Essay on The Causes of Poverty - Cultural vs. Structural

Wilson (2011) research proves that the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), contributed to the early decay of inner city neighborhoods by withholding mortgage capital and making it difficult for these areas to retain or attract families who were able to purchase their own homes. As the federal government created this program it excluded certain inner city neighborhoods. This exclusion created “redlining” which assessed primarily on racial composition. People who wanted to get out of public housing and purchase a home in a redlined neighborhood were denied proper mortgages, even if they had sufficient funds. Wilson (2011) says that such restrictions such redlining restricted many opportunities for building or even maintaining quality housing in the inner city, which in many ways set the stage for urban blight that many Americans now associate with black neighborhoods. Policies like this one were created to make blacks stay in the inner city

Different areas of the private sector took control of the racial segregation. Areas such as real estate, banks, labor, and toxic waste locations have participated in some way to continue the segregation and inferiority of people of color. “African Americans and other communities of color are often victims of land-use decision making that mirrors the power arrangements of the dominant society” (Bullard [1994]2004:269). The land-use decisions are used by the real estate industry. The real estate industry along with the bank industry have worked together in order to make it almost impossible for people of color to acquire their own homes. When individuals of color do obtain their own homes the real estate industry corrals them all into one zone. Then the banks charge homeowners in these zones high interest rates on the mortgages needed to maintain their home ownership. “Zoning is probably the most widely applied mechanism to regulate urban land use in the United States” (Bullard [1994]2004:269). When people of color are corralled into a neighborhood the quality of the neighborhood is diminished. The

Segregation and certain policies can also lead to a lack of resources. The segregation that remains in cities today started as a result of a formal practice called Redlining, which started back in 1943 with the National Housing Act. Lower class families of color were not able to receive mortgages to buy into the ‘nicer’ areas, which led a low chance to accumulate wealth, and to receive

One of the reasons they were “trapped” in neighborhoods was redlining. Bradford Hunt’s article reads, “Redlining is the practice of arbitrarily denying or limiting financial services to specific neighborhoods, generally because its residents are people of color or are poor.” The HOLC, Home Owner’s Loan Corporation, “color-coded” maps of the cities show the African American neighborhoods and white neighborhoods. This outline gave the redlined areas the impression of being an investment and insurance risky.

Evaluating the View that Poverty is Caused by Economic Inequality Rather than Cultural Attitudes and Lifestyles

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

and the advancement they had made in the 1960’s was starting to decline. The government has played a role in the intentional discrimination of African Americans such as redlining. Redlining is discriminatory system that created ratings often to blacks only declining them of home loans. In 1990 a study showed that 30% of blacks lived in an area 90% black and 62% live in area 60% black or more (Hodgson 179-180). To better emphasis how much inequality still existed within the government in 1981 to 1993 the average American’s income fell by 5% , the top 5 percent of tax payers income increased by 30% and the income of the top 1% increased by 78% (Hodgson 291).

all, 142). As stated by Swarns in The New York Times, “[home] ownership is a cornerstone of economic mobility”. It is difficult to change your economic status when not even able to secure a home for your family. Redlining did just that by making it difficult, if not impossible, for minorities to get homes and left them stuck in their downtown residences with no real way out, while those around them who could get loans fled (Chen, et. all, 142). These stranded and often less economically well off minorities were the residents of Americas first ghettos. This lead to a culture of poverty that even today is hard for those left behind to escape and is a direct cause of hypersegregation – minority groups are concentrated in areas the majority left (Chen, et. all,

Poverty is “the state or condition of having little or no money, goods, or means of support; condition of being poor” (Dictionary.com, 2017). Based off this definition poverty is a condition that can cause a cascade of cause and effect actions that is detrimental to families and individuals both physically and mentally. Haan, Kaplan, & Camacho (2017) completed a study on the correlation between social and economic status and health in adults in Oakland, CA. They found that the lower the socioeconomic class the higher incidents of diseases and deaths related to chronic diseases (p.1161-1162). Just being without money or little money was not the only indication of health indication, a person living in an area with higher poverty issues

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

Many of our nation’s families live under what is considered to be the national measurable line of poverty. Causes of poverty stem from a wide range of factors including, geographical location, education levels, and generational poverty. The effects of poverty can be detrimental to an individual’s psychological and physical health. In the following paper, we will examine the prevalence, impact, and causes related to families that live in poverty.

Bradshaw (2015) uses term child poverty to refer to the children who lack material resources. There are two forms of Poverty. One is coined ‘absolute poverty’. Where there is a definite shortage of available resources and it is about the same for everyone in that society. The other is ‘relative poverty’ is a form material disadvantage. This occurs when some their people do not meet the accepted standard of living that their government sets. Child poverty is the situation of the children is living in. This could apply to orphans being raised by the state or from poor families. The Children’s Commission states that poverty in Aotearoa as the exclusion from the “minimum acceptable way of life in one’s own society due to inadequate resources” (as cited by Chandra, 2015 p 79). Thus, New Zealand falls in the latter, poverty here is ‘relative’.

Poverty is the lack of the basic needs of life, including food, shelter, clothing and safe drinking water. For a person to live normally, it is important to meet a certain level of physical, social, and emotional needs. People who live in poverty have difficult time to achieve those as they are not welcomed in many places. Because of their low incomes, they have troubles in maintaining their health, hunger, education. Poverty has become a large issue around the world. It is something that many of us know about but we’re not realizing just how big of a problem it is. This paper will include basic information about poverty, its effects, facts and statistics which can make people aware and want to help reduce poverty.

A social problem, is “a general factor that effects and damages society”. It can be used to describe an issue or a problem within a certain group of people or an area in the world. Examples of contemporary social problems today include anti-social behaviour, drug abuse, and sexual abuse. Poverty is an example of a social problem that exists all over the world, and to different extents. In the UK, poverty has effected at least a third of the population, as shown by the Office of National Statistics, providing evidence that it is a massive social problem in the country. Tameside has a big poverty problem. 1 in 4 children in Tameside are born into poverty, and workers in Tameside earn significantly less than other workers in the rest of the North-West area. In addition, Tameside has the largest proportion of people claiming unemployment benefits compared to the rest of the North West of England.

People are dying every minute because of this terrible disease. No antidotes have been found to eliminate it. Poverty is like an epidemic with no antidote affecting the entire world. It has already killed billions of people, and will continue killing unless we do something to stop it. Have you ever thought what living in poverty is like? Seeing a shocking picture in which people were trying to survive gave me a whole different perspective. That image showed me one of the poorest areas of the planet where people were living under despicable conditions. They were working in sweatshops, collecting garbage and living in broken down huts in order to survive. A polluted river passes across from their humble homes, causing incomparable complication to their lives. I could observe the terrible conditions in which this people are working, fishing and collecting garbage. Not only pollution is shown in this photo, above of the photograph a bridge could be observed. I imagine the noise, and the dust that this little detail brings to their lives. That photograph made me feel angry at politicians because they could do a better job helping the needy. Since they were almost dying, I felt sad for the circumstances they live in. A sense of admiration for the way they are able to survive, gave me the strength to fight against this global scourge. The author of this picture is trying to convey a message, showing us poverty in all its faces and inviting us to be part of his fight against