The Importance Of Ultrapoors In America

In Lisa Miller’s essay “Divided We eat,” she describes her usual morning breakfast that consists of fancy foods and claims that she is a food snob. She then goes into detail about what her neighbor's routine is like, and what Alexandra Ferguson’s morning routine is like. Food is typically a big issue for these families and the parents will usually spend hours thinking about how they will feed their families. Miller and Ferguson later discuss that some children don’t get enough eat, and some of these children are within five miles of them. Miller then tells us that seventeen percent of Americans are food insecure. The income gap has increased and now more Americans are becoming obese because of this.

Many families in America are barely making ends meet. Forty two million women are living in

These programs may include Welfare, food stamps (SNAP), and government housing projects. According to the authors, the results showed from the analysis of how many families are on food stamps is, in 2011 over 1.5 million households with about 3 million children were surviving on less than $2.00 a day, including a family member in the work force (Edin, Shaefer, 2016). It is amazing that these families are living on so little when on when many people spend more than that before they go to school, or work. For example, grabbing a quick breakfast before work can cost almost $7.00. The authors noted that they researched about a total of 18 families, but only 8 total are featured in the book.

There are no secret economies that nourish the poor; on the contrary, there is a host of special costs. If you can’t put up the two months’ rent you need to secure an apartment, you end up paying through the nose for a room by the week. If you only have a room, with a hot plate at best, you can’t save by cooking up huge lentil stews that can be frozen for the week ahead. You eat fast food, of the hot dogs and Styrofoam cups of soup that can be microwaved in a convenience store (Ehrenreich 253).

Americans have the highest standard of living of any civilization ever to exist. Our technology and ease of access to everything afford us lifestyles never achievable to all previous generations. Jobs, cars, and opportunities are equally available for almost everyone. Almost. As a result of the last recession there is an abnormally high number of people living below the poverty line and many more living on welfare. Many people in the United States fear that they cannot provide enough food to their families and barely have the ability to fuel the own cars to get to work. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the rate of poverty ceased to decrease about ten years after the implementation of anti-poverty

People are still living on $2 a day here in the United States. As one of the wealthiest countries in the world, how is it possible for people to live with this little amount of money? I know that I cannot. In $2.00 a Day, Jennifer Hernandez, a single mother with two kids, is a person who lives on $2 a day as she tries to survive and support herself and her kids in the collapsing economy. The minimum wage job for cleaning houses reinforces the cycle of poverty that Jennifer and her kids live in. This cycle of poverty reveals that there needs to be major changes to the economical infrastructure of the United States since the poor cannot get themselves out of poverty even though they actively look for work or have a job.

Obesity rates in the US are rising due to food insecurity. One in six people in the U.S. are food insecure, while two-thirds of adults and one-third Americans are overweight or obese.14 Studies have found that wealthy districts have three times as many supermarkets compared to the poor.15 Kevin Conocannon of the USDA noted in an interview that people in poorer areas sometimes have narrower variety of food options.16 SNAP recipients face barriers to achieving nutritious diets due to lack of availability in their neighborhood. Healthy food often comes with higher costs, so most people with lower income result to eating foods with lower cost and higher calories. According to a 2009 report by the USDA, as many as 23.5 million Americans live more than one mile from a supermarket with limited access to a vehicle.17 Food Deserts are particularly prevalent in low-income communities.18

So if the poor of today earn roughly the same in current dollars as those many years ago, how do they afford their “elevated” lifestyle? The answer lies in over 200 Federal and State programs designed to support them until they are able to thrive independently. The most popular include the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), Food Stamps,

For a nation of 323.1 billion people, it is astonishing to see the people of America unaware of some situations. According to The Center for Poverty Research, in 2015, an estimated 43.1 million Americans lived in poverty according to the official measure. We are not doing enough to help those in need. Of course there are places for people to get help but so many people are struggling. “In 2015, 12.2% of men lived in Poverty USA, and 14.8% of women lived in poverty” (The State of Poverty). As a nation, we could try to be more considerate to the people that need help. “Overall, the typical American defined as poor by the government has a car, air conditioning, a refrigerator, a stove, a clothes washer and dryer, and a microwave” (How Poor is America’s Poor?). Some people suffer silently. They may have all of these things but they will always be in need of assistance. Our government has ignored the poor people of America and it is time to take action. Already, there are food

As of the 2016 census, approximately 323.1 million people reside in the United States of America. 14.5% of those Americans living in poverty, meaning that 45.3 million Americans are affected by poverty, an immense increase from 8 million in 2008. 97.3 million people who occupy the U.S are considered low income and 41 million people struggle with hunger in the United States. 1 in every 2 people are considered poor or receive low income. Poverty is not equal among various demographics, for instance, in 2015, 12% of men lived in poverty in the USA, and 14.8% of women lived in poverty and among non-citizens the poverty rate is 22.8%.

