Poverty as a Disease: The Silent Epidemic Shaping Global Health

Source: Adobe stock photo (Education licensed)

By Onyekachukwu Mercy Egun

Introduction

Poverty is not a disease in the medical sense, but it behaves like one in the way it weakens the body, shortens life expectancy, increases vulnerability to infections, mental illness, and reproduces itself across generations. According to World Health Organization (2024), “the poor are often exposed to greater personal and environmental health risk factors, have less access to health care services, and have limited lifestyle-related choices”. “They are also more likely to experience discrimination, abuse and exploitation”.

Poverty as a Multisystem Disease

Poverty functions like a “multisystem disease” because it affects virtually every aspect of human health simultaneously, as nutritional deprivation weakens immunity, making infectious diseases such as tuberculosis, malaria, and cholera more prevalent in poor populations (Manzi, 2023). Meanwhile, poverty is linked to non-communicable diseases like hypertension, diabetes, and cardiovascular diseases, through chronic stress, poor living conditions, and inadequate access to preventive care.

Poverty and Global Health Inequalities

The relationship between poverty and disease is not merely metaphorical; it is biological, structural, and measurable. As stated by the World Bank, (2025) about 831 million people worldwide were living in extreme poverty in 2025, surviving on less than $3 per day. It was also observed by World Bank (2025) that extreme poverty persists today and is growing sharper in a few countries, including Sub-Saharan Africa and fragile-conflict affected states like the Democratic Republic of the Congo, South Sudan, Sudan, Somalia, Mozambique and parts of the Sahel countries, where armed conflicts, weak governments, food insecurity, displacement and economic instability continue to keep millions in chronic poverty. The health consequences of persistent poverty are severe on the health of populations which are caught up in poverty; they are more likely to suffer from malnutrition, unsafe homes, lack of sanitation, inadequate health care, and exposure to environmental dangers.

Poverty, Mortality, and Child Health

The differences in life expectancy between countries can reach as high as 33 years, largely because of unequal social and economic conditions rather than purely medical causes (World Health Organization, 2025). People born in countries with the highest life expectancy, such as Monaco where life expectancy is 86.5 years, can live more than three decades longer than those born in countries with the lowest life expectancy, such as Nigeria where average life expectancy is 54.3 years (World Population Review, 2026)

In many low-income countries such as Nigeria, Somalia, Chad, Niger, South Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, poverty directly determines whether children receive routine vaccinations, whether pregnant women can access skilled birth attendants, and whether families can afford nutritious food and clean water. According to World Health Organization (2026), children born in Sub-Saharan Africa experience the highest risk of death before the age of five, with an under-five mortality rate of 71.6 deaths per 1,000 live births, nearly 14 times higher than children born in Europe and North America. Nigeria, Niger, and Somalia were among the countries that were further identified with the highest under-five mortality rates globally, each recording over 100 deaths per 1,000 live births in 2024. Many of these deaths are linked to preventable conditions such as pneumonia, diarrhoea, malaria, malnutrition, and inadequate access to vaccinations and maternal healthcare services (World Health Organization, 2026).

Mental Health Consequences of Poverty

Mental health, as revealed in a study by Dubey et al. (2023), provides one of the clearest examples of poverty’s disease-like effects, as financial insecurity, unemployment, housing instability, and food scarcity generate chronic psychological stress that alters hormonal and neurological functioning. According to World Health Organization (2025), reports on social determinants of health, economic inequality and structural discrimination contribute significantly to anxiety, depression, and substance abuse disorders. Poverty therefore becomes both a cause and consequence of mental illness, as individuals struggling with untreated mental health conditions may find it difficult to maintain employment or education, thereby deepening economic hardship and perpetuating the cycle.

Intergenerational Cycle of Poverty

Another reason poverty resembles a disease is its transmissibility across generations, as children who are raised in poor households are more likely to experience malnutrition, interrupted education, unsafe environments, and reduced economic opportunities in adulthood. Health, according to World Health Organization (2025), follows a “social gradient,” meaning that individuals living in deprived environments consistently experience worse health outcomes than those in wealthier settings. A perfect example of this is revealed in the reports by World Health Organisation, (2025), that people in low-income countries are significantly more likely to die before the age of 70 from preventable diseases such as malaria, tuberculosis, and complications during childbirth compared to those in high-income countries. This pattern demonstrates how poverty reproduces itself socially and biologically over time.

Countries Successfully Reducing Poverty-Related Disease Burdens

Importantly, poverty is neither inevitable nor untreatable as evidence from countries such as China, Brazil, and Rwanda demonstrates that targeted investments in healthcare, education, sanitation, and social protection can significantly reduce poverty-related disease burdens. According to the World Bank (2022), China lifted over 800 million people out of extreme poverty through large-scale investments in rural development, healthcare, and infrastructure. While Brazil’s Bolsa Família programme significantly improved child nutrition, vaccination uptake, and school attendance among low-income households. Similarly, Rwanda achieved major reductions in maternal and child mortality through expanded community healthcare systems and universal health insurance coverage (Sserwanja et al., 2022). According to the World Bank (2025), robust economic growth and human capital investment helped reduce global extreme poverty dramatically from 2.3 billion to 831 million between 1990 and 2025.

Conclusion

Viewing poverty as a disease changes how societies respond to it. Diseases require prevention, treatment, policy coordination, and sustained intervention. Similarly, poverty cannot be solved solely through charity or temporary relief programmes, as it requires systemic reforms addressing inequality, healthcare access, education, employment opportunities, and social justice. As argued by World Health Organization (2025), health inequities will persist unless governments address the economic and structural conditions producing inequality.

References

Dubey, S., Ghosh, R., Dubey, M. J., Das, S., Chakraborty, A. P., Santra, A., … and Benito-León, J. (2023). Psychosocial basis of human sufferings and poverty in patients with neurological and psychiatric disorders. Medical research archives, 11(5), 3919.

Manzi, A. (2023). Poverty and health: Why we need to address the root cause of disease. LinkedIn. Available at: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/poverty-health-why-we-need-address-root-cause-disease-anatole-manzi (Accessed: 15/04/2026)

Sserwanja, Q., Gatasi, G., and Musaba, M. W. (2022). Evaluating continuum of maternal and newborn healthcare in Rwanda: evidence from the 2019–2020 Rwanda demographic health survey. BMC pregnancy and childbirth, 22(1), 781.

World Bank. (2022). Lifting 800 million people out of poverty. Available at: https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2022/04/01/lifting-800-million-people-out-of-poverty-new-report-looks-at-lessons-from-china-s-experience (Accessed: 21/04/2026)

World Bank. (2025). Poverty. Available at: https://www.worldbank.org/ext/en/topic/poverty (Accessed: 26/04/2026)

World Health Organization. (2026). Child mortality (under 5 years). Available at: https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/child-mortality-under-5-years (Accessed: 12/04/2026)

World Health Organization. (2025). Poverty. Available at: https://www.afro.who.int/health-topics/poverty(Accessed: 26/04/2026)

World Population review, (2026). Life Expectancy by Country 2026. Available at: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/life-expectancy-by-country (Accessed: 12/05/2026)

World Health Organization. (2025). World report on social determinants of health equity: Executive summary. Available at: https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/social-determinants-of-health (Accessed: 26/04/2026)

Acknowledgement

The author would like to acknowledge Dr Winifred Ekezie and Godwin Ukeje for their valuable feedback, review, and contributions towards strengthening this article.