Problems with the Poverty Threshold
When I think of the term “poverty threshold”, I imagine some kind of physical barrier that is holding poor people back from living a normal life. These people fall under the poverty level and struggle for quite some time, like a fish out of water just hoping for someone to throw them back in so that they could possibly live a normal life. When looking at the gross yearly income that determines the poverty level, which is at about $31,800 for a four-person family (as of 2006), I think to myself ‘How can all of these people be living in such low standards?’ Well obviously they do not have a choice! I mean most of the people in poverty live in dirty places that are screaming with disease and they
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A common, threatening event in women who are bearing children and are undernourished is the result of premature birth, which creates yet another problem among the impoverished. According to Tanner and Finn-Stevenson, premature babies are highly vulnerable to health complications because they are unable to perform biological functions such as breathing and sucking independently (2002). Also they found that premature infants process information at a slower rate and have a lower intelligence level as well as having more learning problems in school than full-term infants (Tanner and Finn-Stevenson, 2002). In one study done by Chavez, Martinez, and Yaschine in 1975 of Mexican infants in poverty, out of two groups of newborns, one group was supplemented with powdered milk, vitamins, and minerals, while the diet of the other group consisted of prolonged breastfeeding (Tanner and Finn-Stevenson, 2002). In that particular community breastfeeding was resulting in malnutrition of the infants receiving the breast milk due to the poor diets that their mothers were ingesting. The results of this test showed that after eighteen months the mothers of the supplemented infants initiated more complex interactions with their offspring than the
The Poverty Line is the level of income below which the income of the household or individual is
Poverty affects over 767 million people in the entire world. In the United States alone, poverty affects more than 42 million people. According to feedingamerica.org, of that 42 million affected, 13 million children and over 5 million seniors live in poverty. Poverty is grouped into two different categories; absolute and relative. Wikipedia.org defines absolute poverty as the absence of enough resources to secure basic life necessities. This includes not having safe drinking water, not having clean bathroom facilities, not being able to get proper healthcare, not having access to education and not having proper shelter. Absolute poverty is also referred to as living in extreme poverty. Relative poverty, according to wikipedia.org, is the condition in which people lack the minimum amount of income needed in order to maintain the average standard of living in the society in which they live. The meaning of poverty varies from country to country and person to person. For example, while some people in the United States would be considered as living below the poverty line, a person from another country may consider that person rich. However, poverty is simply when an individual is unable to meet their basic needs. This includes not being able to clothed, house or feed oneself or one’s family. Poverty is a problem that will not be easily solved. There have been many attempts to try and end poverty, but yet it continues to grow. In a country such as the United States that’s
An evolutionary psychologist, like Kevin LaLand (2011) may discuss the importance of prenatal learning by discussing that “modern humans are not just primitive savages struggling to make psychological sense of an alien contemporary world.” The baby is genuinely trying to learn about the world it is going to enter. The baby relies on the clues the mother gives it through her diet and the environment in which she lives. Paul stated (2011), Hinting to the baby, by malnourishing it, that we live in a world of deprivation when we actually live in a world of plenty could have harsh adverse health effects.
Everyone knows what the word poverty means. It means poor, unable to buy the necessities to survive in today's world. We do not realize how easy it is for a person to fall into poverty: A lost job, a sudden illness, a death in the family or the endless cycle of being born into poverty and not knowing how to overcome it. There are so many children in poverty and a family's structure can effect the outcome. Most of the people who are at the poverty level need some type of help to overcome the obstacles. There are mane issues that deal with poverty and many things that can be done to stop it.
The UK government, however, uses a different definition of absolute poverty: The measure used by the DWP seems to be more accurately described as a minimum acceptable standard of living over time. This standard is set relative to what people earned in 2010/11: the threshold is a household earning less than 60% of the 2010/11 median after taxes and transfers, adjusted for household size and composition.
In terms of federal poverty measure there are two different versions; one is poverty thresholds and the other is poverty guidelines. Poverty thresholds are a version of the federal poverty measure, developed by Mollie Orshansky in the 1960’s, which is the official measure of poverty that was based off of the cheapest food plan for a family (Schiller). In 1955, studies reflected that poor families spent about one-third of their income on food; so multiplying a low-cost food budget by three determined how much income a family needed (Schiller). Poverty thresholds are mainly used to calculate the number of poor Americans and other poverty population figures (lecture). Since then the threshold has only been adjusted for inflation and is an absolute threshold that considers a family poor if its pre-tax cash income falls below the poverty threshold (lecture). Since the food plan was only supposed to be used temporarily or for emergencies, it is clear it needs some updating. Poverty guidelines are used to determine program eligibility and are considered a simplified version of the poverty threshold (lecture).
Is the poverty line a realistic measure? Can families whose income is at the poverty line have enough money to secure the basic needs to live in America today? Can people hold a steady job, work full time and still find themselves falling below the poverty line?
