Measurement And Economic Effects Of Poverty On The Iranian Family

Effects of Poverty on Families in Iran

The family is the most important place where mental strength, emotional interactions, and the trust of each person are formed. For many of us, the family is where we experience the strongest love and hatred, we enjoy the deepest satisfaction and suffer from the most painful calamities. Foundation of the family can break with a lot of reasons, such as violence, dishonesty, drugs and alcohol. However, poverty can be one of the most critical problems that people have all over the world. Poverty is like a disease that infects all countries. One of the characteristics of the poverty is that can weaken the society and can start from the smallest basic social unit, family. Poverty has the power of breaking the

All of this is leading to an extreme income gap between the rich and the poor. A recent report titled Measurement and Economic Analysis of Urban Poverty showed that between 44.5 percent and 55 percent of Iran’s urban population lives below the poverty line. This report was published at a conference organized by Tehran University and the United Nations Population Fund and made public by the Islamic Students News Agency shortly thereafter. Poverty in Iran, as defined by the Iranian government, means a monthly income of less than 180,000 toman, the equivalent of roughly $600, for a family of five people. The authors of the report — Mansour Kiani, Khalil Attar and Jila Habibi — estimated that approximately 23.3 million Iranian city dwellers live under the poverty line and cannot subsist on their incomes. The report did not include statistics for rural Iran. Furthermore, 46 percent of Iranian women ages 15 to 24 are unemployed, and the unemployment rate for young adults is twice that of the general unemployment rate. This means that the country is officially in an unemployment crisis. And it seems that Iranians who are employed are powerless in pushing to increase pay, benefits and working

I can remember when I was a volunteer teacher in Iran. I had a lot of students who couldn’t go to school because going to school has costs and expenses such as buying uniforms, tuition, cost of transportation, and buying books and notebooks. A poor family couldn’t afford all these needs, so they prefered not sending children to school. In my opinion, they just chose from being alive, or having education, and inevitably they chose living a painful life with a lot of suffering and hard work. I can remember a couple of my students didn’t have homes and they had to live in tents and most of the time they were sick. In cold winter, hot summer, rainy spring, and windy fall they lived in a plastic tent without water, bathroom, kitchen, or bedrooms. My students worked hard to contribute to the family and to survive every day. They sold flowers and magazines. Sometimes they cleaned the windshields of the car in intersections behind the red lights. They had just one minute to clean the car and then earned a little money until the next red light. It is very painful to see many talented students who have beautiful dreams, but they drown in deep poverty. According to an Iranian media reports Iran has seven million child laborers, which over four million children dropped out of