Yemen, being the poorest Arab nation, is suffering the world’s worst humanitarian, man-made crisis with more than 24 million people - an astounding 80% of the population - in need of humanitarian assistance due to famine, disease and war, including 12 million children. The background to the crisis in Yemen began from the Arab Spring of 2011, when a...

Poverty is a social condition that is characterized by the lack of resources necessary for basic survival or necessary to meet a certain minimum level of living standards expected for the place where one lives. The income level that determines poverty is different from place to place, so social scientists believe that it is best defined by conditio...

Issues like hunger, illness, and thirst are all causes and effects of poverty . That is to say, that not having food means being poor, but being poor also means being unable to afford food or clean water . The effects of poverty are often interrelated so that one problem rarely occurs alone. Bad sanitation makes one susceptible to diseases; and hun...

Fighting Poverty may sound something governments should be doing; we may think is their responsibility. But the truth is that we all should start doing something to help, either we understand or not what causes global poverty, it is a crucial part of the process implementing effective solutions to help eradicate the problem. Photo Credit: American ...

The effects of poverty on behavior and academic performance can be insidious and devastating. - Photo Credit: Wikipedia People have long argued that the way out of poverty is to provide the poor with the economic means to overcome their situation. However, this solution is rooted on a very simplistic view of a problem with multiple complex causes. ...

Developing countries is an umbrella term —with no universal definition— for low and middle-income countries with lower industrialization and human development rates than other —developed— countries. The term developing countries is problematic because it disregards the heterogeneous nature of the global community. Due to widespread acceptace of the...

Among the effects of urbanization on poverty is the birth of slums, product of weak management policies, insufficient and unaffordable housing - Photo Credit: Wikipedia According to the United Nations, over half of the population of developing countries will live in cities by 2020. This is perceived by many as a huge step forward, for developing co...

At one point or another, we all have wondered why some people have more money than they could ever spend, while others do not have enough to secure even the most frugal of meals. Why some countries are lit with fireworks that their citizens look at from gravity-defying skyscrapers while others are crippled with ongoing epidemics. Why, if in theory ...

Check the article below for a compilation of poverty facts in fields such as education, health, economics and the environment - Photo Credit: Wikipedia Poverty is a complex, multidimensional issue that goes beyond the lack of income that characterizes it. It affects how, what and when people eat, how they manage their health, the basic resources th...

Malnutrition —along with its causes, signs, symptoms and effects —  has been broadly discussed in previous articles. It cannot be stressed enough that this issue is very much alive today, in both the developing and developed world. The rise of the diet culture , which has seen incredibly restrictive and harmful diets being merchandised as some...

Malnutrition is an imbalance in micro and macronutrients —either a deficit or surplus of them— which impedes the body’s capability of growing and staying healthy. As mentioned in previous articles, malnutrition can be caused by several different factors, which include but are not limited to disease, lack of access to safe drinking water, eating dis...

The world's effort towards battling malnutrition are focused on under-nutrition. Portrayed here, a child suffering from chronic undernourishment - Photo Credit: Deviantart Malnutrition happens when the intake of essential macronutrients and micronutrients doesn’t cover, or exceeds, the body’s requirements for proper functioning. It is then a blanke...

Child in the Central African Republic, a war stricken country - Photo Credit: Flickr Poverty, as mentioned in previous articles, can be measured by establishing a poverty line and evaluating how many people are below it. This poverty line can be absolute —income required to meet basic needs— or relative —a set percentage of the median national inco...

People living in generational poverty lack the resources to escape it, unlike their situational poverty counterparts - Photo Credit: Wikipedia People with a background of generational poverty lack tools those in situational poverty have, therefore, it is extremely difficult, if not virtually impossible, for them to escape poverty. It is useful to k...

Situational poverty is a period wherein a person falls below the poverty like because of an adverse event - Photo Credit: Flickr Situational poverty is a period wherein an individual falls below the poverty line  because of a sudden event. Situational poverty can be caused by a range of factors, such as: a divorce, death of the family head, il...

Poverty: "Damaged Child", Oklahoma City, OK, USA, 1936 - Photo Credit: Flickr Children living in poverty are denied a good start in life —if any start at all. The United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) acknowledged this in December 2006, when it said that: “…while a severe lack of goods and services hurts every human being, it is most threatening a...

Women selling groundnuts in Selima District, Malawi - Photo Credit: Wikipedia As defined by Madeiros and Costa (2008), “the feminization of poverty is a change in poverty levels that is biased against women or female-headed households” . In other words, it is a current phenomenon in which the gap between women and men in poverty is constantly widen...

A young girl is checked for signs of malnutrition in Sindh, Pakistan. April 2012 - Photo Credit: Wikipedia Although largely considered synonyms, there is a marked distinction between signs and symptoms. A symptom is a subjective term used to define the changes felt by patients as consequence of a disease. A sign is an objective term becau...

Starved woman in Africa - Photo Credit: Wikipedia Malnutrition occurs when there is an imbalance in an individual's dietary intake as a result of under-nutrition or over-nutrition. Disregarding the type, malnutrition is a serious health hazard, as it affects the proper functioning of the cells, tissues and organs, thus compromising bodily func...

Photo Credit: Wikipedia Poverty is defined by Erenstein et al (2002) as " the failure to meet the minimum adequate level required to satisfy certain vital functions".  This poverty definition goes beyond the basic needs a household has to meet in order to survive —it acknowledges the social nature of man and what he needs to feel tru...