Poverty and Child of the Dark

Poverty is the state of being unable to consistently provide the most basic necessities for oneself. If you're going to bed hungry and its not by choice then you'd qualify as impoverished. When your housing is barely standing and unelectrified or when you have no housing, you're impoverished. However, the generally accepted definition of poverty in the first world has steadily changed as both wealth and the general standard of living in such nations has dramatically increased over time This is mainly due to industrialization, the major technological advances that it afforded, and development of consumer based economies. As it is, even the poorest first worlders are far wealthier than your average third worlder and are  living lives far more comfortable than those of 50 years ago. Poverty in the first world has been greatly alleviated both by their industrialized and consumerist economies, but also by the fact most poverty has been exported to the third world, so to speak. This has also been affected by both public school systems and by more effective economies. Welfare systems have done little to actually eradicate poverty in the first world so much as it has done well to alleviate the stresses of poverty. As to whether its a place for government is hard to say, considering its a case of taking other people's money to give to other people.

Carolian in Child of Darkness is a very good example of someone struggling in poverty with some dignity. She's  living hand to mouth in a glorified urban shanty town and she clearly works hard finding whatever work she can (such as collecting all that discarded paper) to try and feed herself and her children the best she can. She is a person completely at the mercy of the prices of essential commodities like food and petrol, as a simple price change can mean the difference between eating tonight or not eating. She is a person living in true poverty, unlike those living in American poverty. The various Ghettos of America today do not compare to the soul crushing poverty of the favelas. The closest any part of America gets to the level of poverty seen in favelas would be rural parts of Mississippi and the city of Detroit. The very fact that almost every American can directly benefit from the fruits of industrialization and consumerism in the form of extremely cheap food and energy is proof of this.