After searching around today trying to research my topic for this paper I ran across an article from one of our local new papers and in was an article about poverty in my community. I was so surprised to see that the poverty level had grown in my community by 43 percent within 5 years, and what makes it even sadder is that these statistics was about children living in poverty. If you were to come to my small little town Urbana, OH and visit you wouldn’t think by the way it looks that we have children living in poverty. The article also went on to say that the annual kids count report found that 23.4 percent of Champaign county children were living at or below the poverty line in 2011, compared to 16.7 percent in 2006 as I read the article I knew this was a great topic …show more content…
Lowering the poverty level will effectively help people live better lives because more financially stable, they would have the means to provide and take care of their selves or their families. Poverty in America a topic that is always current, and is a problem that will never be truly abolished. In the United States, almost 13 percent of the population lives below the poverty line. This information, and my interest in the subject, helped me form three questions. What is poverty? How do people enter poverty? And what is being done to combat it?
What is poverty? According to the Dictionary, “Poverty is said to exist when people lack the means to satisfy their basic needs.” Poverty is hunger. Poverty is lack of shelter. Poverty is being sick and not being able to see a doctor. Poverty is not having access to school and not
Children living in poverty are a very big issue in my opinion! Nearly 16 million children in the United States which is around 22 percent of all children are living in families with incomes below the federal poverty level, which is around 20,000 dollars a year! Families need about twice that amount of income to cover the basic expenses of living. Most of the children have parents who work, but have really low wages and their employment is very unstable leaving them struggling to make ends meet. Children that live in poverty can really affect their ability to learn, contribute to society and have emotional and behavioral problems. Children that grow up in poverty also have poor health and mental issues. Poverty is one of the single greatest threats to a child’s well-being. A parent can really help a child out with their low income job, if they just try to use most of the money they make on their child’s educational experiences.
The current poverty rate in America is 13.5 percent (US Census Bureau). That measures out to roughly 43.1 million Americans. What exactly is poverty? Poverty means not having enough money to meet basic needs including food, clothing and shelter. However, poverty is so much more than just not having enough money. Poverty is not having access to a doctor or medications you may need, poverty is not having access to a good education. Poverty can be the people who are barely able to pay for food and shelter and simply can’t afford other expenses such as car repairs, field trips with their children and any other extracurricular activity.
“One out of every seven children will be born into poverty in the United States” (“Poverty in the US”). People are not aware of the poverty in America, but the United States has one of the highest poverty rates in the world. Many of the reasons for this issue is a lack of available jobs, low wages and barriers to employment. A primary issue is the lack of information on poverty. People need to be able to know where to go to obtain information on this issue. The media is not covering poverty enough so the people in America can not be informed of what the nation is going through. In the United States, the poverty rate has continued to slowly rise throughout the years, which greatly affects a family’s lifestyle and even worse, a child’s future, due to people not knowing what to do about the problem.
Poverty has been around as long as there has been an America. Programs have been set in place to help offset the issue, such as Food Stamps and housing. The government’s implementation of some of these programs is to ensure that the poor have a place to sleep and adequate meals to eat. There are issues with these programs that contribute to the furthering of poverty, but for the most part are more helpful than harmful. While there is a chance that there will always be a poverty line that Americans will be under, there are solutions that can be implemented towards getting many of these people above it. Some options might include keeping jobs within the
The U.S. is among the richest countries in the world today, yet millions of people in America still live below the poverty level. The number of Americans living in poverty is increasing day by day as well as the number of children. Poverty in America has become a great threat to children’s wellbeing as they are affected emotionally, socially, and even in their school performance (Wood 720). Poverty in America is mainly caused by lack of jobs. Many people who live in poverty in the United States is due to lack of jobs and getting jobs with minimum wage. Another cause of poverty is due to the rise in the cost of living. Poverty exists in America despite the fact that is among the richest nations in the world.
Poverty is “about not having enough money to meet basic needs including food, clothing and shelter”(what is poverty, 2009). Everybody might know this meaning and the problem.
The topic of poverty is America has been both a huge focus and a sore subject for many. There are differing opinions on how to handle our growing population of people below the poverty line, with some saying the solution is the good old “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” rhetoric to others saying impoverished people have children and refuse to work just to get bigger checks from their states.
Poverty is a hard concept for people to put into words. Ruby Payne states a working definition of poverty in her book A Framework for Understanding Poverty in which she says, “The extent to which an individual does without resources” (7). For a better look, the dictionary defines poverty as “the state of one who lacks a usual or socially acceptable amount of money or material possessions”
Poverty is a situation in which income is inadequate to provide for basic needs such as food, shelter, medical care, and clothing. Poverty has been a problem for societies since the beginning of time.
It is reported that 18.5 million people are in deep poverty, which means the income of a family is under 50% of their 2016 poverty threshold. It is often said that the efforts to fight Poverty in America has failed. According to surveys, 5% of Americans think that anti-poverty programs have helped decreased poverty, while 47% have said the programs have done nothing. However, in 2014, the U.S census bureau reported that poverty was decreased by 15%.The official poverty rate right now is 12.7%. 8 years after the great recession, the poor families of america begun to emerge from poverty. With the increase of jobs and more safety, poor families were able to climb out of poverty. Census data released today has shown that living in poverty were able to return to pre-recession levels, with poverty declining for all ethnic groups. However, poverty still isn’t disappearing from America. 40.6 million Americans are still living in poverty last year. Historically America has always had a very high poverty rate. It was first rated in 1959 to be 22.4% of people were in poverty. Which is a lot. The poverty rate has been fluctuated throughout the years. In 1973 the poverty rate has decreased to 11.1%, then has increased and decreased to 11 to 15 percent throughout the
Poverty: The state of being extremely poor. The state of being inferior in quality or insufficient in amount.
While poverty rates among the elderly in the United States have significantly fallen since the 1980’s, poverty has simultaneously increased in the younger population, specifically those with children. Families with young children have a poverty rate that has steadily increased since 2003 (Hoynes, Page & Stevens, 2005). Currently, there are more than 14 million children living in poverty in the United States (U.S. Census Bureau, 2016). The geographic nature of poverty various across time and has significantly differed from centuries ago. However, it has consistently been found that children in poverty face more hardships academically and physically as they live in economically disadvantaged, chaotic, and under-resourced communities (Reardon
Poverty is a huge factor in the world and in our society. There are several steps we could do to try to possibly reduce the percentage of people living in poverty in the U.S. This is a huge problem in our economy and how it affects people that work for their money. Poverty in America is a news topic that is often overlooked. The demographics that are hardest hit are children, the elderly, and the unemployed. ("US Poverty Level By State.")
What is poverty? A question most Americans will not have to think twice before answering. Poverty is, of course, simply a lack of money. The views of a specific person will defer when politics or morals are introduced, however, the idea stays the same. Those in poverty are there because they have less money than what has been decided to be livable. Poverty has changed significantly over the last two hundred years in the United States, and yet, the measurement has hardly changed since it was created fifty years ago. As the United States of America has because a better-established country and therefore a more prosperous country, the type of people that are considered poor has changed quite a bit. Before industrialization and immigration
What is poverty? Poverty is not simply a matter of low income flow. Poverty can be generally categorized as the state or condition of having little or no money, goods, or means of support (http://www.dictionary.com/browse/poverty). There are two types of Absolute poverty where individuals have no access to the basic necessities in life including food, water, clothing, shelter and Relative poverty occurs when people do not enjoy a certain minimum level of living standards as determined by a government that vary from country to country, sometimes within the same country (Brunswick and Canada, 2010).