Why People Can’t Escape Poverty

Oftentimes people criticize the poor for not improving their economic status. People say that they are lazy, they don’t work hard enough, and that they don’t take advantage of opportunities to improve their lives. However, the people that say this are not looking deep into the root of the problem. People living in poverty are stuck in an endless cycle of obstacles that keep bringing them down.

Once poor, people can experience difficulty escaping poverty because many changes that would allow them to do so require money that they simply do not have. For example, a good education would help somebody escape poverty, right? Well what if the closest public school that they can attend does not provide good education? And what if they can’t afford to pay for a private school with better education? The answer is that they will be stuck going to that public school and they will not gain a better education.

What about the parents? Can’t they get their family out of poverty? Well in order to do that, the parent will need to find a good job that pays good money. But what about the kids at home? Who will look after them while the parent is at work? The parent will need to pay for child care which is very expensive and will take away from the money that the parent is bringing home from work, so we basically start at the bottom again.

Now let’s say that the kids at home are old enough to watch after themselves. The parent did not have a good enough education, and therefore was turned down at several job interviews, so now the parent loses motivation to improve their economic status. The parent wants to go back to school to get a better education but now they can’t afford it, thus adding to their lack of motivation.

As you can see, it is not that easy to get out of poverty. Poor people cannot just “get a job.” It’s really not that simple. In order to fix this problem, I think that the government should focus more on putting more affordable programs and education services in poor areas in order to give these people a boost in improving their lives.