Poverty is bad for your health
14th October 2008
Aside from the obvious problems with diet and health care, poverty is bad for your health.
Research shows that the greater the disparity between the rich and poor, the greater the disparity between life expectancy when other factors have been taken into account. The belief is that there is a pyschological burden in being very poor when there are very rich people around.
Apparently beauty can be beneficial to health. The rich can afford to surround themselve with beautiful objects but the poor must live in squalor. When they fall ill, their surroundings do not help them recover.
The rich can select their environment and insure that nothing noxious occurs there. The poor find themselves living next to factory smoke stacks, landfills, sewage plants, etc. These are bound to be bad for their health.
With all of this, the poor serve as a breeding ground for illness that may leap to more affluent populations. Without health insurance, they fill emergency rooms, increasing the burdent on an already collapsing health care system in our country.
And finally, when hope is gone and desparation the normal emotion, the poor also become a breeding ground for violence, crime, terrorism and revolution.
It is in the best self interest of us all to do what we can to allievate poverty least it bring down our civilization around our ears.