Writing an Essay on Poverty

Poverty was and is one of the biggest vices of society. This phenomenon is dangerous not only for poor strata but also for any other social class, as it leads to crimes and political unrest. Person from low-income background cannot fully participate in the life of society, losing their potential.

One of the biggest evils of poverty is that it can be hereditary, meaning that the child from a poor family has no access to all the privileges of life and fewer chances to succeed.  That is why it is very important for students and novice writers to talk about this issue in essays and research papers. If you are ready to make a contribution to raising awareness of poverty, read our article to find out the best tips and tricks for writing a high-quality paper as well as useful information on the topic.

Poverty essay topics

• Poverty is a state of mind essay
• Poverty in America essay
• Essay on poverty and health
• Growing up poor essay
• Child poverty essay
• Poverty and education essay
• How to reduce poverty essay
• Essay on causes of poverty in Africa
• Essay on poverty and starvation
• Global poverty essay
• Essay on poverty and the elderly
• Lack of education and poverty essay
• Essay on helping the poor and needy
• Lasting effect of poverty on children essay
• Essay on poverty and hunger
• Essay on poverty and malnutrition
• Essay on poverty in third world countries
• Gap between rich and poor essays
• Wealth and poverty essay
• War on poverty essay
• Essay on poverty in developing countries
• Essay on poverty and unemployment
• Essay on measures to eradicate poverty
• Causes of poverty essay
• Poverty leads to child labour
• Poverty impacts on families
• Essay impact of poverty on child development essay
• Essay on reducing poverty
• Poverty in the United States essay
• Poverty solution essay: how can I contribute to solving this issue?
• Essay on poverty in the world
• History essay on poverty in America
• Effects of poverty on education essay
• Essay on overcoming poverty
• Essay about poverty causes and effects
• Essay on crime and poverty in the US
• Poverty and crime essay: can the eradication of the former lead to the eradication of the latter?
• An essay on poverty, illiteracy, and unemployment
• Poverty causes crime essay
• College essay on poverty around the world and the ways governments address it
• What is poverty essay
• Essay on “poverty breeds corruption”
• Essay on terrorism is a product of poverty
• Essay on poverty is the root cause of all evils
• Essay on poverty is the parent of revolution and crime
• Essay on preventing poverty by introducing new legislations
• Poverty and homelessness essay
• Background on poverty essay: is it true that poverty is hereditary?
• Poverty and inequality essay
• Essay on poverty and inequality in developing countries
• Essay on poverty solutions: short-term and long-term ones
• Essay on poverty and corruption in developed countries
• Essay on poverty and violence rates in the country of your choice

How to write an essay on poverty?

An essay is a relatively free form of writing as here you are allowed to express your opinion (unless instructed otherwise). However, how to write the paper that stands out from other students’ works? Follow these tips to craft a really outstanding essay:

• Choose a good topic. Find something that is both interesting for you to work on and topical for your target audience.
• Mind the formatting aspect. There are various academic styles, and you can be assigned to use almost any of them. Always be careful with this aspect because incorrect formatting may cost you some points and sufficiently lower your grade.
• Find some credible sources to support your ideas. It is always a good idea to back up your claims by referring to the ideas of outstanding professionals in the field. The main thing here is not to forget to cite these words properly so that it won’t be considered plagiarism.
• Use transitional words between paragraphs. Smooth transitions are essential in your writing as they make your text clear and cohesive. 
• Look for some decent examples. There are various sample essays on poverty on the Web, so you will probably get some inspiration while reading them and understand how to present your ideas clearly.
• Make an outline. This is an important step in any writing process. An essay has quite a specific structure, which is, however, quite easy to work on. We will discuss it in the next paragraph.