Taking a tour of any historical or famous American’s home provides a sobering window to the past in several ways. While some give off a sense of luxury of a bygone period of their past, it doesn’t take long to realize these dwellings lacked the basic amenities – hot water, plumbing, and electricity. To ponder the vast and incredible improvements that America has achieved over the last century would easily amaze these historic figures. Today it is possible for the poor in America to live at a standard that previous generations of similar means simply could not afford. The level of comfort poor Americans experience in today’s society far exceeds that of prior generations, creating a class that have no clear incentive to improve their
Poverty is not only an individual problem, but a societal problem. Harrell R. Rodgers wrote an article, “Why are People Poor in America?” Rodgers gives two categories of theories that are used when cultural /behavioral or structural/economic. Behavior/culture theorists look at the behavior, culture and values of the poor as the reason for poverty. While structural /ecIn western culture statistics are an excessively used tool in describing social issues. Numbers help explain a situation, but in excesses, can dehumanize a population. A serious social issue that suffers from desensitization is poverty. Poverty, as it is defined by Webster, is the state or condition of having little or no money, goods, or means of supporting; the condition of being poor. The condition of poverty plagues many American families. According to the Census bureau, 15.1 percent of the United States population falls below the poverty threshold. 15.1 percent does not draw the same effect as the actual 46.6 million individuals living in those circumstances. In the United States, poverty has become a growing problem. There are 15 million more people living in poverty today than in the year 2000 (U.S. Bureau of the Census 2013). The poverty threshold, developed by Molly Orshansky, is a tool used to help indicate how many Americans are in poverty. According to the census, 46.6 million of America’s total population makes less than the poverty threshold for a family of four. The condition of being
However, this system of measuring poverty is flawed because if a family makes a dollar more above the set limit, they do not qualify for financial help from the government (NCCP, 2008).The poverty threshold is an inadequate measure of whether people are considered poor or not. Current poverty measures are flawed because it assumes how much a family spends and does not accurately include family resources such as Earned Income Tax Credit (NCCP, 2008). The way that the government measures poverty is based on outdated information that was set in the 60s. Because it has not been sufficient to keep up with the standard of living, those who are living in “high cost cities like New York and those who live in rural areas of the country” (NCCP, 2008) are barely getting by.
In the documentary “Poverty in America: Born with a Wooden Spoon” we get an in depth look about what it is like to live in poverty in America. In the early moments of the documentary we are informed that the poor people of America are a diverse group of people. These people can be put into sub group and each of them has certain different characteristics. The first and most obvious group is the homeless or otherwise known as the urban poverty. These people are scattered around inner cities and it is very easy to see how hard their life is and what kind of struggle they are going through. The next group is the group of situational poverty. Situational poverty comes about when something abrupt occurs in someone’s life that causes him or her to be forced into poverty. Examples of this can be divorce, losing ones jobs, or sudden illness. Another different kind of poverty is the working class poverty. These are the people that have jobs but make so little that they cannot get themselves above the poverty line. Next are immigrants they provide cheap necessary labor for the country to flourish but yet they are still consider to be apart of poverty. They often do not even work for themselves, they leave their homelands and live on their own just so they can get jobs to send back money home to their families. The middle class can also have people in poverty. They try to cover it up by getting themselves into loads of credit card debt and eventually fall below the poverty line to the
In the United States, income poverty is defined by the poverty threshold, developed in 1959 and based on expected food expenditures (thrifty food basket) for families of varying sizes. Each year the threshold is adjusted for the Consumer
In 2010, about 46.2 million people were considered poor. The nation’s poverty rate rose to 15.1 percent, whereas in 2009, 14.3 percent of people in America were living in poverty (Censky, 2011). That is an increase of 2.6 million people in 2010. In the United States, the federal poverty line – an absolute measure of annual income – is frequently used to determine who is categorized as poor (Ferris & Stein, 2008, 2010). Currently the government defines the poverty line as an income of $11,139 for an individual and $22,314 for a family of four (Censky, 2011). In sociology, poverty can be defined using two terms – relative deprivation and absolute deprivation. Relative deprivation is a comparison between people and social class. With
Ronald Reagan once said, “We fought a war on poverty, and poverty won.” I read the book, Dancing in the dark by Morris Dickstein. This book was about the great depression, and the impacts it had on American life. The traditional thought of poverty, people dying of hunger and people lying in the roads, has been erased. America has abolished poverty by the traditional standards but the thought of poverty and what it is has changed. In America we consider poverty to be spending all your money on bills, so you have no money left for food to feed your family. We consider poverty to be just being poor. One-Third of our population makes less than $38,000. This is not enough to be able to be above the poverty line. Anything below this
The poverty level in the U.S. is normally based on annual income figures. In 1995, a family was identified as poor if their income equaled $15,569. Adjustments, however, vary with inflation and family size. In short, by current U.S. standards, many poor people elsewhere in the world would be living near or in absolute poverty, surviving on just over $200-$500 per year (Funk & Wagnall 1).