The moral challenge of poverty’s impact on individuals

Abstract

In this article I want to substantiate the claim that poverty presents one of the most urgent moral challenges facing humanity. Poverty violates moral values about what constitutes a minimally decent human life broadly shared throughout the world and especially the standards for human living defined in Christianity. How can such a claim be substantiated? One has to judge the harmful impact of poverty on individuals and show that the moral repugnance of these effects on human beings makes it obligatory that poverty should be high on the agenda of all people. It is shown how devastating these effects of poverty can be for individual human beings and why poverty is such an affront to a person’s dignity. In the light of the consequences poverty has for the dignity of its sufferers, it is judged that Christians have a strong moral responsibility to become involved with the plight of poor people.