It is believed that poverty and poor health are correlated, especially in developing countries. Due to various circumstances, marginalized social groups are affected by unhygienic living conditions, thus allowing infections to spread. Moreover, poor people are often stripped of the information or availability of healthcare facilities that would provide proper care to prevent or treat any illness. A usual line of reasoning would be that low income is the main cause of health-related problems among vulnerable individuals. A low standard of living creates conditions that facilitate the spreading of different diseases and prevents underprivileged groups from receiving sufficient access to treatment or prevention methods. In short, poverty plays a significant role in developing harmful conditions that enable viruses to spread.
Several researchers see strong evidence that higher income is deeply connected with better health. There are some factors that influence health, which poor people lack, and they are food, clean water, hygiene, and vaccinations. The absence of those elements weakens immunity, allowing infectious diseases like HIV, tuberculosis to kill people. For example, according to Mendenhall, Kohrt, Norris, Ndetei, and Prabhakaran (2017), about 22-30% of the low-income population in South Africa suffers from HIV. In comparison, tuberculosis is present among 1–5.5% of the low-income population (Mendenhall et al., 2017). Therefore, poverty contributes to the spreading of infectious diseases.
Moreover, aside from infectious diseases, underprivileged people also suffer from non-communicable diseases that are mostly related to an inadequate diet. Malnutrition is a leading reason for the fragile immune system; that is why, according to Marquis et al. (2015), a microcredit program was integrated in Ghana. It was supposed to incorporate nutrition education in order to influence the situation on children’s starvation. A small but significant protective effect on childhood malnutrition was identified; however, “it could not overcome an overall reduction in child weight and BMI due to a prevailing drought” (Marquis et al., 2015, p. 342).
In addition, poor diet causes diabetes and, as reported by Mendenhall et al., diabetes is present among 4.8-10% of the low-income urban population in South Africa (Mendenhall et al., 2017). As with any other non-communicable disease, it has risk factors that lead to the rise of comorbidities, especially among poor, marginalized groups on a global scale.
Regarding mental illnesses, it cannot be denied that poverty greatly impacts the mental state. The research conducted by Ljungqvist et al. (2016) investigates potential relationships between symptoms and the level of income of those who live with serious mental illnesses in Sweden. The age of the research participants varied between 18 and 65. At some point, therapists diagnosed all of them as having a severe mental disorder, including schizophrenia, bipolar and anxiety disorder, depression, or neuropsychiatric syndromes like autism spectrum disorders. The other common trait among participants was their low income.
As the study progressed, the researchers found out that “temporary financial improvements do not constitute a general solution for problems confronted by mentally ill persons but can for some of them offer a starting point for reintroducing themselves into social contexts and wider fields of action, which will, in turn, affect their mental state” (Ljungqvist et al., 2016, p. 848). Such results that the relationship between mental health and poverty is, in fact, straightforward.
In conclusion, it would appear that poverty is much more than just money deprivation. In regards to health, it is also a capability deprivation. Due to the lack of opportunities to access proper healthcare, those who are affected by poverty are most likely to be subject to different diseases as well. Poverty, being both a cause and a result of health problems, creates a vicious circle. Nevertheless, it is possible to break the cycle with the help of volunteer work, financial help, and education.
References
Ljungqvist, I., Topor, A., Forssell, H., Svensson, I., & Davidson, L. (2016). Money and mental illness: A study of the relationship between poverty and serious psychological problems. Community mental health journal, 52(7), 842-850.
Marquis, G. S., Colecraft, E. K., Sakyi-Dawson, O., Lartey, A., Ahunu, B. K., Birks, K. A., Huff-Lonergan, E. (2015). An integrated microcredit, entrepreneurial training, and nutrition education intervention is associated with better growth among preschool-aged children in rural Ghana. The Journal of nutrition, 145(2), 335-343.
Mendenhall, E., Kohrt, B. A., Norris, S. A., Ndetei, D., & Prabhakaran, D. (2017). Non-communicable disease syndemics: poverty, depression, and diabetes among low-income populations. The Lancet, 389(10072), 951-963.