Based on your experiences, please enlighten me about poverty in other countries

[Cleita]

8. I lived in Chile for a while and traveled around South America a lot.

There is grinding poverty, but one thing that the dispossessed can do in those countries is build shelters for themselves out of whatever scraps they can find of wood, tin or even newspapers. We don't allow our homeless to do the same and instead routinely tear down their cardboard boxes and other shelters they try to build for themselves. The poor also can build campfires to keep warm and cook on, another thing we don't let our homeless do. Public sanitation in some places is almost non-existent so relieving yourself out in public happens. I have had to raise my skirt on occasion behind a bush or rock when I couldn't make it home. Also, some governments including Chile give everyone family allowances for their children. It's not a whole lot, but enables the parents to buy food for their children. In many poor families everyone works, but the wages are so very low, it's barely enough to survive.