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Vicious Cycle of Poverty

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Vicious cycle of poverty: What can be done about it?
Philosopher George Farquhar once said, “There’s no scandal like rags, nor any crime so shameful as poverty.” Oftentimes, scandals fade away with the passage of time, but not poverty. Poverty devastates its victims, and oftentimes it transmits its destruction onto their children in a vicious cycle, continuing its effect through generations. Being trapped in poverty is like getting sucked in a dark hole, where one can hardly see the bottom. With the light at the end of the tunnel so bleak for so many poor Ethiopians, I often ask myself what can be done to stop the cycle.
I come from a country, Ethiopia, where poverty is rampant, and the country still suffers from preventable diseases and unnecessary deaths. Ironically, it’s not due to the lack of natural resources that the country is in such a shocking mess – this is the country which is still referred to as “the water tower of Africa” and which once used to go by the name “the breadbasket of Africa”. The country is naturally rich but physically poor. How can a country be both rich and poor at the same time? This happens when there is lack of accountability and good governance of natural and monetary resources.
There are no easy steps that one can follow to tackle and break the vicious cycle of poverty. But looking closely into the lives of many school-age children in Ethiopia in my student life, I have come to understand that one of the many causes of such a cyclic poverty is transitory social disadvantages. By this I mean that if their parents are trapped in poverty, most of the children who come from low-income families are also at a disadvantage since school. I remember some of the classmates I had in my school years who came from such a family background. Often, they come to school feeling ravenous and with low self-esteem. They had to compete with other

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