Nowadays, a serious problem of modern societies is the large percentage of poverty in the general population and it will keep spreading if without taking any effective actions. The definition of poverty given by World Bank (2011) is the state of people who lack money and productive resources to satisfy basic human needs, including nutritious food, safe drinking water, housing, sanitation, health and education. It has been reported that 3.14 billion people live on less than $2.50 a day in 2005 (Word Bank 2008), which means almost half the world live in severe conditions. These people cannot afford the cost of housing and education; meanwhile, they suffer greatly from hunger and sickness. Hence, equality, increasing international aid and developing education industry will be given as possible approaches for alleviating this matter.
First of all, developing countries should be treated equally as other developed countries on international platforms, such as United Nations, World Trade Organization and International Monetary Fund. In this era of globalization, staying isolated cannot solve the poverty problem. Developing countries should have equal rights to vote and speak in international conferences to ensure they can benefit from international trade. They should prohibit some developed countries exploiting the natural resources in their countries by reaching trade agreements. For example, it is unfair that developed countries almostly used up oil, forest and mineral resources in some underprivileged countries, but no money goes back to ordinary people. Furthermore, after over-exploiting some pollutions and environmental destruction remained there. It highly impacts the local environment and economic system. Inevitably, globalization will become the main trend of our modern society. Therefore, developing countries should firmly maintain their rights in global market.
Secondly, getting international financial aid is an efficient way to gain a remarkable improvement in a short term. The money can be invested in local infrastructure (e.g. roads, electricity, water supply system), and that might provide basic livelihood guarantee to the poor. In the last 30 years, some developed countries have being working on it. For example, twenty-two of the world’s wealthiest countries have reached consensus of ‘…each giving 0.7 percent of their national income as aid to the poorest countries’ (United Nations, 2002). Obviously, that means a huge amount of money has been ploughed into infrastructure to meet the urgent needs. In addition, cancelling the debts that underprivileged countries cannot pay off is another essential part of financial aid. Many poor countries are trapped in a vicious cycle. Their governments have to repay the debts annually after gaining such a meager income, even though this money could actually be used to help their own citizens meet their basic needs (Kamble, 2012). Nevertheless, these two approaches only alleviate the symptoms of poverty, they have little effect on solving the fundamental problem. Although, developed countries can cancel the debts or enhance investments, some of these underprivileged countries will remain in poverty or rely on financial aids, unless they have a successful transformation to a self-sufficient society(Kamble, 2012).
Finally, popularizing the program of universal education should be concerned as a crucial way to deal with poverty. The government should spend more money on education, also rearrange the tuition fee to ensure the enroll rate of school-age children. As is known by everyone inadequate education and illiteracy are very common in developing countries. Without education, poor people are only