Urban and Rural Poverty

1. One aspect of poverty that differs between rural and urban areas is the amount of reliance people have on the environment. Much of the poor in rural areas in the developing world rely on some form of agriculture to provide their necessities. Many rely on seasonal variations in the weather to provide the proper conditions to grow and harvest crops. This leaves them completely at the mercy of Mother Nature and sets them up for a devastating blow if the weather patterns do not behave as hoped. This is especially evident in areas of Asia where much of the agriculture depends on the seasonal monsoons to water the crops. When crops fail due to weather or other reasons, many of the rural poor decide to migrate to urban areas in order to find new opportunities. In urban areas the poor have little reliance on the environment as they did in rural areas. The urban poor are dependent upon finding reliable employment because everything in the city revolves around having a source of income. This is in contrast to the rural areas where the poor can use agriculture to provide for themselves. In the city they must rely upon an employer for wages which they use to provide for their families. When employment is unavailable and housing becomes unaffordable, the urban poor will resorts to living in squatter settlements or "shantytowns." They have no agricultural means to feed their families so the level of desperation becomes even higher than it was in the rural areas. This can lead to the high crime rates seen in the urban poor and possible migration back to the rural areas.

2. Another difference between the urban and rural poor is the quality and availability of health care. Urban areas have numerous health care options for residents while rural areas may have little or no proper health care available. This is especially true in the developing world where infant mortality rates are much higher due to the lack of health care in the rural areas. The AIDS pandemic is another example with Sub-Saharan Africa and South and Southeast Asia being the hardest hit areas of the world. Both of these regions claim extremely large rural populations where health care is either unavailable or extremely limited. Even in modernized countries such as the United States the difference can be seen. Residents of southeastern Kentucky where poverty is the highest will often travel to Lexington to receive medical care. While health care in the rural areas of the United States is much more readily available then in the developing world, it is still not of the same quality as the available health care in the urban areas of the United States. Just being in an urban area does not guarantee proper medical care though. In the United States insurance is a necessity to receive the medical care everyone deserves and many of the poor simply cannot afford this cost. Proof of this can be seen in cities like New Orleans where infant mortality rates are on par with countries in the developing world.
In urbanized countries like the United States, health care can actually compound poverty due to its lack of affordability, while in developing countries the lack of available proper health care leads to high infant mortality rates and low life expectancies.