Government, Poverty Reduction, and Inequality

GOVERNMENT, POVERTY REDUCTION, AND INEQUALITY
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Government, Poverty Reduction, and Inequality
Introduction
Since the 1990s, the world has made great strides in helping to fight and reduce poverty rates. According to Peer (2021), in 1990, close to 36% of the world’s population lived in extreme poverty. Today, this percentage has reduced to about 9.2% of the world’s population. The change and drop in the percentage have resulted from the national, regional, and global initiatives that have helped drive people out of extreme poverty. While trying to perceive the extent to which poverty continues to ravage society, people often consider material resources. However, poverty transcends many other factors that also help showcase the extent to which poverty continues to become a menace in the world. These other factors include elements like the lack of education, sanitation, healthcare, and even healthcare. Studies to understand and reduce poverty are thus pivotal in helping ensure progress in society. Poverty and inequality are closely related terms, even though they happen to mean different things. Today, as the world is making great strides on different fronts, a significant percentage is left behind. In some parts of the world, women are still being considered inferior to men. In others, race and ethnicity happen to interfere with a people’s progress in life greatly. Other elements of inequality like socioeconomic status and access to technology happen to drive a wedge in the world today as some parts are said to remain a great distance behind while assessing the Sustainable Development goals of 2030 (UN, 4, 2020). The need to help bridge the gap between the various sections of societies in the world is indeed dire. As the UN (2020) indicates, solving inequality and poverty is tied to other factors like migration and the climate crisis. The governments are quite crucial in any move to help drive down poverty and ensure that inequality is also reduced. Provided herein is a discussion of how governments can play an integral role in fighting poverty and reducing inequality in the world through policy development and adoption to help protect the most vulnerable in society and ensure the world progresses at a more balanced rate.
Why Adopt Policies to Address Poverty and Inequality
It is incredibly difficult to separate poverty and inequality. Poverty begets inequality, and inequality, in the end, begets poverty. Therefore, there is a need to develop policies that will help eliminate both elements to help provide a balance in the progress the society makes. First, before delving deeper and discussing the governments’ need to adopt policies to reduce poverty and inequality, there is a need to consider the position of the poor and marginalised in policy-making. According to Claeys (125, 2001), the poor happen to be greatly marginalised when it comes to policy-making. She notes that through social exclusion, the poor happen to face challenges when they seek participation in policy-making. Therefore, in the end, policy-making ends up unequally sidelining the poor while in favour of the ones who are well off. There is a need for governments to e...