Progress has been made on the road towards eradication of poverty, but there is a long way, still to go. Especially since in recent years income inequality in many countries has been growing again, after it shrunk for a period. It is strange, that in the face of so much evidence, there are still people who think: ‘I don’t care about all those poor people, as long as I can grow my wealth’. When it has been proven over and over again that when income inequality is reduced and poverty is aleviated, the entire economy benefits and everyone is better off.
Poverty is one of the main reasons why children end up in institutions, and may also be a reason for them eding up in other forms of alternative care. In previous blogs (HERE and HERE), I have written about how we can prevent children from ending up being separated from their family due to poverty, without having to accomplish complete eradication. In this blog, I would like to outline what eradication of poverty – or something close to it – could do for reducing the need for alternative care.
As mentioned, poverty is one of the main causes of institutionalisation, and this is just looking at the direct effects of poverty: people unable to feed their children, unable to afford healthcare, and/or unable to afford education, deciding to – or being persuaded or coerced to – place their child in an institution, thinking that this way the child will have a better chance in life.
There are also many indirect effects of poverty that can lead to children being separated from their parents: children removed because they are deemed to be at risk because of unsafe housing conditions, mental health problems of the parents ( caused or exacerbated by the stress caused by poverty), alcohol or substance abuse by the parents (in an attempt to cope with the realities of severe poverty), or domestic violence or neglect (because of stress caused by poverty, mental health problems or substance abuse). When the element of poverty is taken away from these situations, many of these problems dissolve on their own and those that remain will be much more manageable, with far less support.
Children with a poor background have a much, much higher chance of ending up in an institution or being taken into care than those whose families are more economically secure. This is true for children all around the world.
This means that not only will the national economy be better off when the ‘bottom layer’ of society has money to spend. Enormous amounts of money will be saved if suddenly the costs of the domino effect of poverty, such as funding the alternative care system, funding mental health services, funding the justice system are removed. These systems will still be needed, because they are not exclusively needed to fund the knock on effect of poverty, but they will be able to operate on a far smaller scale. While on the other side there are more people able to pay taxes.
Working towards eradicating poverty is one of the best investments that any country – as well as the world as a whole – can make, on so many levels.
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