Poverty and youth unemployment as a challenge faced by the developing countries
Introduction:
Sustainability emerged as a concept in the 20th century, it rapidly grabbed attention of the world discussing topics like environmental issues, economy and global politics. However, there are some challenges that are faced by the developing countries when implementing it to any country (Hasnan, 2016). The World Commission on Environment and Development defines sustainable development as “a development which meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (as cited in Chan, Darko, Olanipekun & Ameyaw, 2018). Researches have proved that sustainability has been quite successful in few countries and these countries are now the known as emerging countries in the world. However, there are few research evidences that shows sustainability hasn’t been quite successful in the developing countries. The implementation of the sustainability practices hasn’t curbed the grave issues like unemployment, poverty and environmental degradation (Ramos-Meja, Franco-Garcia & Jauregui-Becker, 2018). This essay will point out the poverty and youth unemployment as a challenge faced by the developing countries after implementing the sustainability exercises. The essay will also discuss how these issues are persistent in the developing countries as well as counter arguments to the main idea.
It is difficult for the developing countries to decrease poverty in spite of implementing sustainability measures. Poverty in the developing countries has been persistent since the start, the people living in lower class are mainly dependent on the natural resources in the developing countries. According to Messerli, Murniningtyas, Eloundou-Enyegue, Foli, Furman, Glassman & Richardson (2019). Moreover, these resources are scarce in the countries due to which these individuals are unable to get their hands on these resources. The reason why the poor aren’t able to get what they want is because of the upper hand of the capitalist individuals residing in the country. This is why the sustainability measures taken by the government weren’t fruitful. The rise of poverty in the developing countries have been due to the capitalist society that continue to work for themselves rather than for the country. If capitalist society in any country isn’t eradicated than the sustainability practice applied in the developing country to eliminate poverty won’t be that effective (Ali, 2016). Sustainability and poverty are intertwined that means that if sustainability practices are implemented impartially and efficiently than the countries can get rid of the social problem like poverty. A country can only become a developed nation when the poor people get equal rights as the rich.
Poverty has been a major issue in the developing countries for quite a while now. The countries’ governments have taken initiatives to tackle this problem but for some poverty isn’t eradicated at all. Unlike the Malaysian economy, there has been a huge reduction in the poverty since the 1970s. According to Nair & Sagaran (2017), the poverty rate in Malaysia was 49.3% but in 2007 it was 3.6%, these values indicates a paradigm shift in the country. The government of the country helped the citizens in residing in the lower class to get equal opportunities in every phase of their life (Nair & Sagarnan, 2017). The policies implemented by the Malaysian government to eradicate poverty are; New Economic Policy (1971-1990), this policy aimed on reducing poverty entirely through increase in employment and a rise in income level. In National Development Policy (1991-200) envisioned on raising awareness of anti-poverty tactics. National Vision Policy (2001-2010) aimed on economic growth and through the process of this policy poverty would be eradicated from the country (Manaf & Ibrahim, 2017). However, poverty still persists in the country, people still suffer to get the basic necessities in Malaysia (Nair & Sagarnan, 2017).
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Poverty has been a global crisis across the world and has been affecting many countries. However, there is a country that made huge changes to their economy and now they are considered to be at the top in everything in the world. That country is China, at the time of independence it was considered to be the poorest and slow economies not only in the world but also in Asia. After the 1980s, Chinese government introduced anti-poverty policy that changed everything including economic growth in their country. The current anti-poverty policy aims to eradicate the grassroots of poverty in China by the year 2020. Through eliminating two main issues that are regarding food and shelter and providing the basic necessities that is housing, health and easy access to education (Alike & Shen, 2017). Through sustainability measure Chine changed the face of its economy and now stands at the forefront in the world. These policies are multidimensional in nature and the country is considered a pioneer in applying this policy. From 1978 to 2010, two hundred and fifty million Chinese citizens have upgraded from extreme financial poverty, four hundred and thirty-nine individuals have upgraded from acute during 1990-2011 through 1.25 dollar per day standard (MDG Goal) (Alike & Shen, 2017). This example proved that through sustainability measures poverty can be eradicated completely in a country if that country appoints effective policies.
The increase in the educated youth often decrease the job positions in the labour market in developing countries. There has been a debate going on around the world that the Youth in the developing countries have been sitting without jobs after their graduation. For instance, according to the International Labour Organization (ILO, 2012), two hundred million or to be exact, 6% of the labour force around the world is not employed. However, in case of the youth unemployment is different as they are neither educating themselves nor working for the betterment of the economy which is a waste of youth’s energy (as cited in Buheij, 2019). Nevertheless, the youth still have to face hard workforce markets and employment deficiency. Moreover, according to International Monetary Fund’s Report in 2019 showed that around twenty percent of youth between fifteen and twenty-four years old in the developing countries are not even working or studying. As compared to the ten percent of the youth in the developed countries (Lagard & Bludorn, 2019). Many countries of the world are facing youth unemployment like in the African countries where youth unemployment is considered to be a major issue in the continent and around the globe. The increase of this issue is also due to the rise of rural-urban migration in the developing countries. For example, the International Labour Organization (ILO), states that in Northern Africa the rate of youth unemployment is 29.3% (ILO, 2016 as cited in Buheij, 2019).
Youth unemployment around the world has been a grave issue and mostly specifically in the developing countries where the population has been increasing but there are no jobs for the college graduates (Kluve, Puerto, Roablino, Romero, Rother, Stoterau & Witte, 2019). However, along with poverty China has been working to increase the youth employment in the country. According to Ma (2018) China has been implementing education policies through which the increase in graduates made the government to provide these individuals with employment mediums. There is an increase in the urban youth employment through the policies. However, there are also some negative impacts of the policies on the rural youth employment. In other words, not all the youth is working some are also unemployed in spite of the policies introduced by China (Ma, 2018).
Refutation:
There is a higher unemployment among youth as compared to the adult unemployment. This is due to the fact that the increase in the enrollment of student in the college generates more graduates than the vacant positions in the labour market. Nevertheless, there are some countries who have taken care of the unemployment rates among youth as well as among the adult population. According to Wadensjo (2016), Sweden is one of those few countries in the world which has a low youth unemployment in the world. The government of Sweden help the students in getting employment through different programmes targeted at youth to start working some place. The Swedish government started introducing policies to combat unemployment since the 1920s and 30s. Subsequently, the government introduced new policy after the great war in which the emphasis was also given to the increase of employment opportunities to the general public. The response to the crisis by the Swedish gave a boom to the labour market and during 1970s-80s the current programs at that time expanded due to which there were new jo opportunities (Wadensjo, 2016). This portrays that sustainable measures adopted by the country can increase the employment among youth.
Sustainability as a concept has gotten much attention in the past few years and countries are really trying their best to achieve the goals of sustainability in the coming years. Sustainability helps the countries to be stable in the long run and to curb every major issue from the economy. However, there are some issues that are solved in the developing countries even through sustainability measures taken by the governments of these nations. The issues that are most prevalent are poverty and unemployment, poverty is a social phenomenon and exists globally. Countries have tried to eradicate this issue but couldn’t do so especially the developing nations; in spite of implementing policies for curbing poverty, developing countries are still in the same position and haven’t moved out of poverty. This is due to the capitalist society and the overdependence on natural resources. The second main issue is the youth unemployment in these countries, youth have awareness to get higher education. However, on one hand there is an influx of college graduates and on the other hand there are no jobs available for these graduates. Despite of government implementing policies to open up labour market for these young graduates there is no change in the percentage of youth unemployment.
References:
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