A Further Look Into the Statistics of Poverty
In the first post of this publication I spoke a lot about the reasons why I wanted to research poverty because I wanted to let my readers know why I was choosing this topic. In this post I am going to dive a little bit further into the actual statistics about poverty. Poverty has always been an issue the world has had to deal with and the rates are always changing but there is some good news. Over the past 10 years, the poverty rate in the United States has been steadily declining.
If you take a look at this visual presented above you will see that in 2010 the Poverty rate was approximately 15.1% of the U.S population, the highest it had been since 1993. But luckily in 2019 the number is drastically lower at 10.5% which is the lowest the U.S poverty rate had been in 30 years. With that being said however the Covid-19 pandemic affected so many people and the number is currently back up to 13.7% as of today. While the skyrocket in poverty rate is definitely concerning, I think and hope that once the pandemic subdues and life returns to normalcy the trend will continue and we will see poverty rates continue to decline. It’s a good thing that the trend in the United States seems to be heading in the right direction poverty is not something that only affects people in the United States. Worldwide, 9.2% of the overall population is making less than $1.90 per day and nearly half of the global population (which is nearly 4 billion people!) makes under $2.50 per day. The fact that nearly half of the human beings alive today are making less than a McDonald’s cheese burger for an entire day worth of work is something that should make you realize how serious this situation truly is. Another reason why I feel like there needs to be something done about this situation is because there seems to be a direct link to violence and crime and poverty. Due to living in poverty many people are forced to turn to the streets and join gangs or sell drugs in order to pay rent or put food on the table for their children because they have no other choice. On top of that poor areas such as Detroit, Michigan have the highest crime and violence rates in the world an.d many children can’t get good education because they can’t afford it
Sources Cited: Department, Published by Statista Research, and Jan 20. “U.S. Poverty Rate by Year 1990–2018.” Statista, 20 Jan. 2021, www.statista.com/statistics/200463/us-poverty-rate-since-1990/#:~:text=This%20statistic%20shows%20the%20poverty%20rate%20in%20the,States%20has%20shifted%20within%20the%20last%2015%20years.
