Stereotypes Of Poverty

This week’s readings recap the poverty line and who falls below the poverty line. More and more people are becoming depended on public assistance because they are unable to make ends meet. There are many stereotypes and stigmas that associate with people who are below the poverty level. These include abusing the system, drug or alcohol users, lazy, etc. When in fact this misunderstood population is far from theses stereotypes. Much of the public believes that poverty families are large families taking in money when in reality “the average size of families living below poverty line is fewer than three” (pg. 247). The fact is we like to make stigmatize being on welfare as a negative thing. But recently in other countries we have learned they
Transitional poverty are those who are briefly or temperately poor. These include life changing events that cause them to be poor momentarily like divorce, job loss, etc. Marginal poor are those who are considered the “working poor” (pg. 251). Due to social institutions such as education level, lack of skills these people are stuck working in low income jobs an forced to stay in the poor community. Finally, residual poor are those who are going to stay in poverty for a long period of time. These people are dependent on welfare and as seen as the laziest population of society. Unfortuniantly there is a possible domino affect within these families because it’s unlikely for a child who comes from a residual poor family to get out of the poor instead they are most likely looped back in and the process repeats. So why is this? It’s because in the United States we make it extremely hard to receive and get off public
Individualistic explanations of poverty is split into three subcategories: genetic inferiority, individual characteristics, influential theory/ human capital theory. Genetic inferiority means that it was believe that you were poor because it was “in the blood” (pg. 255) meaning that you are poor because it runs in your family and only certain people are allowed to be rich. It was also believe that genetics played a part in how smart you are and certain people are always going to be intelligent and more successful than others. It turns into a form of control because we view the poor as uneducated and not as intelligent therefore they need to be dependent on the system to maintain order. Looking at induvial characteristics such as psychological problems which focuses on the belief that the poor have something wrong in their mind that make them poor such as drug abuse or mental health. It is believed that “those who fail lose confidence and begin it feel out of control of their lives, and this leads to future fail” (pg. 258). Most of which people who are poor are failing and it’s believed to have a connection to mental health. Human capital approach is the economist approach that explains individual contributions to their own poverty. This approach looks at the skills and abilities of the public and if you don’t have certain skills you are not valued in the work force. It’s a continuous struggle for