As one of the biggest problems facing the world today, poverty continues to have significant negative implications for the society. The effects of poverty are extremely severe and far-reaching, so much so that it was one of the top Millennium Development Goals agreed upon at the Millennium Summit of the UN back in 2000 (Hatcher, 2016). To understand the effects that poverty has on the society, one must critically analyze the societies in which poverty is rampant, as well as analyze poverty from the relative perspectives that it presents. This paper hopes to develop a holistic comprehension of poverty in the US and elaborate on the diverse ways in which it continues to affect the health of societies across the USA. In this way, this paper hopes to raise awareness about poverty in the USA, and how it affects health.

While there are many options available that can support developing an understanding of poverty and how it affects society, the voluminous amount of literature that exists on the topic cannot be ignored. As one of the core problems that almost every other society, the US included, faces, it is essential that this problem is tackled, and its impacts on health mitigated as soon as possible. In this respect, a literature review would be appropriate for this study. Through a review of existing literature on the matter from various demographics and regions across the US, and particularly in Arizona, the health effects of poverty can be understood not only from a multifactorial perspective. This is essential towards understanding the core implications that poverty has on health in Arizona, and in the USA as a whole.

Poverty has been shown to have detrimental implications on the physical and mental health of individuals (Veritta, 2008). Perhaps one of the most common health effects of poverty on the populace comes in the form of stress. For many individuals that are struggling to make ends meet and provide for their families and loved ones, high stress levels are common. This is often because such individuals tend to hold down more than one job, enduring long working hours and persevering minimal relaxation and sleep times. Moreover, they still have to meet their social obligations in terms of parenting. This combination of factors has been shown to result in high stress levels that are often accompanied by a variety of other health complications such as high blood pressure. In addition to this form of mental health impairment, many individuals living below the poverty line exhibit high levels of depression. This depression can often be attributed to the high stress levels that individuals are exposed to, as well as other poverty-related effects such as the failure of the individual to adequately meet the needs of his or her family. In Arizona, where approximately 27% of children live in poverty (County Health Rankings, 2016), the pervasiveness of poverty and its effects on mental health is a cause for worry. It is also astonishing that within this demographic, roughly 14% of said children remain uninsured and unable to access quality healthcare services (United Health Foundation, 2016). As such, poverty in this state primarily affects children, who are exposed to an array of implications which they carry forward into their adult lives and propagate the cycle.

In addition to this, the US, and the state of Arizona at that, also suffers from pervasive health conditions such as obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, and asthma within these poverty stricken regions. Many of these problems can be attributed to poor diets, environmental pollution, and smoking which are all prevalent in poor neighborhoods in Arizona and the US at large (Hickey & du Toit, 2013). The inability of families to provide healthy balanced meals that include fruits and vegetables has been seen to contribute towards disease vulnerability of these individuals, as well as unhealthy eating choices. Smoking also contributes towards poor health, with health conditions such as asthma and high blood pressure being common among poor neighborhoods where smoking is also rampant. In Arizona, for instance, 16.5% of the adult population engages in smoking (United Health Foundation, 2016), and in the same population, approximately 217 cardiovascular deaths are recorded for every 100000 individuals, in which asthma is a core contributor (United Health Foundation, 2016). These are some of the health effects that poverty causes both in Arizona and the USA.

While poverty can be said to have significant negative impacts on the society, it must be categorically understood that of all the various impacts that it causes, its impact on health is the most devastating. This is because by impairing the health of individuals inadvertently incapacitates them, and significantly reduces their ability to engage in productive work. In Arizona, these impacts are seen to have detrimental effects first on children (Yoshikawa, Aber, & Beardslee, 2012), then on adults and the rest of the population. Needless to mention, the USA in its entirety is affected in the same way.

As has been demonstrated, by affecting the physical and mental health of the populace, poverty further facilitates the propagation of the poverty cycle, inhibiting individuals and families to break free of this social problem. The negative impacts of poverty on health have been witnessed in Arizona, as well as the rest of the USA. Consequently, any interventions that may attempt addressing the problem of poverty must first conclusively address its impacts on health if they are to succeed at all.