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Poverty In America

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Poverty is a complex societal issue, which includes social, economic and political elements. It is a lack of necessary means to fulfil basic human needs including food, shelter, clothing etc. The U.S. Census Bureau defines poverty as living in a household with a total cash income below 50 percent of its poverty threshold. Official poverty rates in the US as estimated by the Bureau is 12.7 percent for 2016. Official measures concluded that 43.1 million Americans lived in poverty that year, nearly 1 in every 6 people. The measure is based on information provided from the Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement. The survey is sent to U.S. households, so the poverty estimates do not include those who are homeless. (Semega, …show more content…

Once, one of people’s greatest life achievements was getting married, more so for women. It is considered the ultimate form of love between two people, however, the motives for getting married are widely varied. As we evolve as a society, so do our outlooks on love and marriage. In 2014, one half of adults do not live with a spouse, as opposed to one third of adults in 1967. Therefore, fewer than 70 percent of children younger than the age of 18 currently live in two-parent households, as opposed to 90 percent in 1960. Many children in single-parent households are reported to be living with their mothers, which only amplifies the poverty rise in single mother’s demographic. Another factor is the role race plays in this statistic, with 18 percent of white children living only with their mothers, opposed to 51 percent of black children living only with their mother. (Socioeconomic Patterns of Marriage and Divorce, 2016). These changes in definitions of family life will undoubtedly play a role in altering the future of American economics, as well as redefined the concepts of marriage to reflect modern-day standards of …show more content…

Levinger’s theory of marital dissolution (1965), proposes that “divorce is a function of inducements to remain in the marriage, specifically the attractions of the marriage and barriers to leaving, and inducements to leave the marriage, specifically the attractiveness of the alternatives to staying. The attractions of the marriage are conceptualized as the ratio of the relationship’s rewards to its costs”. He describes the rewards of marriage as love, respect, trust, sex. He describes costs as abusive behavior, while including barriers for leaving a marriage despite rising costs such as children, pressures from relatives, religious beliefs and social standards. However, the appeal of rewards sometimes triumphs over the costs and further strengthens the barriers to divorce, which means that not all unhappy marriages end in divorce, and sometimes happy marriages can end, if there are more attractive alternatives producing higher rewards (Lewis and Spanier, 1979). For example, couples who have pro-marriage views and life-values are more prone to staying in a relationship only for the sake of the relationship, even after costs such as infidelity, loss of closeness and incompatibility, if they are guaranteed a socioeconomic stability. On the other hand, once happily married couples whose rewards are no longer higher

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