IB Geography
Origins and Sources of Disparity
Module as Described in the IB Syllabus: Explain disparities and inequities that occur within countries resulting from ethnicity, residence, parental education, income, employment (formal and informal), and land ownership
Activity 2 - Causes & Effects of Poverty
Why some countries are rich and others are poor?
Why we have disparity - the global timeline
I selected this video because I feel it will be a great tool to use. To begin with it is a great visual, the entire video is organized - countries and continents are all color coded and it is easy to follow the growth or movement. This grouping also makes it easy to identify patters.
In addition, the video goes back and analyses history. It is important to understand how and why countries are where they are now and this video helps me do just that. It looks at why some countries managed to develop and why otheres didnt.
Some of these reasons include colonization and slavery for example.
Hans Roslings Video is a wonderful revision guide.
My selection of this video is based on its very intruging and thought provoking. It is also an adition on the first video I was on Global Wealth Disparities. The video serves to look at the right things that developed nations are doing that allow them to make such progress and be succesful.
1. Institutions - these include police. Good instiutions help a country prosper, but if the instiutions arent in order, corruption can take place. It has positive correlation to poverty.
2. Culture & Religion - The less people believe, the richer they tend to be. Rich countries do not have a strong religous base
3. Geography - Poor countries are generally in tropical regions, and the soil tends to not be so great, and agriculture cannot prosper as well as it could.
Activity 1 - Relevant Poverty Terms
Poverty: Defined as the state of one who lacks a usual or socially acceptable amount of money or material possessions”
The International Poverty Line: The poverty line states that those living under $1.25-a-day day is indeed considered poor, but those earning slightly above $1.30 or $1.45 per day are not counted as poor.
Absolute poverty: Not consuming or having enough for a minimum standard of living (The minimun is $1.25). These include the most basic needs (food, health care, shelter)
Relative poverty: Feeling of Poverty relative to the wealth of those round you. It is somewhat pyschological. For example, The United Nation’s Human Development Index is a good example since it's calculated with three values: income, life expectancy and literacy.
Individual poverty: Non-existent legal employment means more risks and fewer rights for average workers. Usually they won’t be covered for work-related accidents, no health care or pension plan, no contract, no protection against any abuse at work: harassment, violence, unpaid overtime or simple exploitation.
Institutional poverty: Government is unable to get citizens and private companies to pay their taxes. A poverty cycle is created and national institutions constantly lack finances. This leads to public servants being underpaid, and from here the qualified ones look elsewhere from employment. A lot more corruption is created and no control over the risk of monopolies or even violence.
Poverty Trap : is "any self-reinforcing mechanism which causes poverty to persist.If it persists from generation to generation, the trap begins to reinforce itself if steps are not taken to break the cycle.
The Poverty Organization provides a look at poverty in different countries and examines the causes & effects. In groups we examined one country in different continents, and created a brief presentation as well as an overview with the information.
Please click on any one of the different buttons labelled by their countries, to veiw an in depth analyisis of the causes of poverty.
Activity 4 - Video Critiques
There are many causes and effects related to Poverty.. There are multipe links to the primary resources on poverty below. Click on them to view them directly as presented by Poverties. Org.
Activity 3 - Poverty around the world
The causes of economic equality
The article "The causes of economic equality" is linked. Please click on the paper clip to view the original article
I selected this article because its well organized, and I feel it will be a good review tool. I understood the information provided & it provided some good statistics and data charts too.