How Does Poverty Affect the Health of the Community?

When a person or family lives in poverty, lack of nutrition and the stress of never having enough has a negative impact on their health. However, they are unable to pay for healthcare to address these concerns. If an entire community is struggling to find work in order to make ends meet, you have multiple and rampant health concerns across the board. How does poverty affect the health of the community? Everyone is now at risk for more and more complicated health concerns.

The World Bank tells us, “Poverty is a major cause of ill health and a barrier to accessing health care when needed. This relationship is financial: the poor cannot afford to purchase those things that are needed for good health, including sufficient quantities of quality food and health care. But, the relationship is also related to other factors related to poverty, such as lack of information on appropriate health-promoting practices or lack of voice needed to make social services work for them.”[1]

Ill health, The World Bank continues, then turns that poverty into a cycle. Without good health, a person cannot work, cannot make money and cannot afford healthcare. And on it goes. So, imagine an entire village where most people are out of work. Without enough food to eat and with the stress of living in constant survival mode, you have home after home of families with failing health.


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