The Poverty Of The United States

Many individuals all over the world are affected by poverty. In order to completely understand the cause, the effect, and the solution to ending poverty, we must first understand the meaning of poverty. Poverty is the condition where an individual’s basic needs for food, clothing, and shelter are not being met (business dictionary). According to the World Bank Organization, poverty is also the lack of healthcare, education, information, and jobs. There are two general types of poverty: Absolute and Relative. Absolute poverty occurs when individuals cannot obtain adequate resources to support a minimum level of physical health. Relative poverty occurs when individuals do not

Poverty, the state of being extremely poor, exists all over America! There are several different types of poverty, and the causes of poverty. Most people think of poverty as just somebody who is homeless and has no job, somebody who has no money to support the basic needs of life, and wears ragged clothing and lives under a bridge. What people don’t know is there are people living in poverty that have jobs and make money but live so poorly that they are categorized with people that live in absolute poverty.

Poverty has always been with us from beggars outside the gates of Jerusalem to the mentally ill homeless woman in the park. America is known for our huge difference in culture and class. This is due partly to the dynamics behind the political decisions of this country. The president himself admits that America is more unequal than it’s been since the great depression and many of his own supporters say he has failed. America now has, by many standards, the lowest social mobility of all of the high-end countries, meaning that a child born into poverty is likely to grow up as a poor adult. This is surprising for a country that not only prides itself as being a middle class society, but as the society where anyone can make it and where

There were approximately 45.3 million people in poverty in 2013. This number went up 37.3 million since 2007. (DeNavas-Walt 2014, p. 12). The number of poor individuals is the largest it has been in the 52 years. In Ruth Sidel essay “Women and Children Last: The Plight of Poor Women in Affluent America”, she talks about the public misunderstandings about America's poor society. Women should be helped equally, but Sidel does not focus enough on women helping themselves. Sidel assumes that being poor just unexpectedly happens to the female population. In the reading she uses real life stories of women. One reoccurring theme is that the men in their life left them or fail to help them out with the children. Poverty includes more than single women with children. People that are elderly and can’t work is included, disabled and handicapped veterans or people in the army are included. Women make up some of the poverty population, but men makes up the other part. In 2013, there were 14,704,900 poor women and 10,990,100 poor men according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Poverty isn’t just surrounded around women; men and children are included.

The current poverty rate in America is 13.5 percent (US Census Bureau). That measures out to roughly 43.1 million Americans. What exactly is poverty? Poverty means not having enough money to meet basic needs including food, clothing and shelter. However, poverty is so much more than just not having enough money. Poverty is not having access to a doctor or medications you may need, poverty is not having access to a good education. Poverty can be the people who are barely able to pay for food and shelter and simply can’t afford other expenses such as car repairs, field trips with their children and any other extracurricular activity.

staggering? Poverty occurs when a person’s need for food, clothing and shelter are not being

Through interviews with welfare workers and recipients, Hays demonstrates the high costs welfare has had on the moral, economic, physical and mental well-being of poor women and their children due to what she considers to be the conflict between the two opposing aspects of reform: work values and family values. She believes that these conflicting values and the inherent weaknesses in the Act contribute to serious and ongoing problems for welfare recipients.

Public housing is another program that helps to provide a roof over a family’s heads for reduced costs. Rent in some places can be quite high and a family of four may find it hard even to afford a small 3 bedroom house without breaking their pockets.

Poverty has been an ongoing issue since the birth of this Nation. When one thinks of poverty the last people we think of are the ones closest to home. As children some are told “finish your dinner, there are starving kids in Africa”, but what about the starving children whom are in neighborhoods close to us? Poverty is everywhere, even the places that are thought of as wealthy. Poverty in America; a continuing issue.There are many different definitions of poverty. The United States Census Bureau states that

In today’s economy the need for people with college degrees is at an all-time high. With factories starting to turn to robots, the world now needs people to program the robots. In order for you to program a robot, you need to learn how to code; which can usually can only be done at a four year university. . If every American had some type of education beyond high school, Americans would be better off because more people would have higher paying jobs while poverty levels would go down, more family time, crime rates would decrease, and more jobs would come and stay in the United States.

There are many factors which contribute to poverty in the United States. The first of the governing factors of poverty is economic downturn. According to Kneebone (2010) and Desilver (2014), both the Great Depression and Recession led to increasing levels of poverty due to the lack of employment. Essentially, if companies are not making revenue, eventually they must begin laying off workers to compensate for losses. In addition, collapse of family structures of contributed to poverty. Rushefsky (2014) reports single-parent families, specifically those with female head of households tend to be in poverty due to low wages and or lack of job opportunities, requiring the dependence of welfare programs. Fundamentally, it becomes more difficult for families

The Reforms of public benefits for needy families in the U.S. and specifically single mothers, which took place in August of 1996, was an important step since its inception with FDR in 1935. Many requirements were imposed onto public benefits eligibility, such as work and income requirement and establishing a time limit for public aid. Effects of the reform were hard to ignore as it resulted in decreasing governmental expenditure and heavy program caseloads. However, the big debate about public benefits is of which welfare discourages work and it provided a golden plate those who built comfort in it. Although many researches show the reform has a positive effect on employment, earnings, and income of single mothers, but generally negative

A review of the literature indicated that in the U.S. the prevailing view of the elites was that assistance to the needy would only encourage idleness and other undesirable behavior and that social Darwinism would ensure that only the individuals with the best work ethic and moral character would prosper and reproduce (O’Connor, 2003). It also implied that those who have previously received public assistance generally tend to earn low wages and remain below the poverty level. However, many families were removed from welfare, not due to obtaining employment, but failure to comply, or they reached their sixty-month time limit and were terminated from the program. While others experienced barriers such as housing, childcare, domestic violence,

The book Evicted makes Arleen and other mothers appear lazy because of their dependence on welfare checks to be given to them. It’s obvious that Arleen does depend on welfare checks, however she’s not unemployed like the book says. Taking care of children is a job in its own, so the blame for single mother’s dependency on welfare check lies with the loss or abandonment of the father. Fathers who abandon their kids are the reason why we’ve noticed the feminization of poverty. With more and more moms being abandoned they must to pay an unfair amount of rent, food for her kids, and work outside the house. For any person, this is a tall order so no wonder we’ve seen an increase in women falling below the poverty line. Even though there’s programs

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).