Poverty In America

There has always been discussion and debates as to why there is poverty in America and that it should not exist because we live in a developed country that has one of the largest economies in the world. So why is it that poverty is still such a big issue that we face, and more specifically, why does poverty seem to affect minority groups (African-Americans and Hispanics) more so than the majority group (of European Descent/Whites). Social capital refers to the norms of reciprocity. This reciprocity allows for mutual benefits to each party, and “is dependent on trustworthiness of the social environment and the extent of obligations held.”(Coleman 102) Poverty and the associated problems persist in the communities, as discussed by Massey and

So in communities where there is no closure in the network, there is also no trustworthiness being established, nor is there obligations to hold, which are two components necessary for gaining of social capital (Coleman 106). A closed network established collectiveness because all individuals in the network are connected and communicate with one another. So if they see an individual doing something that is not okay, they will all come together and try to stop that behavior, therefore establishing the norm that it is not okay to behave in such a manner. This builds trust and obligation to each other in the community to “look out” for one another. There tends to be trends of closed networks in higher income communities, which is what accounts for the establishment of norms in their society that are not crime related, and encourage the opposite of that. There is more social capital, where people help each other and everyone benefits, in these communities and therefore more human capital, money (Coleman 101-107). However, in communities where there is no closed network, there are no norms established (Coleman 106), and therefore we see “higher rates of crime, property abandonment, mortality, and educational failure”(Massey 351), which are there “norms” in that community. According to Massey, “blacks are confined to small numbers of segregated neighborhoods”(Massey 353), where there are closed social networks are therefore negative “norms” are established because there is no collectiveness in what is acceptable and what is not. That is how negative stereotypes are formed about these individuals, and even if they would like to move out of they face “housing discrimination”(Massey 354), so efforts to move out of the communities that are poverty stricken are challenged. If there is no