This includes sleeping in parks, under bridges, in cars, or in shelters (overview). In the past year, over fifty million or every one in six people have been reported without food or with a shortage of food. This includes being forced to go to a soup kitchen for every meal of the day, or having to skip a meal to pay other bills (reporter). The amount of people who are without food is dramatically higher than those who are without a home. The amount of people considered homeless is very low compared to the amount of people without food. There are many reasons that a person can have a lack of food. One of the biggest reasons that a person can be foodless is the high cost of living. Since the financial crisis of 2008 the cost of living has increased and nobody saw it coming. One key example of this is the price of electricity and gas. The government has raised the price of living about ten percent from what it was in 2010 (cost). While many of the essentials have risen in price, some of the other living expenses have dropped. One example of this phenomenon is clothing. Clothing does get more expensive each year; the amount it has raised fluctuates from year to year. For example, if a shirt has raised ten dollars two years ago, then this year it may only raise five dollars (cost). Although that is a very rare coincidence, it does sometimes happen. The cost of living is way too high to live in a house on minimum

Food insecurity is an issue faced by millions of Americans every day, and the biggest group affected by this are working families with children. Food insecurity is so big that the United States government have now recognized it and provided a definition for it. The United States government has defined food insecurity as a household level economic and social condition of limited or uncertain access to adequate food (USDA.gov). Food banks and anti-hunger advocates agree that some of the causes of food insecurity are stagnant wages, increase in housing costs, unemployment, and inflation of the cost of food. These factors and unemployment have cause food banks to see a change in the groups of people needing assistance. Doug O’Brien,

Unfortunately, it was estimated that roughly 1.2 billion people in 1993 lived in extreme or absolute poverty, that which Robert McNamara regards “‘a condition of life so characterized by malnutrition, illiteracy, disease, squalid surroundings, high infant mortality and low life expectancy as to be beneath any reasonable standard of human dignity’” (Singer 219, 220). These estimates can be projected at nearly 2 billion today. A large majority of the people living in absolute poverty resides in underdeveloped countries. Among the nearly 4.4 billion people in these countries, “3/5 lives in societies lacking basic sanitation; 1/3 go without safe drinking water; 1/4 lack adequate housing; 1/5 are undernourished, and 1.3 billion live on less than $1 a day” (Speth 1).

While there are malnourished people in America, it is much worse all around the world, mostly in third world countries. There are three predominate reasons why third world countries are hit hard with malnutrition, 1) poor families aren’t given government help, 2) difficulties with economy and 3) higher food prices. (“2012 World Hunger…”) As stated in the website “2012 World Hunger and Poverty Facts and Statistics,” in the world there are 925 million hungry people, most of them in Asia, the Pacific and Africa. These people live on $1.25 or less a day. Minimum wage is $7.25 in the U.S., and most people work 8 hours a day, so that means they would be getting fifty-eight dollars a day. It would take someone in a third world country about forty-seven days to make what someone makes in America in 8 hours. And most of them spend that money on food and medical needs, but $1.25 is not enough. In the United States if a family doesn’t have enough money for medical help, they can still go see a doctor, but in other countries it’s very different. More than 30,000 children die per year from preventable sickness because they can’t go see a doctor. And as for food, Americans have access to food every hour of the day. The wealthiest 5th of the world consumes 86% of all goods, as stated in "Child Welfare League of

The 2015 Statistical Analysis Poverty Level Data report shows in the United States, there was an increase in which families’ are able to provide food per person within their household. After the devastating financial and economic crisis in 2008, families have been in financial detriment for years trying to maintain consistency in providing food, support, and shelter. Not until the government 2015 report, there were clear evidence of a sufficient rise in food surplus in low income families since 2008. According to the governmental statistical report, 14% of households were suffering from food deficiency. In other words, 17.5 million households, approximate one out of every seven homes could not provide nourishment on a regular basis. This estimate is down from the last statistical data recorded in 2011 at 14.9%.