The Effects Of Poverty, Overcrowding And Society In Cairo

Poverty, Overcrowding and Society in Cairo

Cairo is what is considered a mega city, it is the largest city in the Middle East and Africa, and as such it is plagued by most of the problems that major Third world cities face, in overcrowding, pollution and poverty. Of course being the capital it is also home to a wide spectrum of social classes and groups. This paper will focus on how the dynamic between these social classes is affected by poverty and overcrowding and how the community as well as the government cope with these problems or don’t. First, we must analyze the situation with poverty and overcrowding like how they are measured and portrayed to society, and then we can assess the effect of this portrayal on the different social classes in Cairo.

Deciding whether or not a person should be considered poor, is hard enough; now imagine trying to study the situation of millions of people at the same time which is the case in greater Cairo. It is justifiable that international organizations are forced to make poverty lines that have a clear cut off point for when a person is to be considered poor. One of the most widely applied poverty lines in third world countries is the 1$ a-day poverty line, not only does this poverty line ignore a huge number of factors that should be considered when making a poverty line but it is also established quite arbitrarily. As Peter Edward claims in his article, “The Ethical Poverty Line: a moral quantification of absolute poverty”, “The basis for the $1-a-day poverty line is simply that it is the median of 10 of the lowest national poverty lines in the world. It is not derived from any more sophisticated consideration of well-being outcomes or bundles of goods for basic needs satisfaction....

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...ng into the other factors that would constitute poverty in Cairo’s informal settlements, like the lack of basic services like education and transportation as well as the lack of sanitation and healthcare, we were forced to look into the emergence of these informal settlements as possibly an effect of rural inequality. However, regardless of the truth behind the levels of poverty in Cairo, public perception of poverty as ruralisation of the cities, seems to have linked the ideas of poverty, overcrowding, crime and violence to each other, leading to an increasing divide between the rich and the poor. The rich are forming their own gated communities in an attempt to protect their lifestyles that are in fact maintained by service by the poor, creating a dysfunctional society. It also appears that the government seems to be doing little to mend this ever growing rift.