Poverty is Everyone's Problem

The Finnish Ministry of Social Affairs and Health just estimated that the budget cuts made by our current government threaten to increase childhood poverty by 3 percent, which would mean plunging 31,000 children under the poverty line in our little country. When it comes to young adults (also known as students), around one-third of them are considered to be "at risk" of poverty, with 19% of higher education students reporting financial problems and uncertainty and 24% of UAS (Universities of Applied Sciences) students saying the same.

While our lawmakers are trying to pressure them to finish their studies more quickly, our kids are struggling under the constant fear of running out of food, with many unable to purchase such luxuries as prescribed medication. This leads to ever-worsening physical and mental health problems and prolonged sick leave. For many of them, those same problems will carry on after graduation, leading to shortened careers - and too often, shortened lives.

It's not just the students either. While the total number of low-income residents in Finland has remained relatively stable, the overall number of people living in prolonged poverty has doubled in the last 20 years. This type of chronic poverty is especially problematic, as it creates and deepens many kinds of spiralling social and health-related problems, which in turn makes it even harder for them to become employed.

It's almost as if the poor will not become any less so if we take whatever little they have left.

Those problems are then again passed on to the next generation: Recent study shows that children who come from low-income households not only have a significantly higher chance of becoming low-income adults themselves, but are twice as likely to die under the age of 30 compared to those who come from a high income family.

The more we have poor people, the more they burden our social and healthcare system which is already creaking at the seams. The less healthy our people are, the less they will study, work, and live. The more pronounced our social inequalities, the less of a functioning society we become.

And then there's the human aspect as well.