Recent Trends On The Inheritance Of Poverty And Family Structure By Kelly Musick And Robert D. Mare

This is actually not the case, it is the opposite. Most poor people still want to get married, whether they have children or not. Their expectations about finances are very high. They want to be financially prepared before jumping into a marriage. They think marriages are reserved for those who can afford at least the essentials. Those essentials include a nice home and car, some savings in the bank, and enough left over for a nice wedding. The women of Jen’s generation are also set on being more independent than the generations of the past. In the past, women depended on the man to be the breadwinner while they remained at home to be caregivers to the children. Today’s women want to be financially capable of caring for themselves and their children despite what the man chooses to do. Jen stated that she wanted to be prepared, just in case something went wrong with Rick that might end in

Naomi Gerstel and Natalia Sarkisian, the authors, did a research on Americans’ life and wrote the article to describe the relationship of family between the different races. In the introduction of the article, Naomi and Natalia mentioned that political people focused on the ties between married couples and their children. In the society, people often hear that poor families were chaotic and their family tie was weaker because rates of non-marriage and single parenthood were very high. There were there two bar graphs at the top of pages to show Gerstel and Sarkisian’s examination on

Everyday in the United States there are families who struggle to make ends meet and struggle to fully provide for their families. Since the 1960s, poverty in the United States has only increased dramatically. It is said that one in six Americans today is living in poverty (What is poverty?). In this book, we learn about different families and their struggles. The information in this book describe instances about welfare, different areas of the population where there are more occurrences of poverty, and a few different families experiences of how they make it day by day to survive. Some of these common organizations that help families that live in poverty may include, food stamps, certain food programs (if

Based on the literature, the United States has one of the highest rates for child poverty than many other rich countries. Over the course of years, marriage and work seem to be link to child poverty and related to many policy debates. When it comes to “marriage” many people understood the norm to be a married couple with children but that has changed to single parents and those single females who give birth without being married to be the norm nowadays and highly increasing the risk of child poverty. According to Cherlin and Raley, divorce rates are high, cohabitation is steadily on the rise, and

Reeves, Senior Fellow, Economic Studies Co-Director, Center on Children and Families they state that “There is a growing marriage gap along class lines in America. This may be bad news for social mobility, since children raised by married parents typically do better in life on almost every available economic and social measure.” (Howard and Reeves para. 1) This first portion of the article talks about how not a lot of people are getting married and people not getting married may be causing a whole dilemma within social and economic mobility which in result leads to more families living in poverty. In addition, Howard and Reeves written “In 1950, almost 90 percent of children age 0-14 lived with married parents-- now that proportion has fallen to less than two-thirds of children. The gap in marriage is growing, especially in terms of childbearing. While marriage is struggling against cultural, social and economic headwinds in poorer communities, it is flourishing among affluent, well-educated Americans who are both more likely to marry and more likely to stay married.” (Howard and Reeves para 3.). In paragraph 3 of “The Marriage Effect: Money or Parenting?” they write about how back in the 1950s 90 percent of children grew up in a parenting household but now two parenting house has decreased than two thirds of the

Married families are shown to be more likely to be financially secure, while single parent families are more likely to be in poverty. There are two ways that poverty can be reduced in the US; through economic changes and social changes.

First of all, money is a big factor of poverty. Children that grow up in a poor family are most likely to become poor as well. Not having enough money can cause people not to do as much things as others with money can do. Not having money causes lack of food, health, and shelter. Growing up in poverty can cause people to not have enough resources to get an education. A common situation  in America is homelessness due to the lack of money people cannot afford a home, so they have to turn to the streets. People usually beg for money on the streets just to get by for a couple of days since they do not have any money.  Divorce can also cause poverty because if a couple separates that means less income coming home due to their separation. If a family cannot get used to the change in their family it can lead to poverty. Usually one parent stays with the children and the other parent does not help. This can cause the parent with the children to not be financially stable. If  people cannot pay for a doctor visit they put their health in risk. Without money you

Family structure is important for developing stability for a child. Its is also a factor in the way a child will themselves feel about the institution of marriage. Likewise, children from ‘non-normal' households are more likely to develop ‘nonnormative' attitudes towards family life. The divorce rates among the impoverished are higher than those of other classes. Higher than that are the divorce rates of African-Americans of the impoverished class. Rector states that "blacks have higher poverty rates, mainly because blacks have lower marriage rates"(Rector, 27 ).

