Since Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society, much has been done to address poverty in the United States. Over time, there have been both changes and continuities. One continuity is that politicians have kept Medicare, Medicaid, and the Education subsidies from LBJ’s plan largely intact. One change is that LBJ’s plan focused on directly providing money to those in poverty, while later plans focused on getting people jobs.…
Borstelmann notes, “The gap between rich and poor grew wider, startlingly so at times, and the bulk of the vaunted American middle class saw its economic security begin to slip away” (Borstelmann, 306). With the U.S. economy during the time period placing a premium on education, college graduates and those with advanced degrees saw their income rise. At the same time, due to globalization, lower numbers of unionized workers, and higher divorce rates, workers with high school diplomas saw a drop in their income while political leaders sat by and did nothing to mitigate this growing trend toward inequality. The U.S. had the most uneven distribution of wealth of any industrialized nation, where poverty rates reached 15 percent in 1994 and remained at 13 percent in 2008. Borstelmann notes “the rate was 18 percent for minors; nearly one in five American children were growing up in poverty in the new millennium” (Borstelmann, 308).…
There were many improvements to America and one of those is the proportion of families living in houses that lacked plumbing declined from 20 percent in 1960 to 11 percent. Also, during the 1960s, black family income rose 53 percent (Mintz). According to the official poverty rate, the proportion of our population below the poverty line was dropping quickly. In the years of 1959 and 1966 the proportion of our country living in poverty dropped from 22.4 to 14.7 percent. Since then, it had reached an all-time low of 11.1 percent in 1973 then it went back up shortly after (Eberstadt).…
Mollie Orshansky’s definition of poverty is the official definition used in the United States, defined as the “condition of people who cannot afford the necessities of life” (Principles of Microeconomics, 306). We measure poverty by the estimated minimum level of income needed to secure the necessities of life. On the other hand, income inequality is when “one group receives a disproportionate share of total income or wealth than others” (Principles of Microeconomics, 306). Supply and demand in the labor markets is what influences wages, which leads to very high income for some and very low incomes for others. Those with low income enter a poverty trap where antipoverty programs are “set up so that government benefits decline substantially…
Reichman, N. E., Teitler, J. O., Garfinkel, I., & McLanahan, S. S. (2001). Fragile families: Sample and design. Children and Youth Services Review, 23(4–5), 303−326. Ruggles, P. (1990). Drawing the line: Alternative poverty measures and their implications for public policy. Washington, D.C.: Urban Institute Press. Seefeldt, K., & Anderson, N. (2000). Inside Michigan Work First Programs. Michigan Program on Poverty and Social Welfare Policy Report. Available online at http://www.fordschool.umich.edu/research/poverty/pdf/insidemich_prtc.pdf Seefeldt, K., Pavettti, L., Maguire, K., & Kirby, G. (1998). Income support and social services for low-income people in Michigan. Urban Institute Publication. Available online at http://www.urban.org/url.cfm?ID=308028 Schmidt, L. (2004). Effects of welfare reform on the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program. Ann Arbor, MI: National Poverty Center Poverty Brief #4. Schmidt, L., & Sevak, P. (2004). AFDC, SSI, and welfare reform aggressiveness: Caseload reductions versus caseload shifting. Journal of Human Resources, 39, 3−812. Tiehen, L. (2002, December). Use of food pantries by households with children rose during the late 1990s. Food Review. U.S. Bureau of the Census. (2006). Current Population Survey, Annual Social and Economic Poverty and Health Statistics Branch/HHES Division. Washington, D.C.: Author. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Adminsitration for Children and Families, Office of Family Assistance (2006). Temporary assistance to needy families, separate state program—Maintenance of effort, aid to families with dependant children, caseload data. Available for at http://www.acf.dhhs.gov/programs/ofa/caseload/caseloadindex.htm Winston, P., Angel, R., Burton, L., Cherlin, A., Moffitt, M., & Wilson, W. J. (1999). Welfare, children, and families: A Three-City Study, overview and design report. Available online at www.jhu.edu/~welfare Zedlewski, S. (2002). Are shrinking caseloads always a good thing? Assessing the New Federalism, Short takes on welfare policy, Vol. 6. Washington, D.C.: Urban Institute.…
