15 March 2018
Poverty Piling up in the UK.
Poverty is rising. In the UK many people live in poverty including: young people such as teenagers and young adults. This is due to the rise of prices as well as other reasons. Poverty is measured by the income the person receives and whether it is under 60% of the average in that year.
Foodbanks - we went on a food bank’s website and found out that alarmingly, one in five people live in poverty (20% of the UK is in poverty). 6371, three-day emergency food supplies were given out last year. So that’s 31855 since the food bank started in 2012. This foodbank has helped lots of people and their stories are on the website. But, what about the less fortunate who have to travel by walking to get this emergency food and carry heavy bags full of food back to their house?
Homelessness - The charity CenterPoint helps fight against youth homelessness. Tens of thousands of youths ask for help with homelessness, as no child or teenager should sleep on the streets. Many of them are homeless, as it’s not safe at home and many of them don’t receive help. This affects them and the line of poverty increases. Most people never think of the fact that the youths need to go to public toilets all the time and if there isn’t any public toilets they have to wait until the shops open.
As the poverty increases the crime levels will as well. The essentials they need are getting too expensive that they can’t afford the basic essentials needed to live. Many things are rising such as food, essentials, toiletries and cleaning products. As the crime levels increase their violence will as well as they will start being cocky and they might end up in prison, but is one of the main reasons because of the minimum wage? Is it too low? Is it right? Or is it too much?
Poverty affects not just the people who are poor but us as well. They might steal from shops which results in the shops getting less money. This means the shop are getting less profits and only leaving one option to increase the price of goods which has a negative impact on the rest of the public. As they work, pay bills, pay taxes and buy the stuff that they want and not to steal even when they don’t have the money. However, from 2011 to 2017 the employment rate has increased from 70.3% to 75%.
Shocking. did you know? - Did you know that there are 3.7 million children in the UK? And that one quarter of them (25%) are living in poverty? Do these children deserve to live in poverty? No. 25% of children is shocking. They might not have Wi-Fi to easily do homework or to help friends, they might have to go to the library or do it in school. Children are our future, they shouldn’t live in poverty as they are our future. They will be our next doctors, teachers, lawyers and news presenters. They shouldn’t have to live and fix the mess that we may have caused.
Overall poverty is increasing as some people are payed under the average wage. People are affected in different ways to others and that can be from not being able to afford food, to not having a house. We need to act fast to prevent this from growing quicker.