Social conflict theory

Published: 2018-08-02 08:04:32
1068 words
4 pages
9 min to read
Boston College
Type of paper: 

Third world countries problems

 For many years, poverty has been a common problem in the society. Many people in the current world especially those in the third world countries re the victims of poverty. These are people living below the poverty line and cannot afford the basic needs in life such as food, clothing, education and medication.  According to the statistics,  close to 700 million individuals are living in poverty in the reports that were released in 2012.  Individuals living in poverty face several challenges ranging from poor living conditions to high mortality rate due to the lack of sufficient hygiene.  Despite the efforts to eradicate poverty from the society, many people do not have hope if they can ever live a poverty-free life.  The main aim   of this paper is to address the problem of poverty in relation to the conflict theory. According to this theory, the tensions and the conflict always arise when  there is unequal distribution of resources and power in the society.  As a result, this becomes the main facilitator for the change in the social structure of the society. The conflict theory can be use to explain how individuals as well as the society have contributed to the problem of poverty. 

 It is believed that the causes of poverty are within the society that we live. These causes include lack of employment, overpopulation, high rate of divorce and natural calamities. However, the causes can be divided into both individual level and the societal level.  Individuals are perpetuating poverty in the society in their way, for instance through overpopulation.  It is the responsibility of an individual to decide on the number of children they can have, and maintain their needs.  This is the reason the programs have been implemented guiding people on the use of family planning. In this case, it is the responsibility of an individual to ensure they have taken sufficient precaution by using family planning to avoid having a large size. However, in developing countries, this is one of the aspects that has been ignored. People have to be pushed to use family planning (Jensen, 2009). As a result, poor people with low income end up having children they cannot sustain their basic needs.  In addition, the increasing population deprive the society from the basic needs  and this is the reason people in poverty do not have  the ability to access all the necessary resources and this is the reason many people end up living in poverty is as a result of the lack of the necessary resources. 

How does social causation theory explain the main causes of poverty?

Similarly, the society has also contributed to poverty in some ways.   One of the ways that the society ways that the society is contributing to poverty is a lack of support to the less fortunate  (Dieterlen, 2015).  This is because the  rich people in the society take all the powers in the society  as they humiliate those that are less fortunate. Let’s take an example of the people living on streets especially young children. In most cases, these are the children whose parents are the victims of HIV/AIDS or they do not have families.  The rich in the society are mean  and greedy to the extent that they do not give a chance people living in poverty to access any resources.  As the society, we should implement programs to help these children by making sure they are out of the streets. These programs should be implemented with the aim of helping the children to access the most basic life requirement, and that is education. Giving education to these children is the best way of eliminating from the society (Dieterlen, 2015). This is because the children will be able to live stable in the future, acquire jobs and earn a good living. However, it is sad that the society has neglected the children, and no one pays any attention, and they end up living on streets the rest of their lives exposing them to poverty the rest of their lives.  Additionally, the society should also implement programs that deal with the cases of orphaned children (Abramsky, 2013). These programs should be effective in such a way that they should accommodate these children in their homes to avoid the cases of street people. 

 The significance of innovation has highly been recognized when it comes to dealing with poverty.   One of the primary societal change that must be implemented by the society is by having different innovations that will increase the production of food, healthcare programs, and the poverty eradication programs .  For instance, the society should come up with the initiative of educating individuals on how they should be innovative to earn an extra coin so that they cannot live in poverty.   The programs should also come up with employment schemes to help these individuals be able to sustain themselves.  Further, another societal change that can be implemented is introducing programs that should educate individuals in the society about the dangers of HIV/AIDS. Using these programs, it will be possible to warn people on the importance of taking care of themselves to avoid the increase in the spread of HIV/AIDS (Dieterlen, 2015).

 Empowerment is also a societal change that people must be aware. By being empowered implies that these individuals have the capacity to take care of themselves financially. Therefore, the society should come up with programs to empower the people living below the poverty line. Using this strategy, it will be easy to deal and control the problem of poverty in the society.  In conclusion, poverty has been a major problem over the past decades. Unsuccessful efforts have been implemented to eradicate poverty for many years (Abramsky, 2013). Thus, it is the role of the society and the individual to implement the strategic society changes that will eliminate the problem of poverty at large.


Abramsky, S. (2013). The American Way of Poverty: How the Other Half Still Lives. New York: Nation Books.

Dieterlen, P. (2015). Poverty: A Philosophical Approach. New York: Rodopi.

Jensen, E. (2009). Teaching with Poverty in Mind: What Being Poor Does to Kids' Brains and what Schools Can Do about it. New York: ASCD.






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