Economic Hardships and its Disastrous Effects‼️‼️

There was a young child back in the days. Every early morning, the young boy of about ten years, enters the bushy farmlands with two other little siblings of his, to look for dried palm fruit under the palm tree, they will then break it, remove the palm kernel, eating it with the little fried garri they have at home. That may be the only food they will consume for the whole of that day.

In another place, a young child is seen wandering at a refuse dump, looking for aluminium cans, plastic bottles and any other iron material, that could be sold as scrap in order to have just one meal for the day.

These two scenarios painted above are just the realities of life for many families, people.and children. We can see these happening on the streets and location that we live and we would like what is the problem? Both explains the high level of economic difficulties that permeate the society we live.

What is Economic difficulty or hardship?

Broadly speaking, it is a condition usually experienced by families, individuals or the society at large, in which they suffer economic difficulties. These economic difficulties includes but not limited to abject poverty. A situation where a person or family is unable to have access to basic necessities of life. These includes things like food, shelter, clothing, healthcare and education.

These problem comes as a result of high inflation, unemployment, constant increase in cost of living, low salaries, huge debt incured, unforseen occurrences like natural disasters, economic recessions, war and even instability in the political realm.

When these conditions happen on a broader scale, like a country, it has a multiplier effect on the individual families and people living in them.

People can no longer afford basic life necessities, reduce the level of their expenditures and becomes almost wholly dependent on loans and assistance coming from people which puts them in perpetual debt.

Effects of economic hardship

There are so many resultant effects of economic hardships to individuals, families and the nation. These are but not limited to:-

1. People suffer in abject poverty and hunger. Individuals and families are unable to provide basic necessities for their families and themselves.

2. It leads to heavy unemployment. When employers finds it difficult to break even, they resort to cutting down on jobs which leads to job loss by individuals and family breadwinners. This leads to serious financial strain and instability.

3. When there is no money, people and families cannot take care of there health, leading to rise in mortality rates and illness.

4. Once economic hardship strikes, there is every tendency that children from such families are withdrawn from schools, limiting there level of education which affects them in the future and limits their opportunities in life.

5. Mental Stress: This condition leads to mental and financial strain which eventual leads to depression, excessive family conflict and breakdown and sometimes suicidal thoughts.

6. Increase in crime rate can also be attributed to economic hardship. Many would be willing to even kill their fellow man just for a token.

From the societal angle, it has never been good too. Economic hardship leads to increase in crime rates. Many engage in criminal activities just to make ends meet.

This level of hardship can lead to civil unrest because at a point the citizenry may not be able to bear it. It can also lead to civil wars.

This situation helps to widen the gap between the rich and poor thereby causing serious economic inequalities.

Many people.will start looking for greener pastures outside the country leading to brain drain and loss of experts within the country. This have a ripple effect on major sectors in the country.

What are the solutions to this problem?

It is a bit of an irony that while so many developmental strides have been achieved in the food sector to grow more food, the higher the rate of people who go hungry everyday. It definitely seems nothing much is being done to alleviate the sufferings of many people.

What the government can do

Granted, humans can never absolutely solve the problems resulting from economic hardship due to our selfish and egocentric tendencies. Just as many people are suffering, some are profiting from it. Hence making it impossible for humans to totally eradicate it.

Notwithstanding, they can still help to ease off the problem a little. What are some of these steps?

It rest on the government of the day to help alleviate peoples suffering to an extent. This they can do through there policies and interventions.

They need to be the primary sources of investment, creating job opportunities for people and providing the needed infrastructure on which these investment will thrive.

The government of the day can provide food aids, support programs and even financial assistance for the worst hit.

Part of the infrastructure provision includes building and equipping hospitals, thus reducing or subsidizing cost of healthcare for the masses.

In a country where everyone is the boss and no price control mechanism, there is always a high rate of inflation. Hence the government should establish a body responsible for controlling the prices of basic life necessities and commodities.

The government should help small scale business with what they need to sustain and keep their businesses alive. This is done via loan and grant provisions as well as tax relief.

Responsibilities on the part of individuals and communities

Laziness can never help to solve this problem. So individuals and the society needs to be industrious and ready to adapt to changes. How?

There should be readiness on the part of people to learn new and sought for skills because of the ever-changing labour market.

There is no one way to making money, hence business owners should become more innovative as they explore other ways of generating income.

There should be formation of small groups known as cooperatives, savings project,, where the members can assist each other to grow.

There is need to educate people to make savings, budget and effectively manage their debt.

These are just some off the things that can be done to help reduce the level of poverty and economic difficulty experienced by majority of people worldwide, more especially in third word countries.