The United States defines poverty for a family of four as being less than $16,036 per year, or $4,009 per person (Leone 12). People find themselves under this line for an innumerable amount of reasons. Some of these causes are under one's control and others are greater factors beyond an individual's power. Each family or individual person has unique and separate reasons for living in a state poverty. There is no way to try and define them all. Focusing in, three main topics arise that encompass the most predominant reasons for a person to fall into poverty. Education, family life and influence, along with the business cycle may work individually or together to cause poverty. These three leading

African Americans have come a long way in the last few decades. We have more rights, more opportunities to grow and prosper and more independence than ever before. But the same cannot be said for African American families as a whole. The African American family and community is in trouble (Tilove, 2005). These families are facing many issues today that are contributing to their break down. These factors include poverty, diminishing health, welfare, incarceration, the struggle to find housing and the challenges involved with providing children with higher education. The disintegration of families have gone on for too long and it’s time we do something about it (“Current Challenges”, n.d.).

The American family is shaped by the economic stratification of society and the opportunities afforded to each social class. Lareau and Cherlin discussed that the typical family encounters economic inequality that overtly affects individuals within households. Lareau has successfully conducted research and illustrated that different experiences vary among the middle class and lower class families by observing the daily life of children. The economy of the United States provides privilege for middle class families and constrains resources for those in the working-lower class.

Poverty has increasingly become a noticeable issue worldwide over the past couple of decades. With the middle class steadily decreasing, considerable amounts of people are becoming part of the lower class, and even more of our world’s population are beginning to live in poverty. It is important to understand there are different definitions of poverty, and that is largely determined by what each country’s government determines as the cut off of poverty, otherwise known as the ‘poverty line’. Although some people could live above the poverty line, and still be struggling financially, it goes unrecognized by most research collection. However, what was initially noticed around the 1970’s is that there was a significant rise in women’s poverty statistics. More female-headed households were living in poverty, and a majority of those women belonged to a minority. This recognizable trend has been deemed the ‘feminization of poverty’, which according research is not only a growing problem in North America, but several other countries around the world. Information gathered about this issue in the United States shows that female-headed households is by far the fastest growing type of family structure, and due to the fact there is a growing poverty level amongst this group, it now means that approximately half of the all the poor in the United States live in a women-headed family and household. (Gimenez, 1999, p. 336) The biggest question when is comes to this particular topic is why?

This review is formulated with scholarly sources and references based off of poverty in America. This disclosure is approached with a value free sociological approach, and it will give insight on the social causes of poverty and the effects it has on America. Poverty is a very controversial topic. Many will assume that people living in poverty are lazy, made bad life decisions, or that they are solely the reason for their predicament however, people living in poverty would argue that their are deeper issues for it. Poverty will be deeply explained and researched from both perspectives

Poverty is an issue that is faced by multitudes of people around the world. Poverty itself is defined as, “the state of being poor” (Merriam Webster). According to Sara S. McLanahan, of Princeton University, “In the United States, poverty is defined as not having enough income to pay for basic needs, such as food, clothing and shelter. Poverty is a family attribute. In other words, if a family is classified as poor, all the members of that family are also poor” (McLanahan, n.d.). The U.S. Census Bureau, in 2013 shows, “there were 45.3 million people in poverty” just in the United States (U.S Census Bureau, 2013). From those living in poverty, in the same year, “the ratio of the female poverty rate to the male poverty rate was 1.2---women were 20 percent more likely to be poor than men” (Mykyta, 2013, p. 2). Also, “of all people categorized as in poverty in 2011, approximately 56 percent were women” (Mykyta, 2013, p. 2). Sakiko Fukuda-Parr, director of the Human Development Report, portrays a simple truth, “women are poorer than men” (Fukuda-Parr, 1999, p. 99).

Single parent families, especially those headed by a female, differ greatly from married couple families in their characteristics. Single parent families are more likely to be poor, receive welfare, and contain young children. In 1990 female-headed households had a poverty rate of 33.4 percent while poverty rates for married couple and male-headed households were 5.7 and 12.0, respectively. (U.S. Bureau of the Census 1991a). As reflected by their higher poverty rate, the earnings power of women heading households is far less than that of married couples or male only