Reflection About Poverty

As poverty continued to spread throughout the United States, an explanation for poverty was to be expected. Generally, poverty is the lack of resources to supply basic needs. However, there are various competing ways to determine the reason for poverty. One view is individual-focused explanations which targets the personal responsibility of the individual in determined their place in a poverty-stricken life. While the opposite view is a structure-focused explanation that primarily blames the society’s structure.

Identifies skills, theories of change, program designs, partnerships, and ways of building schools where students achieve.

Recently, one of my classmates proudly proclaimed he wasn’t influenced by his parents or his background. I had to keep myself from exploding with experiences disproving this statement. Truly, so much of who I am today and who I will be tomorrow is because of my parents and background.

To understand poverty, it is crucial to understand the systems that are involved in creating it. Inequality is embedded in many necessary institutions within society, which provides the basis for poverty to occur. Without this entrenchment of inequality amongst institutions and systems within society, it is clear that poverty would look very different. This paper will delve into the concept of racialized poverty and how racialized minorities have a greater propensity to remain in poverty due to a lack of accessibility to high quality and equal institutions. By examining systems such as the labour market, education and healthcare , it will become evident that racialized minorties are not granted the same opportunities as people who are

What is poverty? www.merriam-webster.com defines poverty as “the state of one who lacks a usual or socially acceptable amount of money or material possessions. “Many Americans mainly think that poor people consist of being unemployed, lazy, lack of education, etc. I even asked a few random people at Capital University, why people are poor and many said lack of employment and others mentioned having a hole in their pocket and not being educated. Even though this may be true; many Americans lack the facts that many poor people are hardworking people who fail to make ends meet. Many Americans live under three different kinds of poverty, they consist of: Official Poverty, Absolute Poverty, and Relative Poverty. To best understand what all

Imagine not having access to clean water, nutritious food, and health care. Around the world as of 2005, over 1.4 billion people deal with this, or circumstances similar to this every single day (Shah 1). No nation is immune to poverty, and even nations considered to be wealthy, like the United States, struggle with poverty. Different factors like disease, literacy, and healthcare/sanitation can be used to observe poverty levels. Through a sociological lens, global poverty can be examined by theories and concepts, shaped by a person’s own experiences, but ultimately is a problem with an elusive solution.

What is poverty? The official definition from Webster’s dictionary is “the state of one who lacks a usual or socially acceptable amount of money or material possessions.” Why are people poor? According to the Washington Post, answers will vary greatly. “Poor people are lazy. Poor people don’t care about education. They’re alcoholics and drug abusers. They don’t want to work because they’re addicted to the welfare system.” Ruby Payne, an American educator and author who is best known for her book A Framework for Understanding Poverty and her work on the culture of poverty has conducted many studies about poverty and its relation to education. “Not only is poverty going to affect your lifestyle, it can cause children to behave differently and to have a lower academic performance.” (Payne, ?????)

I feel confident in saying that everybody has seen another person sitting on the sidewalk or hanging around a street corner asking for money. Images like that are likely to pop into your mind when the word “poor” comes up in conversation. Did a skin color come to mind as well? As a white American human, I could guess that a person of black skin color ran across your mind. Throughout the United States, the common depiction of poorness is a black person or family. What many of us fail to realize is that poverty can hit anybody. Not just people of color. Not not minority groups. You may think that it could never happen to you. You could be an educated, white American, and still be hit by hard times.The issue then arises, what is poverty and who does it affect?

Stories and factual experiences provide insight to readers that explicate the reality of any situation. The solutions to poverty become more attainable when accounts from others’ experiences are brought into consideration. In Jo Goodwin Parkers’ “What is Poverty?,” Lars Eighners’ “On Dumpster Diving,” Peter Singers’ “The Singer Solution to World Poverty” and Barbara Ehrenreich's’ “A Step Back to the Workhouse, ” each author expands on personal experiences and situations that depict various viewpoints on how poverty is perceived by society. These scenarios and experiences provide an accurate portrayal of the crushing effects from those who face poverty daily in order to illustrate its brutal

Countries suffer from several crises of poverty such as social, economical, political crises as well as financial crises. Debt calculated by fixation called poverty line, that is the smallest amount of income in a given nation. The dribble program is voluntary individually to reach and give a pathway out of poverty for the tremendously poor.The exact participant selection process to make sure that our contributor of people who live under less than 1.25 dollar per day. Working with relative power is additional time consuming and expensive than working with other populations.

So in my previous visual report about poverty I discussed the reasons why Poverty continues to grow and who that affects in our society. To begin off as I had stated in the visual report I live in an area of rural West Virginia where some of our small towns considered at 100% poverty levels. We were once an area thriving with the railroad and coalmines, our town was even once known as “The Heart of the Million Dollar Coalfields” is now mostly doctor’s offices and closed shops. Our town died with the coal mine closings and it will only continue to decline. Unfortunately poverty is an all too real thing for a lot of people in my area. I wanted to see if poverty is something that is seen in every state now, not just ours and to see as well who poverty really hit the hardest. The results I was able to fine were both surprising and informative. In my first line graph the information shows the number in millions in poverty as well as the poverty rates between 1959 and 2010. We see a large dip in the 1970’s after the great depression and higher numbers of people in poverty with the recession in 2010. The next question I had was who does poverty effect. This particular chart goes more into who and what ages that poverty hits the hardest. The information states that females head of households with no husbands, people under the age of 18, native born and whites are the hardest hit with poverty for our country. So, to follow up the previous

is a cause of deviant behavior such as crime, and also causes the poor to be marginalized from

Children in poverty are struggling alongside their families but with the help of the government and their dedication, it is possible to successfully get out of poverty. Government has been quite generous with welfare programs and truly helping poverty to get ahead or keep their homes. Welfare has been beneficial for all people in poverty with the Government paying for these programs. Without the underclass there would be a lack of people doing these jobs. Minimum wage is ineffective and although tried, raising it cause more problems for people in poverty. The functionalist theory explains why we need poverty to have a successful economy. Meritocracy explains the prime example of how to get out of poverty. Whereas, we can see that the Government is helping and losing a lot of money through these programs by wasting them. With these factors in hopes to help people in poverty and what people in poverty can do for themselves, it would be easy, in a functionalist perspective, to get out of poverty and become successful.

Poverty is a current social problem that is relevant to American society. Being an impoverished individual in this society places the individual and his or her family at a major disadvantage. According to the United States Census Bureau, 45.3 million American citizens lived in poverty in 2013. Poverty has an impact on society as well as the individual. Higher rates of poverty could lead to higher criminal activity. Individuals who are not sufficiently financially supported will most likely turn to crime in order to make the money that they need. Clearly, a spike in crime rates negatively affects our society as a whole.

One cost-effective intervention to prevent poverty in society today is promote and support education. According to Randi Burggraff “ children need to have the tools available to them in order to learn to go to high school, college, and beyond to gain the finances to support not only themselves, but also their families”. By having an education available for children and having people around them support and believe in the education of children can reduce poverty for many people and give these children the opportunity to live a wonderful life. The proper education a child can be constructed around taking care of themselves and their future families. Another intervention to help control or to end poverty is stretching over a life course is to