Poverty essay outline

As you may know, having structured the text, you would never miss any important parts or points when writing. Let’s consider all the essential sections of any essay:

• Poverty essay introduction. Your introduction paragraph is a presentation of your paper, which should somehow engage your audience.
  • How to begin an essay on poverty? We recommend creating a hook (or attention grabber). Interesting facts or statistics are great attention grabbers for essay on poverty.
  • The next essential point in your introduction is poverty essay thesis. This is a sentence (or sometimes 2 sentences) in which you generalize the issues you are going to consider in your paper. So, taking into consideration the importance of this part, make sure that the thesis statement about poverty is brief and clear. If you struggle to create a strong thesis, get acquainted with some good poverty essay examples on the Web.

• Main part. This is the most extensive and informative section of your essay. Here, you need to provide all the information you have found on the topic, along with the relevant arguments and strong examples. Your main tasks here are to build a strong argumentation line and make paragraphs cohesive with the help of transition words.
• Conclusion for essay on poverty. This part is your final chance to once again showcase the problem you considered in the paper. You will do this by summarizing all the arguments and restating your thesis statement (but never copying it from the intro part, as it will look unprofessional). At the very end, you may leave your readers some food for thought, asking some rhetorical question or just calling for further reflections on the topic. Finally, make sure that you didn’t include any new information in your poverty essay conclusion.

What type of paper should I choose to write about poverty?

You’ve probably already written various types of academic assignments during your studies. But what kind of writing you can choose for your poverty paper? Here are some of our suggestions:

• Cause and effect of poverty essay. Here, you can discover the link between some world events or phenomena that led to poverty.
• Opinion essay on poverty and famine. This task is rather simple – all you need to do is to express your opinion on poverty and reveal how (or whether) it is connected with the issue of famine.
• Informative essay on poverty. In this case, you will have to conduct quite extensive study on the issue of poverty. The good news is that you can choose any topic you like in this case.
• Persuasive speeches on poverty. This type of task is getting more and more popular in universities across the world. The topic for persuasive speech should be a really burning one, and we believe that poverty is a perfect subject for such an assignment. So if you have been looking for a really original type of academic paper, consider working on a speech about poverty.

Poverty research paper topics

Choosing a research topic on poverty from the list below, be sure to narrow the focus down to specific countries, correlations, population samples, historical periods, or organizations:

• Poverty and education research paper
• Research paper on crime and poverty
• Research paper on generational poverty
• The phenomenon of poverty of the mind
• The link between poverty and crime
• Is poverty a by-product of terrorism?
• The most effective solutions to poverty problems
• Why developing nations are so poor?
• Poverty alleviation programs in the world
• Is education the most effective solution to poverty issue?

How to write a research paper on poverty

It is not a secret that writing a poverty research paper is even more challenging than working on a regular essay as it presupposes making more research and taking a more scientific approach in general. Therefore, it is important that you create a plan on how to approach this assignment if you are given one, and we are here to help you do it.

Poverty research paper outline

Here is a basic research paper outline:

• Introduction: introductory phrase, thesis statement for poverty research paper, and statement of hypothesis.
• Body sections: background information, literature review, methodology, results, and a discussion.
• Conclusion: restated hypothesis, thesis statement, as well as the main points of research.

Sticking to this outline and adding more details to it as you research, you will create an A+ research paper!

Best poverty research tips

Finally, as promised, here are the best research paper writing tips:

• Formulate the research topic correctly. Do not make the focus of your study too broad because you will spend too much time researching and won’t be able to include all of your findings in the paper. Moreover, it will simply look messy if there is no focus. Therefore, it is better to concentrate on one or two issues and find as much credible information on them as possible.
• Find previous research results on this topic. Find the most trustworthy resources, compare them with your own data, and draw conclusions.
• Make sure that all the ideas in the paper are consistent. It is imperative to review your paper and determine if the logical order as well as the sequence of research points is not violated.
• Compile a list of references according to the chosen academic style. Improper formatting of citations and references may cost you an excellent mark.
• Work on the conclusion properly. It is important to sum up the work done correctly, summarizing all the important points and restating thesis and hypothesis.
• Revise your paper. Check if there are any stylistic, grammatical, or spelling errors and eliminate them before the submission.

