Milestone One: Critical Analysis Portfolio
Cheyenne Nelson
Southern New Hampshire University
Introduction
The purpose of this critical analysis portfolio is to analyze and describe how poverty
relates to wellness through the four general education lenses: history, humanities, natural and
applied sciences, and social sciences. Wellness can be defined as the overall well-being of an
individual; relating to poverty from what it once was to how it is viewed now has taken a drastic
turn in modern society in focusing how individuals view and interact with the world around
them. This document will utilize the four lenses to further depict how the issue of poverty has
specifically influenced modern society based on factual statements and proceedings relating to
such.
History
One key aspect that makes the lens of history so important is that "...it can provide us
with solutions to many of the problems of the present"' (The School of Life, 2014). Due to such
knowledge, "over the last 200 years the world as a whole has seen a marked decline in the
incidence of absolute poverty" (Ravallion, 2013); in brief, the effects of poverty on society are
damaging and have been concurring for decades. With a multitude of factors affecting poverty
(i.e. unsafe work environments, poor housing, water and food related diseases, etc. (Borgen,
2019)), the issue of poverty deems never-ending through generations; however, moving forward,
modern society faces the challenges of poverty and aims to potentially fix the major issues
through transitional thinking of what once was to what could be. Moving forward through
history, poverty was once viewed as "...necessary for economic advancement" (Ravallion, 2016)
has now advanced to viewing poverty "...as a social ill that can be avoided through public
action" (Ravallion, 2016) -- poverty is "...no longer seen as some inevitable, even natural,
condition, but as something that could and should be eliminated" (Ravallion, 2016). Through
transitions thinking and trial and error of past methods to battle poverty, modern society is on the
right track of decreasing the problem.
Humanities
In brief, humanities include ".. .the study of languages, literature, history, jurisprudence.
philosophy, comparative religion, ethics, and the arts -- are disciplines of memory and
imagination, telling us where we have been and helping us envision where we are going" (Liu,
2014). Two historical steps identified in the transition of thoughts on poverty include the First
and Second Poverty Enlightenments. The First Poverty Enlightenment occurred approximately
"...20 or so years prior to the turn of the 19th century" (Ravallion, 2013) and began with "the
philosophical writings of Immanuel Kant, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Smith and others" (Ravallion,
2013) who created a new sense of "...respect for poor people as people, not merely serving some
purely instrumental role as means of production" (Ravallion, 2013), but that the economy should
be "...a means for promoting all human welfare" (Ravallion, 2013). These measures advanced
gain on "...promotional antipoverty policies, such as public subsidies to help cover schooling
costs" (Ravallion, 2013) -- this can be seen in modern society advancements today as