Social inequality has been evident for many years as the growing inequality between poor and rich teens has only grown worse throughout countries in North America and Europe. America has the second largest population of people in poverty from a survey of 34 different developed countries.The poor should be made a priority of the government because…
Flash forward to today, America has over forty-three million people that struggle with food security and over one-third of these people are children (Hauptmann, Cole). In terms of poverty, America is slightly worse as over forty-four million people are beneath America’s poverty line. While America has it way better than most other countries that have huge problems with hunger and poverty, America is definitely not perfect. The systems set in place in the 1970’s to alleviate hunger and poverty in America are now overtaxed and misused. Over 25% of federal disability claims were found as unnecessary and seemed to take advantage of only minor…
One set of facts that are given are that by 2003 despite liberal predictions that the welfare reform would push an additional 206 million more individuals into poverty, the U.S Bureau of the Census reported there are now 3.54 million fewer people living in poverty, and some 2.9 million fewer children who live in poverty currently than in 1995. It is also stated that poverty among black children are at the lowest in history. It is estimated that there are 1.2 million fewer now than in the mid 1990’s (Rector,…
In our failed efforts to put an end to poverty in America, it is still remains alive and well, leaving millions of Americans to subject themselves to strenuous acts just to feed themselves and their families. The problem of persistent poverty is a complex one that makes people living in America finding themselves unable to make ends meet, for themselves in the competitive, through no fault of themselves.…
The time of the reconstruction era was full of new advancements to the industrial revolution many immigrants traveled from their homes of poverty and poor conditions to experience a better life for their families. The dream of the immigrants was that of achieving the successes of their dreams. Instead what the immigrants found was that of a vicious cycle of poverty.…
Even though some people think this problem can easily be solved. It's a terrible thing our country faces each year. Because Peer pressure is a problem many young kids face. The impact of drugs in the communities and poverty and how it changes lives. There are numerous elements that play a hand in the increased number of violent acts. I had to say poverty is the worst of them all.…
Poverty in the United States today has many faces. There’s the pleading face of a middle-aged man on a city street holding up a sign that says “Hungry, Need Help.” There’s the anxious face of a young child in a schoolroom somewhere, whose only real meal today will be a free school lunch. There’s the sad face of a single mother who doesn’t have enough money to buy clothes for her children. And there’s the frustrated face of a young man working at a minimum-wage job who can't afford to pay his rent.…
Smeeding, T. M. (2005), Public Policy, Economic Inequality, and Poverty: The United States in Comparative Perspective. Social Science Quarterly, 86: 955–983. doi: 10.1111/j.0038-4941.2005.00331.x…
This shift can be seen in the TANF’s restrictions that encourage people to find jobs as well as another outcome of the 1996 tax reform, the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). The EITC provides sizable tax refunds for low income workers. While this program is decidedly beneficially to the working poor, the unemployed cannot benefit from it (Edin, Shaefer 2015: 8). The end of the AFDC combined with the implementation of the TANF and EITC has led to the “unintended consequence” of the rise of extreme poverty (Edin, Shaefer 2015: 158). It turns out that by focusing almost solely on the working poor while making the welfare reforms in 1996, the poorest of the poor, families making less than $2 a day per person, suffered the most. The number of American families surviving on an income of $2 a day has been increasing since 1996, and the cause of this increase can be directly related to the fact that the AFDC “was no longer catching families when they fell” (Edin, Shaefer 2015:…
In 2012 during his State of the Union address, President Barack Obama announced, “A minimum wage worker who works full time year round does not make enough to be considered above the federal poverty line” (Cooper). According to Dr. Sherry Kasper, an economics professor at Maryville College, the federal poverty line for one single individual is around $11,500 a year (Kasper). Since President Obama stated that full time minimum wage workers do not make enough money to meet the requirements to be above the federal poverty line, there are tons of people who make less than $11,500 annually and struggle financially to support themselves, let alone enough to support a family. Therefore, because the minimum wage so low, America has millions of people living in…