Increasing Poverty In America

staggering? Poverty occurs when a person’s need for food, clothing and shelter are not being

Public housing is another program that helps to provide a roof over a family’s heads for reduced costs. Rent in some places can be quite high and a family of four may find it hard even to afford a small 3 bedroom house without breaking their pockets.

The topic I chose to inquire about for my project was poverty in America. For the project I researched many different topics to find the one that I connected with enough to write about and come up with an inquiry. I found the topic of poverty in America interesting and it was something that I could relate to in certain ways. At first I wanted to expand on this topic and incorporate world poverty but that was to general. Also there was too much information and differing ideas on my question when applying it to world poverty. Thus, I decided to just stick with poverty in America. I already had a lot of knowledge on this subject and it was something that could be tied in with material from class. While listening to Professor Fitzgerald’s lectures

Poverty is an epidemic that has swept the American nation many times over. Whether it be quietly lingering under the surface, or blatantly staring us in the face as it is in this current recession, it affects people across America on individual, community and national levels alike. While there are many causes and effects of poverty, it is important to view the issue of poverty and its causes from all angles when one seeks to tackle the problem. These factors include socio-economic status, mental illness, family values and work ethics, to name a few. In this essay, I will be examining these factors as they are discussed in the book, The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls (referred to as Glass Castle throughout essay), as well as in the article

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.

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.

Imagine living on the streets. Knowing that you can not provide enough for your family. Barely hanging on. About 50,144,955 people in America feel this everyday. These people are in poverty, the state of being extremely poor. This one issue is what is holding us back as a whole. It needs to be eradicated in order to move forward, but we need to start small. We need to start in our state, Connecticut. There are many things that can be done to stop poverty, and it needs to start now. Poverty is holding America and the world back, in order to move forward together, it needs to be put under control through giving to the poor and getting voices heard.

Within not only our own country, but throughout the entire world, there is poverty. It is pretty much a fact of life, and the current way the U.S. government is attempting to resolve the problem is not the correct way. We are trying to fix a long-term problem with a short-term solution. Instead of welfare, there are much better ways to solve the problem of poverty.

Peter Singer wrote an article that appeared in the New York Times that proposed that the formula for world poverty is, “Whatever money you are spending on luxuries, not necessities, should be given away.” This seems like an extremely drastic proposal for America’s society today, almost the whole country measures happiness on luxuries that cost money. However, when one thinks about how people live in many African countries this is not a big stretch. If we give luxury money away it would result in several pros for the our societies, we would become a less materialist world, we would become more benignant toward our neighbors, and most importantly fewer parts of the world would be struggling as much.

Statistics indicates a rise in poverty levels in most countries all over the world. In America, more than 15% of the population lives in poverty and deplorable living conditions. Poverty and homelessness are particularly high amongst children living in the United States. Poverty is considered as the inability to meet one’s basic needs due to lack of money. It is state of deprivation in which a person lacks and is unable to acquire the normal monetary sum or property and other possessions. In the United States, the poverty threshold is used by the government to measure the level of poverty in the country. The government implements different policies and programs to eradicate poverty depending on the level of poverty. The policies and programs are meant to improve the welfare of the poor in the society and enable them to improve their social status. This paper will entail research on poverty and the policies and programs implemented to eradicate poverty in the United States.

As a young adult in 2017, I wonder how the United States will advance in the next twenty years, fifty years, or when I leave the Earth two hundred years from now. America has developed tremendously in the last century. For instance, numerous diseases and infections have been eradicated. There are nearly three hundred twenty-five million people in the United States today with nearly eighty-five percent of Americans having access to the internet. However, with these advancements, my generation will have deal with America’s dilemma of the distribution of wealth in this country.

“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.

United States. However, 51.4 percent is earned by the richest, whom account only 10 percent of the population. Moreover, the top 3% of earners own over half of all wealth in the United States (Frohlich). This increase in poverty is due in part to the high oils prices, the recession of 2008, and the relocation of many businesses in another country. For instance, the poverty rate of 2009 was the highest it has been in 15 years according to the Census Bureau. The report showed rates of poverty regarding blacks, whites, Hispanics and Asians. The poverty rate for non-whites was 9.4 percent, for black 25.8 percent, for Hispanics 25.3 percent and for Asians 12.5 percent (Eckholm).

In today’s economy the need for people with college degrees is at an all-time high. With factories starting to turn to robots, the world now needs people to program the robots. In order for you to program a robot, you need to learn how to code; which can usually can only be done at a four year university. . If every American had some type of education beyond high school, Americans would be better off because more people would have higher paying jobs while poverty levels would go down, more family time, crime rates would decrease, and more jobs would come and stay in the United States.

In the data, what had surprised me the most was the large number of white people living in poverty in my community. I was surprised about this data because I had always thought that white people were less likely to be in poverty. On television, say President Trump for example, spoke often about how there were many African Americans in poverty that it was becoming a problem in the United States. “ You go into the inner cities and you see it's 45 percent poverty, African Americans now 45 percent poverty in the inner cities” (Sebastian, 2016). The percentage of poverty President Trump has said in his response was contradictory because it had exceeded the federal data. The percentage was less than 40 percent even in a city such as Detroit.