The Socialization Of Poverty : America

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.

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.

“One out of every seven children will be born into poverty in the United States” (“Poverty in the US”). People are not aware of the poverty in America, but the United States has one of the highest poverty rates in the world. Many of the reasons for this issue is a lack of available jobs, low wages and barriers to employment. A primary issue is the lack of information on poverty. People need to be able to know where to go to obtain information on this issue. The media is not covering poverty enough so the people in America can not be informed of what the nation is going through. In the United States, the poverty rate has continued to slowly rise throughout the years, which greatly affects a family’s lifestyle and even worse, a child’s future, due to people not knowing what to do about the problem.

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 is an epidemic that has swept the American nation many times over. Whether it be quietly lingering under the surface, or blatantly staring us in the face as it is in this current recession, it affects people across America on individual, community and national levels alike. While there are many causes and effects of poverty, it is important to view the issue of poverty and its causes from all angles when one seeks to tackle the problem. These factors include socio-economic status, mental illness, family values and work ethics, to name a few. In this essay, I will be examining these factors as they are discussed in the book, The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls (referred to as Glass Castle throughout essay), as well as in the article

Lately, America has been a cruel place. Its suppose to be a place where you make your dreams come true, where you can start over, and where you can accomplish many things. But you can't do these things if America has inequality every where you go. America's inequalities are bad jobs, homelessness, sexism, and racism, I could go on with the wrong in America but all I would be doing is boring you. My vision of America is a place where you don't have any of these inequalities and where you can accomplish everything you've dreamed of.

It has become common in the modern era of America to forget that many nations are poverty-stricken and lacking proper education around the world. In the United States, most children take a bus, are driven, or walk a short distance in mild weather to reach school. The buildings themselves are typically modern and clean, with an abundance of high quality coloring supplies, binders, and notebooks. Pakistani children get none of these luxuries, particularly girls. Occasionally, parents are able to send their children walking to a small school building with underdressed and underfed students where often no teacher is present, but even this poor form of education is a rarity. Girls fare even worse with a 2:3 ratio of females receiving education to

It is an undeniable fact there exists a growing poverty epidemic within American society that needs to be addressed. According to a 2012 report by the Cato Institute the United States government spends nearly one-trillion dollars every year to combat severe financial need through a total of 126 separate welfare programs. While this value by itself seems significantly large, perhaps to an even excessive extent, in reality it had little effect on the American poverty level, never al allowing it to drop below 10.5%. Even with these massive government expenditures aimed at elevating quality of life, for many households an escape from their low-income bracket is still vastly unattainable. Current statistics show that more than 40% of individuals born into the bottom quintile will remain there, failing to escape into a life of financial stability. Despite immense funding, in its existing state of organization, the system of aid currently offered by the American government to lower income household fails to effectively alleviate the living conditions of the impoverished due to its negligence towards payday loans and the other intangible costs of poverty, its temporary and ineffective solutions to fight hunger, and most significantly, its insufficient reliance on an unreliable and inconsistent enforcement from state jurisdictions.

So, when most individuals do not have access to resources in society in order to achieve necessary progress and therefore leads to greater social mobility. These individuals are most likely going to face some social injustices because they are below or on the poverty line. Because of the group's social position in society, it has led to several social injustices that include awareness-raising, improving access to medical care, education for children, employment opportunities and acceptable safe housing for families. Poverty is a social injustice because of economic policies it favors one class moreover another class. Social context known as the physical setting of which people were raised often is the building block of a moral society and are the reasons why poor people stay poor. In the book, there were a few stereotypes that were addressed to the population in poverty or the unprivileged. It was often seen that the families that had fallen into these types of situations were usually sing persons and one parent families, so because of their only being one potential wage earning it is not enough for a living (Rank, Mark 2005). Another stereotype is that the chances of an individual that failed to receive a high school diploma will be disadvantaged and will experience poverty during their lifetime than individuals with college degrees who were raised by wealthy parents (book). Along with education, many assume that poor people do not value education, while it is true the parents may not be involved in school activities it is because they are working to provide for their family. Poor people in the United States are often stereotyped in innumerable ways that impact those living in poverty and education falls along with the

Within not only our own country, but throughout the entire world, there is poverty. It is pretty much a fact of life, and the current way the U.S. government is attempting to resolve the problem is not the correct way. We are trying to fix a long-term problem with a short-term solution. Instead of welfare, there are much better ways to solve the problem of poverty.

Statistics indicates a rise in poverty levels in most countries all over the world. In America, more than 15% of the population lives in poverty and deplorable living conditions. Poverty and homelessness are particularly high amongst children living in the United States. Poverty is considered as the inability to meet one’s basic needs due to lack of money. It is state of deprivation in which a person lacks and is unable to acquire the normal monetary sum or property and other possessions. In the United States, the poverty threshold is used by the government to measure the level of poverty in the country. The government implements different policies and programs to eradicate poverty depending on the level of poverty. The policies and programs are meant to improve the welfare of the poor in the society and enable them to improve their social status. This paper will entail research on poverty and the policies and programs implemented to eradicate poverty in the United States.

Peter Singer wrote an article that appeared in the New York Times that proposed that the formula for world poverty is, “Whatever money you are spending on luxuries, not necessities, should be given away.” This seems like an extremely drastic proposal for America’s society today, almost the whole country measures happiness on luxuries that cost money. However, when one thinks about how people live in many African countries this is not a big stretch. If we give luxury money away it would result in several pros for the our societies, we would become a less materialist world, we would become more benignant toward our neighbors, and most importantly fewer parts of the world would be struggling as much.

While poverty rates among the elderly in the United States have significantly fallen since the 1980’s, poverty has simultaneously increased in the younger population, specifically those with children. Families with young children have a poverty rate that has steadily increased since 2003 (Hoynes, Page & Stevens, 2005). Currently, there are more than 14 million children living in poverty in the United States (U.S. Census Bureau, 2016). The geographic nature of poverty various across time and has significantly differed from centuries ago. However, it has consistently been found that children in poverty face more hardships academically and physically as they live in economically disadvantaged, chaotic, and under-resourced communities (Reardon

Poverty is a state of deprivation lacking the usual or socially acceptable amount of money or material possessions. (Poverty) Poverty in the United States is a well know issue just like in other countries. Even though the United States is a powerful country it stills has problems and poverty is a major problem in the United States. According to the United States Bureau, the poverty rate in 2016 was 12.7 percent, which is down 0.8 from the previous rate in 2015.

What is viewed as immoral changes as society changes. However, across America’s history, whatever is tied to immorality seems to also be tied to the perception of the poor. Stereotypes about what it means to be poor and certain behaviors of the poor have always had the connotation that these behaviors are immoral, that is, seen as deviant, unclean, and undeserving of any help. Indeed, “throughout American history- and arguably to this day- poverty has been blamed on poor morals and poor habits” (Wagner, 2005, p. 57). The idea is that people who are poor have somehow made themselves poor through their own moral misdeeds, and the only way out of poverty is to reclaim a pure and moral work ethic to rejoin society and to be deserving of public aid. As an example of the thread of the poor being tied to perceived immorality, the nineteenth century in America gave us poorhouses, which separated the “unclean” poor from those who worked hard for a living. In the twentieth century, a shift in society’s views of single mothers caused these single mothers to be viewed as immoral, resulting in a significant decrease in assistance given via Aid for Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), now Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), as part of the welfare reform that occurred in 1996. Both of these policies in American history highlight the public desire to shun those who are viewed as immoral, putting much of the stigma on the poor that actively inhibits the poor from