Research questions about poverty

Any research should be based on some questions, which can serve as a basis for a whole paper. Here are some interesting questions which may inspire you to do more research:

• Why does poverty still exist?
• What are the main causes of poverty?
• What are consequences of poverty?
• Can the issue of poverty be solved with money?
• How can poverty be reduced in the future?
• How does poverty affect healthy child development?
• Does foreign aid help in alleviating poverty in developing countries?
• What aspects contribute to poverty reduction in developing countries?

Causes of poverty

First of all, let’s generalize the causes of this phenomenon. Poverty is a consequence of various and interrelated causes:

• economic (unemployment, low wages, low labor productivity, non-competitiveness of the industry);
• socio-medical (disability, old age, high incidence rates);
• demographic (single-parent families, a large number of dependents in the family);
• educational and qualification (low level of education, insufficient professional training);
• political (military conflicts, forced migration);
• geographic (uneven development of regions).

There might be a lot of talks on this topic, as different people have different theories of why poverty still exists. However, some reasons are rather hard to argue about, and we will focus on them in the sections below.

Lack of education

You might not think of this reason as a major cause of poverty. However, it is a huge problem nowadays, causing people to get the lowest pay that they can possibly get. It’s a fact that poorly educated people have limited opportunities to succeed in a dynamic work environment. The problem is that low-income families usually spend a fairly small percentage of their income on the education of their children. As a result, the next generation continues to struggle with poverty and has no resources for personal development.

Lack of natural resources

We all know that many countries totally depend on their natural resources. The growing consumption and depletion of resources lead not only to critical and partially irreparable damage to the environment but also to higher prices in the market. This rise in price affects manufacturing enterprises that consume a lot of energy and raw materials. For this reason, global competitiveness is fundamentally dependent on the efficient and economical use of resources, alternative energy sources, and raw materials.

According to analysts from the World Economic Forum and PwC, the shortage of natural resources directly affects half of the world economy. In addition, a lack of resources leads to conflicts between countries, which only exacerbates poverty.

High unemployment level

Unemployment is a serious problem in many countries in Europe, Asia, and the Americas. In 2020, according to the International Labor Organization, there are 400 million unemployed in the world (10.7% of the world’s population). High unemployment level leads to mass poverty, lower wages, as well as social and political instability.

Unemployment is the leading cause of poverty in the United States. In 1999 and 2005, 71% of families below the poverty line had no working family members. In 2020, the level of unemployment in the United States reached 14.7%, which is considered the highest since the Great Depression.

Covid-19

According to the World Bank, in 2015, about 734 million people (10% of the world’s population) lived on less than $ 1.90 a day. The aforementioned progress will be reversed by the global pandemic crisis, which significantly affected national, regional, and global economies. There are no doubts now that the impact of COVID-19 will affect all countries. Thus, the World Bank estimates that in 2020, more 40-60 million people worldwide will be living on less than $ 1.90 a day.

Shocking statistics for papers on poverty

We know that the topic of poverty is rather extensive, so we are here to provide you with some great examples of statistics and interesting facts that you can use in your essay!

• Almost 46% of the world's population (3.4 billion people) live on less than $5.5 a day.
• More than 1.4 billion people live in extreme poverty, spending and earning as much as $1.25 a day.
• About a quarter of people on Earth live without any electricity at all.
• Over 2 million children suffer from terrible diseases every year because their parents are not able to afford the needed treatment.
• In 2012, over 77.8% of the extremely poor people lived in South Asia (309 million) and sub-Saharan Africa (388.7 million). Another 147 million lived in East Asia and the Pacific.
• The entire health budget of Ethiopia, a country of 105 million people, is equivalent to just 1% of the fortune of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos.
• Half of the poor are children. Women represent a majority of the poor in most regions and among some age groups. About 70% of the global poor aged 15 and over have no schooling or only some basic education.
• About 132 million of the poor people live in areas with high flood risk.