Essay/Term paper: Why are there poor people

Essay, term paper, research paper:  Biography Term Papers

Looking back on my childhood, I realize how lucky I was to be blessed with the family I have. Knowing what I know now, I have come to understand that not every kid had the same life that I had. Not every child had a living room full of gifts on Christmas morning, or a family to share a birthday with. I was lucky enough to have all of the luxuries that so many children yearn for. So many children take for granted the fact that they eat three meals a day, while so many others are lucky to find a scrap of bread in a dumpster.
It wasn't until I was about nine or ten when I realized that there were poor people in the world. My family and I had been on our annual trip to New York City to see the Christmas play at Radio City. I didn't understand why all these people kept asking my dad to spare them some change, or why a family was searching through the dumpster. I asked, "Daddy, why is that man sleeping on the street?"
My dad spent a long time explaining to me that not everybody had the same life as our family did. Some kids parents didn't have jobs to go to every day, or cars to take them wherever they needed to go, and not every family in the world had breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day. He told me that I was very lucky to have all the things that I had, and that millions of kids in the world would die to have the life I had. I was still very confused about the whole situation. Why wasn't every family like ours? What did those people do wrong? My dad just said that was life . . . some people are lucky, and some people aren't.
At first, I thought that all poor people were the same, but I later found out that anybody can be poor. Through the years, I learned that not all people are born into poverty, that some people can become poor over time. People can have steady jobs and eventually layoffs occur or seniority rules. Innocent people who do their job and does it well can be knocked right out of their position. It doesn't matter if it hurts that person or their family.
So many children grow up, taking for granted all of the luxuries that they were lucky enough to have. As a child, it's very difficult to stop and realize that there are so many underprivileged people in the world, and if they could maybe then they would realize how lucky they really are.