preview

Wealth And Poverty In The United States

Decent Essays

According to the United States Census Bureau’s 2016 report on Income and Poverty, in 2015 there were 43 million American people living at or below the national poverty threshold (12). For individuals this meant earning an annual salary at or below 12,082 dollars, with families adding on 4,160 dollars for each additional person (43). Poverty can be defined simply as economic deprivation on an individual or a family, however its causes and effects are each respectively far-reaching and complicated. Specifically, the effects of living in poverty can be detrimental to an individual’s physical, mental, and emotional health. Living in poverty can also impact various aspects of a child’s development. Eliminating poverty seems like a lofty goal, but …show more content…

While personal circumstances play a role in determining if a person lives in poverty or not, social stratification is a defining force in dictating the rates at which poverty are more prevalent in certain groups. According to John Iceland, a professor of Sociology and Demography at the University of Pennsylvania, social stratification can be defined as, “a set of social and economic institutions that generate inequality and poverty” (80). Generally social institutions determine who is impacted most by poverty. Different groups are exposed to poverty in widely different ways and for different reasons. The impacts of these social institutions range from dictating how employers hire new employees to how much an individual is paid. When employers review different potential employees’ applications and use generalizations based on race, gender, or sexual orientation to determine whether to hire an individual these social institutions are in play. Economic institutions refer to the model of economy where a certain group controls the means of production and thus controls the majority of resources. Economic institutions can also refer to the trend of Globalization, in which companies contribute to job insecurity by shipping thousands of low skill jobs overseas for cheaper …show more content…

The Great Recession of 2007 that lasted until 2009 greatly increased the number of unemployed and impoverished people. The length of the recession and the amount of time it took for America’s market to recover and for the nation’s unemployment rate to decline contributed greatly to the current rates of poverty. Those who do not face job insecurity were instead faced with the expensive cost of living, and families living in metropolitan areas were often hit the hardest. A report released by the Economic Policy Institute breaks down the average cost of living for an American family of four to be around 48,778 dollars per year, with costs that include housing, food, childcare transportation, and health care. While families in urban areas faced and additional 30,000 dollars in living costs (2). Families that make around 20-30,000 dollars a year found themselves unable to meet all the costs needed, thus contributing to the number of families considered to be the working

Get Access