Explain how the person/people in each story from the documentary is trapped in the poverty cycle.

Michael – drug addiction, sells  flowers on the road, had tough time trying to get the welfare
Couple – boyfriend was addicted to drugs, the girl wanted to go to school but didn’t have any places to stay and get educated
Erica – mental illness
The old guy – homeless

Refer to the poverty cycle on page 404 of your textbook. Pretend that you are the government and provide an intervention at 4 different points of the cycle and explain how and why this intervention would break the poverty cycle at that point.

For Michael – help needed on medical care and mental development for his drug addiction. Making it easier to get the welfare would help breaking the poverty.
For the couple- for the guy, medical care and mental development is needed for his drug addiction. And for the girl, education is needed so that she could get more chances of getting hired at work. Also, both of them needs housing.
For Erica – medical care is needed for her mental illness.
For the old guy – housing is needed, and the welfare.

What should be our general rules/attitude we should take when approaching the issue of solving poverty in our own communities?

-Create and improve on access to jobs/ raise minimum wage
-Provide access to education, health care, and shelters
-Develop in support for people who can not support themselves

 

In your own words, explain the problems with measuring poverty (standard of living, absolute vs relative, HDI)

Standard of living – The most common method for measuring living standards is using GDP per capita. This is national income divided by population and gives a rough guide to average incomes. High real GDP per capita indicates citizens are able to purchase more goods and services. difficulty in using GDP to measure standard of living is that GDP per capita in $ terms does not necessarily reflect the local purchasing power of a country.

HDI – a composite index including real GDP at PPP, education levels and healthcare standards. A problem of using HDI is that data from some developing countries may not be very reliable and may be difficult to confirm.

Relative poverty – the condition in which people lack the minimum amount of income needed in order to maintain the average standard of living in the society in which they live. A problem of relative poverty is that it can be used within one society because everyone in different countries has a different standard of living.

Absolute poverty – the condition where a person does not have the minimum amount of income needed to meet the minimum requirements for one or more basic living needs. A problem of absolute poverty is same as relative poverty where everyone in different countries has a different standard of living.

What do you think is the best way to measure poverty in Canada and the world.

I think the best way to measure poverty in Canada is relative or absolute poverty because we’re all living in a same country, it would be easier to measure with the same standard of living.
And for the world, I think using HDI is the best because it is based on education levels, and health care standards.

Pessimists/Malthusians – believe that population would soon outstrip food supply, leading to famine, disease, and social disorder

Neo-Malthusians – believe that disaster will overtake populations in the world’s poorest developing countries in the next 50 years due to increasing global warming, shortages of arable land, conflicts over fresh water, declining fish stocks, and the spread of AIDS or other diseases. They also belive that migrations, technology, and new farming lands cannot solve the problems.

The Optimists –  have faith in mankind’s ability to find innovations, such as solar and wind energy, that will increase Earth’s carrying capacity.

I think the video of Kenya’s human time bomb fits into Pesimmists because the part where the reporter mentions that “doctors are working overtime to save people’s lives but even on a normal day the fecilities are overstreched “(5:08) shows that overpopulation has been created problems like disease, and social disorder in Kenya.

The second video called “global population growth, box by box fits into the optimists because in the video , a guy named Hans Rosling says that “only if we invest in the right green technology so that we can avoid severe climte change and energy can still be relatively cheap then they will move all the way up here”(5:05) showing people the positive ideas of inventing new technology which could stop the problems of growing of population. It shows his faith in abillity to find innovations that will increase Earth’s carrying capacity so that I think it definitely fits into the optimists.

1. Find the dependency ratio, is it high or low?

The dependency ratio of South Korea is 37.6% which is pretty low

1. Describe the situation in the country based on the info in your population pyramid (births, deaths, health, age, male/female, type of pyramid, stage in DTM etc.)

Based on the information in the population pyramid, South Korea is in the stage 4 due to its low birth rate and death rate.

And the number of workers is larger than the number of dependents, so it lowers the dependency ratio.

1. Explain what the country needs to prepare for in the near future and why you think that. (health, population, business, policies, etc. Connect this to your observations)

For economic reasons, Korea needs to let youths to have more opportunities of getting jobs because it has low death rate and birth rate, someday the older population will outnumber the younger population.

 

 

https://youtu.be/qCuz-5zvP-Q