Poverty And Diverty

“The home is the wellspring of personhood. It is where our identity takes root and blossoms, whereas children, we imagine, play, and question, and as adolescents, we retreat and try. As we grow older, we hope to settle into a place to raise a family or pursue work. When we try to understand ourselves, we often begin by considering the kind of home in which we were raised” (Desmond 2016, 293). Evictions! The root of poverty? Matthew Desmond’s novel “Evicted: Poverty and Profit in America City, portrays the lives of tenants, landlords, and house marketing on the poorest neighborhoods of Milwaukee. Desmond gives the reader overwhelming evidence and revealing testimony illustrating the major impact of inadequate housing on individuals, local, and national level. Desmond’s analysis and observation of his case study enables him to portray the reality of poverty, and to persuade the readers that evictions are a major consequence, and primary contributors in the relentless cycle of poverty. Desmond build his argument using two Aristotelian rhetorical appeals, ethos, logos and inductive reasoning to illustrates the importance of ending the cycle of poverty.

Initially, Matthew Desmond’s book Evicted represents a profound and realistic ethnography about people’s day-to-day experiences of poverty with a particular focus on the outcomes of housing instability within the state. He exploits the evidence from housing court administrative records, excerpts from the news, and different surveys of renters to support his point of view revealed in the book. In his work, Desmond raises questions why the state is introducing the housing policy that deteriorates the position of tenants renting from private landlords and how a person with the monthly income of $628 and rent of $550 can not only provide his family but also survive. In Evicted, Matthew Desmond reasonably criticizes the American housing system according to which most of the low-income tenants are left alone in the private rental market and have no options to receive affordable apartments.

The concepts of “worthy” and “unworthy” poor came about during the English Poor Laws that were introduced in the 1500’s. The English poor laws classified poor or dependent people into three major categories and established many requirement before aid was provided. Dependent persons were categorized as: vagrant (nomadic; with no permanent home or employment), the involuntary unemployed and the helpless. In effect, the poor laws separated the poor into two classes which were the worthy and the unworthy. The worthy were classified as orphans, widows, handicapped, or the frail elderly. The unworthy were the drunkards, suspicious, or lazy. (Hansan, J.E. (2011). Poor relief in early America)

Parker also explains her purpose through the use of stylistic devices like imagery. She uses concrete images to portray the idea of poverty. She explains that “Poverty is staying up all night on cold nights to watch the fire knowing one spark on the newspapers covering the walls means your sleeping child dies in flames.” What adds to the readers idea of poverty is the horrendous image of a child burning to death, also the newspaper-covered wall of a make-shift house. There are plenty other nouns like grits with no oleo, runny noses, and diapers that paint an image of poverty in the reader ́s head. You also have the sense of ́smell ́ through this essay by phrases that describe the “sour milk”, “urine”, and “stench of rotting teeth”. You can also ́feel ́ poverty through hands that are “so cracked and red”, since the author cannot afford vaseline. The use of imagery makes the a!udience more conscious of the effects of poverty. !

Arleen’s story reveals the idea that eviction causes a person to often move to progressively worse housing. In the beginning of the book, Arleen is living in “squat duplexes with porch steps ending at a sidewalk edged in dandelions” (Desmond 1) Towards the end of the book, we see that Arleen is hopeless as Desmond describes her as someone “who was not always able to offer [her children] stability; stability cost too much.” (Desmond 240). Where Arleen was initially stable in her home, a simple mistake that her son made caused the family to get evicted and led to major instability within the family as Arleen struggled to find a place to live. During her spiral downwards, the stability in Arleen’s life disappeared because landlords are no longer willing to accept her because she has kids and has a record of evictions. These two things make it harder to find a home showing that society’s problem of eviction becomes Arleen’s personal trouble. While she uses as much as her free agency as possible to fight her personal troubles, she is unsuccessful showing that her free agency is much less meaningful. Arleen was forced

Our nation is a first world country, yet poverty is still a universal dilemma faced in modern society. I would not have ever expected a human being to suffer from such horrific circumstances because even though I do not live in the wealthiest community, impoverished citizens are not as prevalent as they are in the city. I have watched films and television shows with poverty as the centralized theme, however, I did not take it seriously until I had the opportunity to witness it in its true form. Through my work with the Upward Bound program, I had the opportunity to volunteer at a homeless shelter known as the Hannah House during my weekend at the Wanda Hendricks-Bellamy Student Leadership Conference.

The way she does this is in a tone of desperation, thirsty for help. Jo Goodwin’s choice of using imagery in her text was to appeal to the reader’s senses. In the passage, Goodwin’s imagery depicts her everyday life struggling with poverty with phrases such as “ Put yourself in my dirty, worn out,

“I’ve never lost my fierce grudge against poverty. It is the most savage of all human afflictions, claiming victims who can’t mobilize their efforts against it, who often lack strength to digest what little food they scrounge up to survive” (1).

The world poverty has previously been defined by the World Bank as’’ existing on less than $1.25 per day''. ’Poverty is a condition many population and regions worldwide live in and it’s more common in low income countries more so in high income countries. However there is population groups that live within the high income countries, but still live in poor surrounding and in poverty. Therefore, it can’t be claimed that poverty is limited to only low income or developing countries.

People living in severe poverty would face deprivation of basic human needs, including food, safe drinking water, sanitation facilities, health, shelter, education and information. The problems they face are 100% different from any I have ever known. I have never gone without any of these before and I pray I never do. I will never let my kids go without as long as I have a breath in me. I think it is sad that we still live in a country where this level impoverishment can still

The solutions to poverty are plentiful when accounts from others’ experiences are brought into consideration. Stories and experiences provide insight to readers that explicate the reality of any situation. In “What is Poverty” “On Dumpster Diving” “Lifeboat Ethics” and “The Singer Solution,” each article expands on personal experiences and situations to open the reader to various viewpoints on how poverty is perceived by society, as well as how it is perceived by those face it daily, in order to illustrate its brutal reality and plausible resolutions.

In this paper I will discuss the causes for those below the poverty line in America set by

Poverty evokes various definitions depending on the audience and perhaps the purpose or context that it is used. Limiting the definition of poverty to a ‘value judgment’ is of little use in terms of agreeing on a definition for the purpose of comparison and measurement between groups (Sen 1979, p.285). A clear definition of poverty supports and indicates the process for measurement, and as such would also assist in determining the focus and approach for development (Clark 2012; Ruggeri, Saith & Stewart 2006, p.19). In reviewing Oxfam Australia’s (Oxfam) Close the Gap campaign, it is necessary to identify the approach that is taken in defining poverty in order to gauge the scope of the project, the development of the approach used, and to quantify the change that occurs.

What is poverty, and how does it affect child development? This is a question that has been raised in the United States more than in any other first-world country. According to the article, Poorer by Comparison, in Chapter 17 of The Inequality Reader, “official” measures of poverty exist in the United States and United Kingdom only (p.153). Poverty is a state of being extremely poor. Poverty rates indicate how many children at a point in time are living in families with annual incomes or economic resources that are below a consistent threshold considered insufficient to meet basic needs. The child poverty rate is thus a key indicator of a society’s health and well-being. Neighborhoods are also a big component of how children grow up and develop.

As the world population grows new concerns arise due to the needs of a larger and larger populace. In an attempt to prevent further damage and decline in demographic progress, as well as environmental degradation, increased access to effective family planning and contraceptives for women has, and will continue to assist dramatically in decreasing population growth and unwanted pregnancies, which, in turn, leads to a decline in poverty. Lack of access to proper family planning and contraception is a major contributor to much of the poverty and environmental blight that our world is challenged with minimizing.