The world urban slum population
Introduction
In recent years, the world’s urban poverty growing than before, social problems also lead to further highlight. With the deepening of urban poverty, it has become unsafe hidden in social and economic life. The urban poor people have many problems not to be effectively solved; they are unemployment, social security, distribution system, social equity and social development and so on. Since the middle 20th century, along with the accelerated process of urbanization and urban population density increased, the world’s urban population increased from 30% to now about 50%, this figure will be close to 60% to 2030. The population increased has brought a significant increase in the urban poor and slum issues become increasingly prominent. Currently, nearly 10 million people in worldwide are living in urban slums. And according to the World Health Organization (WHO, 2006) more than 13 million deaths annually are due to preventable environmental causes. Among them, the most populous slum in Asia, this figure represents the world’s urban slum population of more than half of the total. In the globalization process led to poverty and social inequality, in 2030 urban slum population will grow to about 2 billion.
Slums represent the worst city in the current poverty and inequality, its emergence and existence of many factors. Among them, the war and the regional situation of unrest led to a significant increase in refugees, migrants quickly to urban migration, urban poverty and inequality were increased, living without protect, these are all the causes of slums. So this report will discuss different solutions to poverty in urban areas. Firstly the author describes the causes and effect, and then the report will talk about problems and how to solute these problems. The author will use reading much information from books, journals and internet to collect data,
What means of urban poverty? Urban poverty generally refers to individuals or families to rely on labor income and other legitimate income could not sustain their basic needs for survival in urban areas.
1. Cause and effect
1.1 causes
Uneven distribution of urban poverty groups lead to the existence and rapid expansion of the important factors. With urban poor groups, unemployment, social security, distribution system, social equity are all problems in social development and these problems did not been effectively resolved and sufficient attention. With the passage of time and social gap between rich and poor growing, global cities in the number of poor people from poverty being gradually towards the long-term poverty, social poverty in the formation of a large group.
1.2 effects
In modern society, the fastest growing community is slums, slums are growing center of crime and violence, in terms of climate change, urban poverty is one of the largest sources of pollution, in this global village, someone else’s poverty very soon become their own problems: lack of market products, illegal immigration, pollution, AIDS, other diseases, insecurity, crime, religious fanaticism, terrorism. People can no longer ignore the plight of slum dwellers. If people ignore these problems, it may be a serious social exclusion, with the attendant threat to peace and security, this is the adverse effects.
2. Problems
2.1 Refugees and migrant populations have high rates of poverty.
2.2 Poor living conditions. Slums are usually the worst health conditions in urban areas, and even waste materials pile up land (including industrial toxic waste), groups living in slums, often suffering from various diseases caused by pollution, slum women and their children the biggest victims of these problems. The streets are dirty, some times many people have to share one toilet. The dirty condition may cause diseases and especially for children, they are easier to get ill (Practical Action, 2008).
2.3 Basic life, health and employment are not protected. One of the main urban underemployment in recent years, some countries and regions due to growing poverty and political instability and war continued, leading to a large number of refugees fleeing their homes to escape war and poverty and to change part of a influx of relatively well-developed and there is no war in the city.
2.4 Urban poverty increased and serious underemployments lead to all kinds of crime. Modern society, the work requires not only the employed have a higher level of scientific and cultural knowledge, while the extensive application of science and technology result in decreased employment. Thus, many cities people who are low education and older age were significantly reduced employment opportunities, making the city are suffering from the rapid expansion of vulnerable groups, vulnerable groups in cities grow crimes, including violent crime is more prominent.
2.5 Urban poor and disadvantaged groups live in the bottom of society, social status is “low” and even some of the extreme poor people have not basic social security benefits.
3. Solutions
3.1 Through legislation to clear the main responsibility of the parties to the social security. Through the legislature to develop the appropriate social security laws and regulations, they clearly defined responsibilities of the principal parties to the social security.
3.2 Establish effective social security system.
Related departments need to further improve the urban minimum living security system. Workers not only should have a minimum wage, but also establish an effective system of Family Planning survey, the conditions to help the inhabitants of current income and family status of assets and other income combined, clear procedures for poor residents to apply for assistance, protect the rights of poor residents.
3.3 The establishment of urban public housing policy as soon as possible. Poor living conditions for the poor, the Government should build public housing, to help poor people improve their living conditions. Currently low-rent housing policy introduced in some cities and their integration into the social assistance system. The system should be firmly follow the fair, the principle of open, unified per capita housing area, and ensure that housing conditions were extremely difficult for low-income residents have access to limited housing support.
3.4 The establishment of poor medical assistance policy. The health care of poor people is an increasingly prominent social problems, disease caused poor people worsened the living conditions and even fall into despair. Therefore, people need to establish a poverty-oriented medical assistance system, the system helps relieve the pressure on poor people’s lives, it is also social development and progress and an important part of social equity. Of course, this system reduces the medical burden of the poor people, but not free.
3.5 Improve people’s education level, because of financial or personal problems, lots of young people have no chance to gain better education. Consequently, with the purpose of guarantee citizens’ security, related organizations can help some poor students to entry universities and give them more opportunities. For instance, the organizations can provide funding to students, or build a committee to collect funds from society; they can also consulate with universities to reduce the tuition fee or provide jobs to students. From these solutions, it is not only benefit for students, but also for whole education system.
3.6 Try to change the appalling living conditions; people should not dispose sewage in anywhere. People should reduce garbage and collect all rubbish to a special place, please do not thrown away or burning rubbish. People can create a good living space.
3.7 Urban poverty lead to all kinds of crime, the best ways to solute this problem, maybe community help poor people to study different kinds of vocational education and improve the quality of the poor people; they also can improve basic education policy and try to make more people to go to school; society can strengthen ethics and law education so that people understand not to do illegal things; community can establish a social security system, it maybe eliminate the poor people’s worried, and they also need to strengthen external management of the domicile population.
Conclusion
In conclusion, this report talk about urban poverty and it impacts our world in different aspects, there are many problems, and people need to give the suggestions to solute these problems. Overall, poverty is a serious instability factors, because this is a very difficult question, we need more concerned about this problem so that more people and community groups aware of the seriousness, to get more help, the agency can try to solve the problem within the maximum range.
Reference
E. Moreno (2003) Slums of the World: The face of urban poverty in the new millennium?
Giusti de Perez, R. & Perez, R. (2008) Analyzing Urban Poverty: GIS for the Developing World. http://gis.esri.com/esripress/shared/images/139/URBAN_ch01.pdf
Masika, R., de Haan, A. & Baden, S. (1997) Urbanization and urban poverty: a gender analysis. BRIDGE, Report No 54. http://www.bridge.ids.ac.uk/reports/re54.pdf
Perlman, J., Hopkins, E. & Jonsson, A. (1998) Urban solutions at the poverty/environment intersection. http://www.megacitiesproject.org/publications_pdf_mcp01solutions.pdf
Practical Action (2008) Urban Poverty. http://practicalaction.org/shelter/urbanpoverty_background
S. Li (2007) Unemployment, Inequality and Poverty in Urban China Taylor & Francis; 1 edition
