Blog #13 How the poor cope with crisis

In this article, it touches on how lower income people and families cope and deal with crisis, or higher food and fuel prices as an example. It talks about the global financial crisis that struck in 2008, and how 3,000 people in 17 different countries had to cope with these deficits.  According to some of the interviewees in the study, families were forced to skip medical treatment and sold some of their assets, while some people turned to prostitution or drugs and slipped even lower into poverty.  Women were also hit hard as they had to continue to carry the burden of house work while still working long hours.  This article focuses a lot on a study called, “Living Through Crises” and gets a lot of it’s information from this study.  They conducted interviews and found a lot of similarities from the people who they interviewed.  This study also found that the informal safety net, such as, neighbors, community groups, families and friends play an important role.  They found it obvious that there was a need for “more generous social protection systems.”, as poor people were better protected compared to other countries.

This article had some strong points, one being the photo at the top, which caught my attention from the very beginning and made me want to continue to read and find out more about this photo.  It provides a lot of relative and important information involving the study that it speaks about, “Living Through Crises.”  It provides quotes from interviewees and quotes from the study itself.  It concludes with a long quote from one of the study’s editors, Naomi Hossein and this is a strong way to conclude an article.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/poverty-matters/2012/apr/18/how-poor-cope-with-crisis