “The recent weakening economy, a higher unemployment rate, unprecedented numbers of home foreclosures and a decline in the safety net for children and their families have resulted in a gradual continuing increase in children living in extreme poverty” (p. 57). Apparently, nearly every aspect of the United States’ crumbling economy affects a family’s ability to meet basic needs. The rise in single parent, mother headed families has not helped poverty statistics because of the lower earning potential of women. A major reason so many children liv...
The Bad and The Beautiful (1952) and State and Main (2000) are films within films that unmask Hollywood Cinema as a dream factory and expose the grotesque, veneer hidden by the luxury of stars. The Bad and the Beautiful, directed by Vincent Minnelli, is a black and white film narrated in flashback form. The films theatrical nature requires more close-ups than wide-screen shots to capture the character’s psychological turmoil. For example, Fred and Jonathan’s car ride is captured in a close-up to signify their friendship; however their relationship deteriorates after Jonathan’s deceit. While the camera zooms out, Fred stands alone motionless. Here, Fred is captured from a distance at eye-level and he becomes ostracized by the film industry and
Wight, V. R., Chau, M., & Aratani, Y. (2010, Jan). National Center for Children in Poverty. Retrieved from Who are America’s Poor Children?: http://www.nccp.org/publications/pub_912.html
The film Babies is a film that follows four babies from San Francisco, Tokyo, Mongolia, and Namibia through their first year of life. The film has no talking or narrative. In many scenes, you don’t even see adults. This helps you get to see a baby’s perspective on the world. This movie showed how different cultures are when it comes to raising children.
poor”( Papalia et al. 295). Thousands of children around the United States sit on street corners
Children represent a disproportionate share of the poor in the United States; they are 23.1 percent of the total population, but 33.3 percent of the poor population. In 2014, 15.5 million children, or 21.1 percent, were poor. Poverty can shape a life of a child and leave them with feelings of hopelessness and unworthiness. There are also specific ethnic and race groups whose children are affected by poverty than others.
Poverty is “the inability to acquire enough money to meet basic needs including food, clothing and shelter” (Gosselin,2009). This social disadvantage limits one’s ability to receive a quality education and it is a constant problem throughout the world accompanied with“deleterious impacts on almost all aspects of family life and outcomes for children”(Ravallion,1992). Poverty is a main factor that affects normal human growth and development in a variety of ways, primarily impacting children’s early development, social behaviour, health, and self worth.
The documentary, Poor Us: An Animated History of Poverty, takes viewers through a detailed history of poverty on Earth. From hunter-gatherers to modern times, poverty in the world is demonstrated in the documentary. One can ask many questions while watching the documentary such as, “What is poverty?” and “Why does poverty exist today?” These questions are partially answered and speculated on in the documentary, although it may be hard to completely answer the questions as it can be argued that there is no one single answer. Poverty, according to the documentary, is the struggle to obtain resources in order to continue living. These resources are basic needs such as clean water, food, shelter and health care. The documentary, however, argues
They are even capable of understanding and dealing with their own emotions as well as the emotions of others. Some of the implications of poverty include educational setbacks, issues with social behaviors and hindrances in psychological and physical development. Poverty deprives children of the capabilities needed to survive, develop and prosper in society. Studies have shown that the income status of a household and even the neighborhoods in which they reside can affect the amount of readily available resources needed to sustain a healthy child. This essay will examine the psychological and physical effects of poverty on children.
Poverty is prevalent throughout the world around us. We watch television and see famous people begging us to sponsor a child for only ten dollars a month. We think in our own minds that ten dollars is only pocket change, but to those children and their families, that ten dollars is a large portion of their annual income. We see images of starving children in far away countries, and our hearts go out to them. But we really do not know the implications of poverty, why it exists, or even what we can do to help combat this giant problem in our world.