The Relationship Between Poverty And Health

"The biggest enemy of health in the developing world is poverty." -Kofi Annan

This quote basically summarizes the relationship between poverty and health in general. According to World Health Organization, approximately 1.2 billion people in the world live in extreme poverty (income is less than one dollar per day). This means approximately 1.2 billion people is at major risk of having a bad health condition. What is poverty exactly? According to Ungku Aziz (1964) , poverty means not earning enough income to meet the basic needs of a person, or does not received nutrients needed for own health and cannot meet and maintain the physical efficiency . While Booth (in Holman, 1978) states that poverty can be described as a poor person living in

Globally and historically, poverty has been the major determinant of child and adult health and even in rich nations such as the UK; it remains a major cause of ill health with huge public health consequences. Poverty is both a source and an aftereffect of poor health. Poverty increases the chances of poor health. Poverty creates ill-health by forcing people to live in bad environments that make them sick, without decent shelter, clean water or adequate sanitation. Poor health in turn traps communities in poverty. Poverty and social discrepancy in childhood have profound impact on the health of children, and their impact on health continues to reverberate throughout the life course into late adulthood. So, how exactly poverty influence child

The educational attainment of a child’s parents, particularly the mother, is recognised as one of the most powerful predictors of child health in both developed and developing countries. Education appears to strengthen practices and behaviour conducive to child health. Access to education in many countries, including the developed countries, is controlled by family income. Poverty will cause the underprivileged children living in the poor areas to be only getting lower levels of educational attainment. There are two major causes for this; first is there are less to none good educational institution in poor areas and second, even if there is, the poor would not have enough money to pay for the education. The other minor factor would be the different attitudes to education among social classes. It is stated that there is now a good evidence that poor social circumstances have a detrimental effect on the cognitive ability of the