Poverty Case

The text in Section A focus on poverty.

1. Write a summary of What is Poverty?

The text is called "What is Poverty?" an article written by Theodore Dalrymple, www.city-journal.org. It is about a doctor from England and some of the colleagues from poor industrial countries, they discuss what poverty is and they are looking after the big differences between the modern England and developing countries, culture and their way to live. In first place the new doctors from countries like the Philippines and India, they are fascinated by England and its culture. It all looks perfect in the first two till three weeks, but then they realize that even if they come from a land full of illness, poverty and disease they would rather live back there than live in England. People in England do not have the same community as in their home country. Even if England does not suffer from material poverty, they said that England suffers from the worst kind of poverty and that is poverty of soul.

2. Give an outline of the various attitudes to poverty in the four texts.

There are a lot of different attitudes towards poverty in the texts. The first text describes two kinds of poverty: material poverty and poverty of soul. It is made clearly that poverty of soul is so much worse than material poverty. In the second text they are focusing on child poverty and how families in Britain are considered poor when they have to struggle to make things work out. They do not have enough money for the children to go for school trips, get new school uniforms or even a ticket to the cinema. The third text is about how poverty is defined in the United States. Many of the American people, who are considered poor, they do have enough food, so they can eat every day, TV's, a car and pretty much what is necessary in their life. They are only considered poor because they are not as rich as the average American who has more than what is necessary. The last text focuses on the definition of being extremely poor, that means no food, no schools, no hospitals and so on. So the rich get richer and the poor once just get poorer.

3. Comment on the following statement: "... the worst poverty is in England - and it is not material poverty but poverty of soul."

The statement really means that poverty of soul is much worse than material poverty. In the text it is shown how Britain seems like the perfect country, because of all the wealth and privileges the British people have. But if you look further into the society, there is so much emptiness inside everyone. People are ungrateful for everything and do not enjoy the small things in life. People have so many material things, that they do not have any goals and wishes anymore. They do not have to fight for anything because they