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Effects Of Poverty And Poverty

Decent Essays

The social problem I plan to discuss in my paper is the effect poverty has on society. In this paper I will go into detail about income inequality and the effect poverty has on crime, health and children. As someone who has family members living in poverty this social issue is important to me. I hope to pinpoint alternative approaches to solving this issue and my ultimate goal is to find an optimal solution to the poverty crisis. It’s no surprise that poverty and crime rates are positively correlated. Through hypothesis testing Judith R. Blau and Peter M. Blau concluded “High rates of criminal violence are apparently the price of racial and economic inequalities. In a society founded on the principle that all men are created equal economic inequalities rooted in ascribed positions violate the spirit of democracy and are likely to create alienation, despair, and conflict. The hypothesis derived from this assumption, which is also deducible from a general sociological theory, is that racial socioeconomic inequalities are a major source of much criminal violence.”() These findings are significant in proving that United States economic inequality does cause conflict. According to a 2010 wealth spread chart the top 5% of Americans posses 74.2% of the nations wealth. With a wealth spread like this, conflict is bound to arise. A famous study done by Shaw and McKay in (1942) compared delinquency rates in various areas within 21 cities and showed that the same variations in delinquency among socioeconomically different urban areas persisted for several decades even though their populations and ethnic compositions completely changed during that time. This study concluded that poverty is a main factor for delinquency rates. () Numerous of other studies have observed the highest crime rates in the poorest of areas. In the poorest of areas people need to do what they can to make ends meet. Crime is a necessity to some individual in order to feed their families and is not always necessarily done out of hate. Time and time again this can be proven especially when natural disasters occur. People lose everything and desperate times call for desperate measures, which usually involves looting. Money is everything in this world

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