Case Study Essay: Poverty

Case Study Essay:
Poverty

Project No. 2 (Case study essay: Poverty)
Poverty refers to a state or condition of an individual or a group, where there is a severe lack
of financial resources essential for basic survival (Kilty, 2007). Poverty is still an imperative
issue for some countries, as they are still unsuccessful in their attempts to eradicate poverty.
Poverty is linked to many detrimental factors and possibly augment various further issues
such as widespread crime, inequality, a severe decline of health in the population, and an
overall pessimistic attitude in the population to name a few. The essay includes a brief
discussions about some groups that are more vulnerable to poverty as compared to others.
Besides this, the essay also includes a description about what precipitates many people in the
group of within poverty and justification as to why does the government not tend to introduce
equity based measures in order to reduce poverty within the group.
In every country, the population can be categorised into different income groups. There are
certain groups within a country that are at the risk of poverty (Kilty, 2007). The groups can
include vulnerable groups like people who are inactive and unemployed along with their
children who are dependent. These people who are unemployed and inactive do not have
any source of income and thus, they are not able to fulfil even the basic needs. The
government take active steps and develops strategies to reallocate financial resources. This is
also done in order to help the poverty groups to at least be able to satisfy their day to day
needs. These strategies include progressive taxes (high incomes are taxed at a higher rate
while lower taxes for low-income earners) and financial aids in various forms. The
government can out of many approaches, can two particular approaches either the poverty
alleviation approach or income maintenance approach (Carson & Kerr, 2017).
Australia adopts poverty alleviation schemes, focusing on standard welfare just enough to
avoid welfare dependency and encourage self-sufficiency (Brady, Finnigan and Hübgen,
2017). These schemes also help in ensuring that the poor people have an access to basic
resources like shelter, food etc. On the contrary, many economies such as the U.S have an
income-maintenance approach where benefits are given according to their income such as
health insurance or other benefits. These benefits are supposed to help the people in poverty
to deal with the challenges in their day to day lives.

Many groups in the society have higher probability to poverty than compared with the rest of
the groups as many factors directly impact their financial wellness as well as restrict their
opportunities to gather financial resources.
There are many reasons that precipitate many people within the group into poverty
like if these people do not get an opportunity to work, they remain unemployed. As a result,
they do not have any access to even the basic resources and thus, move towards poverty.
Among the group who are vulnerable to poverty is single parents especially women as
research indicates are more vulnerable to poverty due to less awards wages as compared to
men throughout their working life (Carson & Kerr, 2017). Women are typical paid lesser and
further due to their caring roles, not much of their time in working resulting in lower
superannuation accumulation when they retire. This is one of the reasons that precipitates
people within the poverty groups. As research indicated 50 % of women had low
superannuation balances that they would have to ultimately rely on age pension to fulfil their
basic necessities.
Unemployed people get mentally affected due to no sources of generating income and also, a
lack of resources. Due to increase in the housing costs, these people are not able to be afford
a place to live and thus, are left with no shelter (Fransman and Yu, 2019). They are forced to
live on the streets and thus, their condition keeps on deteriorating.
Poverty can also be linked with increased inequality, as people with high incomes have better
access to various forms of occupational welfare (medical, cars or school fees) or fiscal
welfare (aimed at tax minimisation) leading them to spend less on essential and giving them
more propensity to save. People who belong to the poverty group, usually have to deal with
being treated as unequal in comparison to other people. These are some of the reasons that
also contribute to the people within the poverty groups. These affect the overall morale as
well as living conditions of these people (Giles, 2019). There are different reasons why the
government does not tend to introduce equity based measures to reduce poverty in this group
because otherwise, the companies will not be able to make profits. Besides this, another
reason of not doing so is that there is a challenge to address the change.
As indicated by Australian Social Inclusion Board and the research indicated six major
factors which led to poverty in any group which included low income, joblessness (less