Poverty In The United States: A Research Paper

In my opinion, poverty is drawn by a line and that line is not invisible or obscured. Either you’re above that line or you are below that line. The definition of poverty is, “the general scarcity or dearth, or the state of one who lacks a certain amount of material possessions or money. It is a multifaceted concept, which includes social, economic, and political elements. Poverty seems to be chronic or temporary but most of the time it is closely related to inequality” (Helpful Dictionary). Poverty is just around the corner for millions of Americans. We have the ability to change it but I’m not sure if we have the aspiration or inspiration. Visiting different places in the United States, you start to notice little things about poverty,
This reality goes completely against what the American Dream is all about. America is supposed to be the land of opportunity. However, while doing research I found that mobility in the United States lags most other advanced industrial countries. The United States used to have this image of a vast middle class. There have always been the very rich and the very poor, but the United States has always prided itself on having a large and strong middle class (Fosler, 2015, Para 8). Unfortunately, that isn’t the case anymore; the middle class has been getting smaller and smaller. There has always been a gap between the top 1 percent and everyone else. While looking at the last 30 years, the gap has become enormous. The rich got richer and everyone else remained the same. Their income remained stagnated. The income growth distribution pay has completely changed. Your average American took up about 2/3 of the income growth distribution pie now they can’t even be found on the pie. A shocking fact that I found was that 400 of the richest people controlled more wealth than the bottom half of America, which is an estimate of 150 million people (Gorman, 2003, Para 4). There are small examples of some individuals that were born in poverty and are doing extremely well and are more successful than the average American. You would think this was a good thing and an example of the American Dream, but we as a society have many different views about how this occurs. Many believe that no matter how hard you work or how lucky you are, there are unjust economic issues that happen which prevents advancements in your life; it is called the glass ceiling. To reiterate, the collection of wealth at the top by the 1% isn’t all about dedication and hard