The state of poverty in America today is abysmal. According to the United States Census Bureau, 14.8 percent of the population, or 46.7 million people, lived in poverty in 2014 (Carmen DeNavas-Walt, 2015). That number has been on the rise, especially since the last recession in 2008. While America’s poverty level is on the rise, other countries have found ways to reduce their poverty level. Brazil, for example, has reduced its poverty level by half after a decade of its program called Bolsa, Familia, which reduced short-term and long-term poverty through direct and conditional cash transfers to poor Brazilians (Ceratti, 2014). From 1980 to 2010, China has reduced its extreme poverty rate from 84 percent to 10 percent (Towards the End of Poverty, …show more content…
2013). What can America learn from Brazil and other countries that have reduced poverty? Who should have to pay for bringing up America’s poor? These questions have to be answered in order for America to begin reducing its poverty rate. In order to answer those questions about helping America’s poor, America’s poor must be defined. People are defined as impoverished for those earning less than $18,552 for a family of three or less than $23,834 for a family of four. As mentioned above, 14.8 percent of the population was living in poverty in 2014. Of the 45.3 million people living in poverty as of 2013, 27.2 percent are African American, 23.5 percent Hispanic, and 29.1 percent Native American (Center for American Progress, 2013). Compare that to the reported 9.6 percent of the population who is white and in poverty. This illustrates a great divide between minorities and whites in America as whites are a majority of the American population yet represent just about 10 percent of the nation’s impoverished. Diving further into the numbers, 28.4 percent of adults have a disability on top of being impoverished. These people likely fell into poverty as a result of their disability, unable to continue work while also facing huge medical bills. People making the federal minimum wage, $7.25 an hour, live in poverty as their annual earnings fall way short of the poverty line. According to a Pew Research publication, 3.3 million workers earned at or below the federal minimum wage, representing about 2.6% of all wage workers. A disproportionate amount of those are young, 50.4 percent of the 3.3 million were aged 16 to 24. Most were white and about half of the total were white women. Finally, a large part of those who earned the minimum wage were part time employees. Occupations of minimum wage employees include food preparation and service workers, sales employees, and grounds workers. (Desilver, 2014)As seen through the numbers, those who are in poverty are often minorities yet minimum wage workers are mainly white. In 2015, the poverty level is $20,090 for a family of three (2015 Poverty Guidelines, 2015). Assuming two working parents and one child living in Santa Clara county, the income required is over $60,000, or three times the poverty line of 2015 (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2015). Therefore, the poverty level is not an accurate picture of actual poverty in the United States as many who make at or above minimum wage are not even close to meeting the cost of living. Raising the minimum wage to a living wage has often been cited as a way to reduce poverty in America. First, the living wage and minimum wage need to be defined and differentiated. A minimum wage is a number set forth by a local, state, or federal government that is the bare minimum an employer can pay an employee for work. A living wage, however, is a number calculated through the consumer price index to find amount of money the average person needs to earn to pay for the average things a person buys. The minimum wage, at least the federal one, needs government approval to officially change but a living wage can constantly change as it is not regulated by any government. The living wage is constantly on the rise with inflation while the federal nominal minimum wage hasn’t been changed since 2009 through an act of Congress (Minimum Wage Question and Answer, 2015). The real minimum wage, however, has dipped year by year as the cost of living has risen over time. Raising the minimum wage to a living wage has sparked much controversy and debate. Opponents of a minimum wage often cite a neoclassical model which states that if the cost of labor increases, supply of labor would increase as more people would be willing to do the work at the increased price, while the demand for labor would drop as businesses would be less able to pay workers a higher price while keeping profit margins. This difference in supply and demand results in a surplus of labor, or what is more commonly known as unemployment which is scary for a lot of people to hear. However, real world data often shows quite the opposite of what theoretical models show. A study of various fast food stores in Pennsylvania and New Jersey found that when New Jersey rose the minimum wage, the stores in New Jersey had an increase in full time employment whereas Pennsylvania saw a cut in full time employment (Card & Krueger, 1994). Additionally, United States Department of Labor, a letter sent to President Obama by over 600 economists stated that there was “evidence now showing that increases in the minimum wage have had little to no negative effect on the employment of minimum wage workers, even during times of weakness” (US Department of Labor, 2015). Both the study done by Card and Kruger as well as the analysis of hundreds of economists illustrated the fact that raising the minimum wage had little to no negative effect on employment. This directly contradicts the theoretical model as it stated that raising the price of labor would cause unemployment. The model to follow should be the one from real world data, meaning that the minimum wage should be increased as it gives actual data that can be analyzed rather than just a model that would function in a specific economical setting. Increasing the minimum wage to a living wage would have benefits to our nation’s spending as with more earnings, people can ween off of welfare and eventually, welfare could disappear entirely, freeing up much of the federal budget for other investing like education and infrastructure or cutting taxes across the board. The economists who sent the letter to Obama also found that “Research suggests that a minimum increase could have a small simulative effect on the economy as low wage workers spend their additional earnings” (US Department of Labor, 2015). However, some may argue that the economists did not account for who would pay the costs for a minimum wage increase and if it is the consumers, that prices would inflate accordingly, negating the effect of raising the minimum wage. The fairer solution to who should pay for the raise in minimum wage is to have businesses take the cost of raising the minimum wage as they have stockpiled huge amounts of money for very few people at the top. However, a more feasible solution would be to pass on the price to consumers as consumers are much less likely to be concerned about a price hike. The price change doesn’t even have to be a huge one. The Huffington Post found that raising the cost of the average trip to Walmart by $0.46 could result in a $12 minimum wage for the employees at Walmart. If Walmart were to pay for such a raise, it would cost them $3.21 billion a year (Fairchild, 2013). Raising the minimum wage would do a great deal to help those who are earning very little to make more money to ensure food is on the table or that there is a roof overhead, but there are other ways to help improve the lives of the lower and middle class than just raising the minimum.
