ASSESSMENT ON THE CAUSES OF BEGGARS
Beggars are those who plead, beg, and beseech other people with the objective of obtaining things, most oftentimes material items, as food and money. Panhandling is its other term.
Many beggars when interviewed said that they prefer panhandling as a means for their survival rather than holding conventional jobs. This implies that they treat begging as a job. Many said that they will not be able to hold regular jobs because of their various illnesses, mental and physical, and a lack of working skills. However, seventy percent of them said that they also desire, if given the chance, to get a steady job and to “get out of the street”
They are usually seen or they cluster around terminals, markets, parks, and other public places. What they usually beg from passers-by are money, food, and sometimes clothing. There are also beggars who ask for liquors and cigarettes, and those who ask for a specific amount of money.
Poverty may be said to be a matter of social and economic injustice. In the Philippines, based on the Family Income Expenditure Survey done in 1994, it was found out that the income generated by the rich families that belong to the top twenty percent are almost half of the accumulated family income of the nation.
The main cause of beggarship or poverty is poor or lack of education. Children of poor families are usually taken out of school or have never attended school to be able to work and help the family in their day-to-day needs. Understandably, since they live on a hand-to-mouth subsistence, their priority is on a day-to-day survival rather than on education. This further weakens their foundation and they get stuck in poverty as they become perennial unskilled laborers.
Another cause is poor health. Since they do not have the necessary financial and material resources to purchase adequate food, and healthcare is almost non-existent, their physical bodies tend to be unhealthy or sickly. They are, most of the times, malnourished. Medically, a poorly nourished body lacks the determination to be productive. Along with their diminished drive to improve their lot, their drive and motivation to work also diminishes.
Their distorted view of the means to attain success further digs them into poverty. Majority of them think that having as many children as they could can save them from poverty. They treat their children as their capital investments for family progress. In so doing, they put their children to work on an early age, and later on in life since their children were not educated, the latter will also end up either underemployed or unemployed. Furthermore, with too many mouths to feed, whatever they can get out of their very meager earnings become scarcer and scarcer. Every added member denotes lesser and smaller portion of resources in the family including time for guidance and nutrition. To wit, children’s health are poor, the odds for survival are lower, physical bodies are less developed, and if they go to school, do not perform well.
Considering the law of supply and demand, as unskilled workers grow in numbers, the demand for them goes down resulting to cheap labor and vulnerability of the laborer during retrenchments.
On a national level, sometimes economic growth does not align itself with the growth in population. This might be due to international inflation or crisis or to mismanagement of government funds and economy. With it follows inflation and increase in unemployment. As a consequence, investors will steer clear of any country that has an investment climate that is poor.
Poverty can also be brought about by abnormal or extreme weather conditions like El Nino or La Nina phenomenon. The median income of the financially-deprived in agriculture is more than eighty-four percent of the boundary set for poverty. In more than sixteen percent of families whose breadwinners are unemployed, more than fifteen percent belong to the poor sector.
An important consideration to reduce rural poverty is to provide measures for farmers to have an access to land. Especially in developing countries, control of vast majority of land is dependent on few persons. There is massive injustice and inequality to owning land.
Credit:ivythesis.typepad.com
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