An Exploration of Psychosocial Effects of Poverty on Child Development in Ngundu, Zimbabwe

Introduction Hunter (2000) posits that current estimates indicate that more than 200 million children under the age of Ave in developing countries are at risk of not developing to their full potential because of poverty and HIV/AIDS. Poverty is a significant threat to the healthy psychosocial development of children. Understanding the scope and severity of poverty is critical in Zimbabwe so as to develop interventions and social policies to protect children at risk and to treat children who have already been affected. Children from low socio-economic background are at very high risk of developing long term, social, emotional, cognitive, behavioural and personality problems. It is estimated that an average of seven out of ten children in Zimbabwe live in poverty. More than 50% of children live in households where no one is employed (Kujinga and Makoni, 2000). Different societies have different conceptions about poverty and their understanding of poverty. Rogaly, Fisher and Moyo (1999) define poverty as the experience of living in a household with a level of income or wealth which is below that necessary to purchase the range of goods and services considered by the strands of majority in a particular reference group to be sufficient for living. On the other hand, Kujinga and Makoni (2000) assert that poverty is the deprivation of individuals and communities of their desired satisfaction with life by social, economic, political, physical and spiritual forces. Given the above definitions, these writers define poverty as the inability to afford a defined basket of consumption, items (food and 'non food') which are necessary to sustain life. There is likely to be a very large overlap between those children who live in poverty and those living with HIV-positive parents. Poverty is an undeniable background to the HIV/AIDS epidemic and HIV/AIDS itself deepens the poverty of already vulnerable children and increases inequalities at every level, including household, community, regional and sectoral (Ganga and Chinyoka 2010). The epidemics undermine efforts of poverty reduction, income and assert distribution and economic growth. The Poverty Assessment Study Survey (PASS) conducted by the government of Zimbabwe in 2000 revealed that AIDS and poverty have reversed progress towards millennium development goals because of the influence they have on all development targets. Stillwagon (2001) argues that poverty amplifies the effect of HIV/AIDS on children and renders their effects on children unrelenting. Poverty affects the physical, cognitive, personality, social, emotional and moral development of children. Abebe (2009) claims that there is a strong correlation between endemic poverty child destitution and orphanhood. He also postulates that one (1) in every three (3) children in African countries is poor and malnourished. The number of hungry children is also rising. The United Nations (2002) confirms that 40% of the child's population does not attend school. More than 50% does not have safe drinking water or primary health care services. Plessis and Conley (2007) add on to confirm the poverty levels saying the prevalence of preventable diseases is increasing and unemployment is rather chronic. This leaves children in predicaments which are unbearable. Stillwagon (2001) purports that poverty prevalence is highly correlated with falling calorie consumption, falling protein intake, unequal distribution of income and other variables conventionally associated with susceptibility to infectious disease, however transmitted. The causal chain however runs from macro-factors that result in poverty, through the community, the household, the individual and into the resilience of the individual's immune system, children being more vulnerable. Stillwagon (2001) goes on to say that work in cell biology has shown the mechanisms that connect malnutrition and parasite infestation, depress both specific and nonspecific immune responses by weakening epithelial integrity and the effectiveness of cells in the immune system. …