World Hunger: Real Serious Problem

Many people disagree on whether world hunger is a major issue or not. According to the World Bank, more than one quarter of the world's population lives in poverty. That is one billion people of the world's population that are extremely poor. Almost half of the world's population, three billion people, live on less than $2.50 a day, while the rest are living on $140 a day. This is in no way fair nor humane. According to UNICEF, one billion children around the world live in poverty, and 22,000 children die each day due to it. If this is not a problem, what is? World hunger is a major problem around the world, and will continue to be a major problem until something is done to prevent it. Poverty is one of the leading causes of world hunger. While not every poor person is hungry, almost all hungry people are poor. Poverty is an increasing problem, especially globally. This is due to the rise in food prices, according to the United Nations reports. Many people live with hunger because they do not have enough money to buy the food they need, or to buy farming supplies to grow their own food (The Hunger Project). Them not being able to purchase or grow their own food makes it more likely that they will be hungry, adding to the number of people who are hungry around the world. Poverty has been a growing problem , which causes world hunger to be a growing problem. World hunger has been a growing problem for a long time, and still is. From 1985-1992, the number of Americans suffering from hunger rose from 20 million to 30 million (Wright 1). That is 10 million more people suffering from hunger in just seven years. As of today, the number of Americans suffering from hunger is 41 million. That is 21 million more people in 26 years. While that is a smaller growth, it is still a growth, which means that is is still a problem. The number of Americans suffering from hunger is growing, and will continue to grow until the government takes initiative to overcome the problem. The United States had been trying to make gains in reversing hunger and malnutrition since 1970, through federal food programs (Wright 1). Over the 48 years that they have been trying to change things, not much has changed. Their efforts have not gone unnoticed, but they also have not been enough to stop the growth nor lower the number of people in America suffering from hunger. America is not the only country who contributes to the total number of people who suffer from hunger around the world. Many other countries have people suffering of hunger as well. Asia has the most people suffering from hunger. It makes up two thirds of the total number of people suffering from hunger in the world. China and India are the most populated countries in the world. This greatly contributes to them being the two most hungry countries in the world. During the years of 1958-1962 an estimated 15 to 30 million people died due to starvation (Wright 17). This is no minor issue. More than 15 million people died in just four years. That is about 10,300 people dying a day, all caused by the same issue. So much could be done to prevent this from being the case. As of today 526 million people in Asia are undernourished (Pandey). While this number has gone down since 1990, it is nowhere near as low as it should be. The problem is very large and needs to be assessed . The more people that die, the less doctors and lawyers we have in the world. The more that children are hungry, the less work they do. Hunger leads to death and causes weakness in the youth. Children who are hungry are proven to do worse in school than children who are not. Many children in schools may not show that they are hungry because it is a silent problem (Shapiro 81). Most teachers and school administrators may think that students do not know the material, or they do not apply themselves. In reality, the students cannot focus on their work because all they can focus on is the noise their stomachs are making, and the pounding headache they have from not eating anything since the day before, at school. About 5.5 million children are underfed (Shapiro 81). That is 5.5 million children around the world who most likely only get fed when they are at school. This means that when children go home during weekends, breaks, and other days which could pop us such as snow days, they do not get fed, and when they get back to school the food that they get may not even fill them up--leaving them to go the rest of the day, until the next day at school, hungry. They live meal to meal. Nothing they have goes to waste. Some kids even save their meals from school to take home to be sure they have something to eat for dinner, or for their little siblings who do not go to school yet. Many children are set up to live like this because of what is going on with their parents. There are many different reasons for them being in this predicament. Many parents may be undocumented, or incarcerated. These families and children would most likely be minorities. Minorities account for majority of the people who are malnourished around the world. This is due to many different reasons. Some being unemployment, low wages, high incarceration rates, and lack of healthy, affordable food (Cooper). Minorities are not able to get money without a job, which causes them to not be able to afford food to put on the table. It is the butterfly effect. It has become an endless cycle. The parents get into situations that lead the children into getting into some of the same situations. If the parent is not making enough money to provide for the children, the children try their best to fend of themselves. This leads the children to stealing and getting into trouble themselves. That leaves them with a criminal record that will one day make it hard for them to get a job and provide for their family, which then has their kids doing the same thing they were doing, all because they are hungry and do not have anything to eat. This is a horrible problem. Children going down the same paths as their parens will have the hunger rates, if not raising, staying stagnant. Which mens it is not getting any better than it already is. Leaving the world, once again, with a problem that still needs to be addressed. The number of African Americans suffering from malnourishment is 10 million. The number of Latinos suffering from malnourishment is an astonishing 13 million (USDA). That is an overall 23 million people suffering from hunger within only two race groups. The world should be disappointed in this number. There is no reason for it to be this high. Things have been put into place to lower these numbers, but whether they really work is the question. Many governments around the world have tried numerous times, with numerous different tactics, to make it so that no one goes hungry. They have put multiple forms of aid in place to assist the people of their countries, some being food pantries, food donations, and even birth control education. The food pantries and donations are there to help people get the nutritious food they need at little or no cost. This is a minor fix to a major problem. The food donations and pantries will never be enough. They may feed a few families, and lower the number of people who are hungry by a few thousand, but that will never make a dent in the millions of people around the world who are still starving to death because they do not have access to the food they need. Some countries offer birth control education as well. This is to prevent the population from growing, which overall stops the growth of people who suffer from hunger. While it is a good effort and idea, people may not have the money and resources to purchase the birth control they need. Birth control can be expensive for people to purchase. The already do not have enough money for food, so they definitely do not have enough money for birth control. This means that people will continue to have children, and the population will still grow as well as the number of people suffering from hunger. Leaving the world with a seemingly endless problem. All in all world hunger is a very real, and very serious problem. Poverty is one of the main causes of it. More than one billion people suffer from hunger. World hunger affects everyone slightly different, but overall the same, children who suffer from hunger tend to do worse in school, and pay attention less. Adults who suffer from hunger tend to have to worry about their children getting the necessary food they need to survive. Minorities usually suffer the most from hunger, but it is still a major problem among everyone. There have been things put in place to reverse or stall world hunger but not many of them actually worked. The ones that did work did not help very much. More things need to be done to prevent the growth of world hunger. If nothing is done, world hunger will continue to be one of the largest problems the world faces today.

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