A 2 working adult, 2 children household in Santa Clara County would currently require an income of over $70,000 a year to just sustain themselves (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2015). Where does that money go? The biggest cost by far is housing at just under $20,000. Housing prices over the years have boomed while the purchasing power of minimum wage has decreased. A bigger focus on low cost, but good quality, housing rather than continuing to build up sky rise apartments in the middle of the city would greatly increase the affordability of housing for those making very little. Another big cost to families with children, especially if both parents are working is childcare, which in this situation is about $10,000. Before kids are able to attend school and even sometimes while in school, parents who work have to make sure their kids are taken care of and cannot afford to leave a job, or even take time off, to care for their kids. Subsidizing childcare, especially early childcare for those before preschool, would also have a huge impact on the costs for families. The final big cost for families is food, which also takes up about $10,000 for that family of four. According to Feeding America, 48.1 Americans, 32.8 million adults and 15.3 million kids, living in a food insecure situation (Feeding America, 2014). Increasing funding for programs that combat hunger would go a long way in helping low wage families make ends
meet.
...nt of $764 and a staggering 43% cannot afford to purchase an average priced home ($140,422). With that being said, over 8,000 families are on waiting lists for subsidized and affordable housing. Many things can prevent someone from housing such as poor credit histories, unresolved debts, and criminal backgrounds. Without affordable child care or dependable transportation, families have a greater challenge of moving towards autonomy.
After substantial decreases in the 1990s, poverty rates stopped their decline in 2000 and have actually started to again creep upward. The great conundrum of how one simultaneously alleviates the multiple causes of poverty has become a central obstacle to poverty reduction. Into this debate comes author David Shipler, a former New York Times Pulitzer Prize winner, with an aptly titled look at the state of poverty in America today, The Working Poor. Shipler's book is more anecdotal and descriptive than analytical and prescriptive. Yet it is a valuable portrait of poverty in America, just as Michael Harrington's landmark book, The Other America, was in 1962. While he does not offer many concrete solutions, Shipler provides readers with an intimate glimpse of the plight of the working poor, whose lives are in sharp contrast to the images of excess w...
As stated by Franklin D. Roosevelt, “the test of our progression is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.” Many people may agree with this statement considering that the United States is such a wealthy country and in 2012, 46.5 million people were living in poverty in the United States and 15% of all Americans and 21.8% of children under age eighteen were in poverty.The honest truth is that many people do not know the conditions this group of people must live in on a daily basis because of the small number of people who realize the struggle there is not a great amount of service. In the article Too stressed for Success, the author Kevin Clarke asks the question “What is the cost of being poor in America?” and follows the question by explaining the great deals of problems the community of poverty goes through daily by saying, “Researchers have long known that because of a broad reduction in retail and other consumer choices experienced by America's poor, it is often simply more expensive to be poor in the United States.
Poverty is not just an issue reserved for third world countries. Instead, poverty is a multifaceted issue that even the most developed nations must battle
Everyone knows what the word poverty means. It means poor, unable to buy the necessities to survive in today's world. We do not realize how easy it is for a person to fall into poverty: A lost job, a sudden illness, a death in the family or the endless cycle of being born into poverty and not knowing how to overcome it. There are so many children in poverty and a family's structure can effect the outcome. Most of the people who are at the poverty level need some type of help to overcome the obstacles. There are mane issues that deal with poverty and many things that can be done to stop it.
