PEER DRAFT (10/19) - Poverty in United States
In A Path Appears who’s author are Sheryl and Wedunn talk about many local and global Social Issues that are still there out there in the world and poverty in the United States is one of them. Poverty is an urgent challenge for the world. It is a persuasive human condition of being unable too obtain or provide a standard level of food, water and/or shelter. In the United States there are more than 47 million of Americans, around 15% who live below the poverty line. Many solutions have been discussed that could potentially decrease poverty but it seems like an unrealistic goal.
People looks up to the United States as the Land of Dream, as the perfect country but poverty stays an important issue: “ Impoverished Americans may own cars and watch television, but in the twenty-first century poverty remains a fundamental part of life in the United States and some other Western nations.” (pg. 46) Poverty has been in the United Staes for a long time, for about more than 50 years, since 1959.
Even though poverty is still present in The United States it hasn’t changed. The Census Bureau released it’s recent data and things haven’t improved in the past year. For years, critics have said that the means of measuring poverty in the U.S is overly simplistic. They add that in the system we live in, they ignore forms of income such as social security and unemployment, food stamps, tax credits, price of couple services, such as health care, the costs of childcare.
An article talks about how economic growth normally reduces poverty. If the economy was healthy, poverty wouldn’t exist. A healthy economy will generate income for everyone and will balance itself out. One republican named Reich disagrees and in his quote he explains that even thought economy has increased 147 percent in the late 1970s, poverty remains around 15 percent, which is higher than in the early 1970s.
Living in poverty has numerous effect on individuals. The five effects of poverty are on education, crime, low social mobility, extra social spending and child development. In A Path Appears, Sheryl and Weduun discussed with the researchers impact of a hierarchical social structure on a child’s brain and this is what they got from it: “It’s important to note that child poverty has anatomical consequences that can be seen in brain scans. When researchers scanned the brains of five-year-olds as they performed a battery of cognitive and linguistic tests, they found that children’s brains function differently depending on the socioeconomic status of their parents. Kids from poor families had less brain specialization, particularly in areas important for language development.” (pg. 54) The authors are highlighting that growing up poor is bad for your brain. Researches found that child’s brain is affected by the socioeconomic status of their parents.
One article completely opposes to poverty, they explains that a shocking large amount of people believe that poor people are the way they are because they were chosen to be poor. Most rich people would argue that they worked for what they have and the poor should look for a job. In their mindset, they believe that if poor people start to work hard like they do, they would no bet in this situation. The problem with that evidence is that, they are being offended by the believes that rich people have because their life isn’t just as easy as theirs. Rich people don’t feel responsible for them and that it isn’t their business.
Sheryl and Weduun heard and disagreed on this quote: “Americans sometimes hint that it’s not worth saving people’s lives in poor countries because then they’ll just have more kicks: Until families curb the number of children they have, the sad truth is that there’s no reason to try to saves lives from malaria or TB or hunger.” (pg.128). They disagree because they explain that people have large families because they expect some children to die. They believe that there is hope for poor children to stay alive. The authors explains that we have to do a better job in making contraceptives available, developing contraceptives that cheat and effective. They add that to deal with the population pressures is to reduce child mortality and support family planning and education.
I do believe that some solutions could potentially decrease poverty. Increasing employment is one way to reduce poverty. Money doesn’t help poverty but giving jobs does. Sheryl and Wuduun talk about one of the reasons how poverty could be decrease: “We also think that some of the most important kinds of assistance are those that create jobs so that the poor can earn their own way too a better life.” (pg. 128) The poor need productive jobs that lead to higher income. Ending mass incarceration is a huge one because the United States hold almost one quarter of the world’s prisoners. Now days, many employers refuse to hire people with even a minor criminal records, and many parolees are locked out of housing, credit and even education. One of the reason it’s rate of poverty is high is because of the overall immigrant in the U.S have substantially higher poverty rates than non-immigrants. Immigration reform will give immigrant families a chance to have a better life.
I totally agree on how jobs could potentially decrease jobs and the same time grow tighter as a community. It does sound unrealistic because it’s easy to say to get “a job” but not always keep people out of poverty. The reason why is because people earn different minimum wage. Getting an employment is a challenge but surviving is more important. Also one thing that people don’t realize is that the job market isn’t accessible to everyone. There are many barriers that prevent people from getting jobs like having any kind of illness, disabilities, race, age and/or sexual orientation. All these contribution affects the changes of people that live in poverty to get a job. There is between 70-90 percent of people who have serious illness are unemployed.
In this period of time that we live in, poverty may not be gone in couple of years but it could always decrease if we work together as a community. There are specific steps to all the solutions that could reduce poverty. We could start by creating and improving the accessibility to jobs and incomes.Then investing and implementing agricultural programs. For example China helped 800 million people out of poverty since 1978 which was a strategy to eradicate poverty. Removing barriers to equal access to resources and services. Encouraging countries to engaging in trade as a path out of poverty. Trading is the key to growth and prosperity. Lastly, improving the management of water and other important natural resources. It is necessary for the poor to have more equitable access to those resources to be easier for them to manage their resources.
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