Poverty Within Developed Countries

Poverty is a vague and ambiguous term. Many people define poverty in many different ways. Some consider it the literal lack of monetary funds, while others consider it the lack of over-all ‘wealth’ which includes the opportunity to attain an education and hopefully, in turn, attain some form of monetary currency. For the sake of this paper, the definition of poverty which includes opportunities and education will be used because it includes various parts of being poor instead of focusing simply on monetary currency.

When the general public thinks of poverty, it thinks of poor starving children in Africa. Poverty does, however, not only apply to these foreign countries. Poverty in developed countries goes largely unnoticed by the media of the modern age. The majority of the population focuses their time and energy to alleviate the poverty found in under-developed countries such as Somalia, Sierra Leone, Botswana and various other poor countries. What goes unnoticed by the majority of the population, however, is that poverty can be found in their own ‘backyards’ so to speak. Poverty within developed countries such as Gary, Indiana tends to go unnoticed.

The question still remains: how can poverty exist within rich, developed countries? The majority of the population of the United States of America live happily above the poverty line. There are, however, various regions of the country in which a large number of the population live significantly below the poverty line. This poverty that is found in specific regions of developed countries is due to certain circumstances being present in that region which are not present in the rest of the developed country.

The city of Gary, Indiana is a prime example of a city living in pove...

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...ice Review 87.2 (2013): 250-268. Academic Search Premier. Web. 28 Oct. 2013. Luke Shaefer attended the University of Michigan and Kathryn Edin attended Harvard University, this is proof that they are highly qualified. They work for the National Poverty Center, which means they are likely unbiased in the article.

Terry, Don. "Where Work Disappears and Dreams Die." American Prospect 23.6 (2012): 48-61. Print. This article is about how the Steel mill used to be the reason why this city was growing and industrious, but when it shut down it left nearly the entire city in unemployment. The author Don Terry has written articles for Columbia Journalism Review as well and was on the campaign trail with president Obama. It is possible that his association with the Democratic Party may create a bias in the article, however it seems to be very fact based and this is unlikely.