Low-income neighborhoods in California are consistently known for falling behind in test scores, graduation rates, and most recently highlighted by the press: college enrollment. For decades a variety of solutions have been proposed to come up with a solution based off the belief that equal opportunity in this nation can only be determined by how hard an individual works towards success. Public school’s finances in California come from federal, state, and local levels. Many federal and state funds have faced budget cuts throughout the last decade, but, 57% of the funding public schools use comes from the property taxes paid by the surrounding neighborhoods. Californians are well known for their diversity, being home nearly 39 million residents,
Insular poverty, elucidated by Professor John Kenneth Galbraith in his 1969 essay, The Position of Poverty, refers to the collages of people who are poor because the designation of their lives trap them on ‘social islands’ where nearly everyone is living in these standards. (Galbraith 404) Poverty has flagrantly become a ‘back of the mind’ subject in America. The underlying question remains; is American society responsible for the uprise of insular poverty? Despite the "efforts" America puts off to relieve the world of insular poverty, American society is indefinitely responsible for its popularity due to the absence of will for the impoverished to climb out of the hole of poverty, the absence of opportunities given to poverty minority, the absence of compassion for the povertized.
The American dream is impossible for the more impoverished because over the years poverty rates have been increasing. The richest country in the world still has more than 12% of its total population, and almost 20% of all children under the age of 18, unable to meet, let alone be guaranteed coverage of basic needs. With that said the nation has fallen apart in the last 25 years. America has faced economic insecurity and it is up to us to change it. Furthermore, the three main issues why poverty in America continues are the high cost of living, a great percentage of people living (below the poverty line) and the economic inequality that the impoverished face.
Poverty is a prevalent issue that many Americans face and it has been a serious problem over centuries. Every year there are people at risk of hunger. Combating poverty is not an easy task; there are many underlying issues that need to be addressed. Fortunately there are policies in place to assist with in decreasing the negative effects of poverty; however, some of the policies may cause people to become more dependent on government assistance. As a result it may cause a rise in taxes to support these policies and programs. Poverty is very common and widespread around the world. Unanswered questions that arise in regards to poverty are what can be done to resolve it, what are the causes of poverty, and is it possible to eliminate poverty entirely. Based on research and my personal experiences, government aid and housing are some resolutions to decrease poverty.
People in America often suffer from poverty and the treatment that comes with it, throughout their everyday lives. The question raised is why are poor individuals dehumanized by high structures of power? Some people with a higher income feel like they have a choice and a real recourse to justice rather than a lower class individual. They also believe that they are entitled to the world and their opinion matters because of their financial status versus someone who doesn’t have material things. Lessin’s and Deal’s film , Natasha Trethewey’s Memoir, and Bell Hooks’ excerpts, depicts that the poor are often dehumanized and neglected by structures of power, such as the government and media, because of their lack of money and education, however some of structures of power are ignorant to how the lives of poor people really are.
This comparison shows how poverty levels, in recent years, are plateauing with around 15% of the population living below the poverty line. The perpetuation of this issue suggests that poverty, unlike a recession or a brief economic downturn, is a persistent issue that continually affects our global society. But what does poverty or impoverishment mean? The definition of poverty is more than a simple state of hardship but rather a time economic turmoil. The specific poverty threshold varies from state to state but on average is $12,082 for one person and $24,257 for a family of four (2012 US Census Bureau). For the individual living alone, the poverty line would mean living on about $30 a day; for the family of four, the poverty line would mean about $16 a day per person. And with this daily dollar amount, people must pay for housing, gas, electricity, heating, food, child care, education fees and more. By looking how much needs to be paid and how little they actually have, it becomes clear how their lives are a struggle for basic survival. Poverty tends to affect certain demographics of people more than others. Amongst ethnic groups, poverty rates are highest amongst Black Americans at 24% with Hispanic Americans following at 21%
In 1990, Schwarz (1990) stated about one in five American families lived beneath the poverty line. According Lein (2013), it is estimated that as of the beginning of 2011, about 1.46 million U.S. households with about 2.8 million children were surviving on $2 or less in income per person per day in a given month. This constitutes almost 20 percent of all non-elderly households with children living in poverty. About 866,000 households appear to live in extreme poverty across a full calendar quarter. The prevalence of extreme poverty rose sharply between 1996 and 2011(Lein, 2013).
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
In the TED Talk, Dr. Robbins stated, that “20 percent of children live below the poverty line in America.” This was not surprising, so many children are living
Poverty is an undeniable problem in America. In 2014, 14.8 percent of the United States was in poverty (“Hunger and Poverty Fact Sheet”). There are more people in the United States than it seems that do not have their basic necessities. In an