What is the Cycle of Poverty?

The cycle of poverty has been described as a phenomenon where poor families become trapped in poverty for generations. Because they have no or limited access to critical resources, such as education and financial services, subsequent generations are also impoverished.

Due to the many root causes of poverty and the complexity with how poverty is measured and defined (read this article on absolute versus relative poverty), there are multiple cycles of poverty—based on, among other things, economic, social, spiritual and geographical factors. Many cycles overlap or perpetuate new cycles and therefore any attempt to depict the cycle of poverty will be far more simplistic than realistic.

A key goal of the Sea to Sea project is, through its partners, to fund new and existing poverty-reduction initiatives that inject positive change into a poverty cycle with the intent of breaking the cycle for the individual, family or community benefiting from that initiative.

For instance, Figure 1.0 below shows—in very simplistic terms—how a cycle of poverty related to hunger keeps a person or household poor in one of the world's developing countries.

Figures 1.1 and 1.2 show examples of how to break this cycle of poverty.

In most cases, the cycle of poverty is systemic in nature, meaning action needs to be taken to combat the root causes of poverty. For instance, the reduction or cancellation of the national debt for the world's poorest countries will have a potentially dramatic effect on those nations' economies. They can, in turn, spend money on government-funded education for instance, rather than interest payments on a debt they will ultimately never repay.

Also, one cycle of poverty can expand or develop into another. A country's slow economy, and consequently a family's low income, not only means a lack of access to food and safe water (Fig. 1.0), but also means limited or no funds for sending their children to school (Fig. 2.0).

To break this cycle of poverty, Sea to Sea partners will, for example, work with farmers to teach them new agriculture techniques (Fig. 2.1). At the same time, they can work within families and communities to set up micro-credit loans (Fig. 1.1), offer training on civil rights and human rights, educate leaders to ensure programs are meeting the physical and spiritual needs of those in poverty, and more.