...Is Childhood Poverty Increasing Inequality In America? Is childhood poverty increasing inequality in America? The test of our progress," said Franklin Roosevelt, "is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have too much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little." It is by that great test that we must measure our progress in the years ahead. John F. Kennedy, 1960' (Lindsey, pg 34, 2009) Children born in America are promised equality and opportunity. How well is America keeping its promise to 1 in 4 children living in poverty? The Bible teaches we are created in God's image (Genesis 1:27). Each child is born with God's DNA but not all children grow up in a world conducive to developing their God-given potential and dreams. Not all children are given equal opportunity. "Their economic and social development will be primarily influenced by the opportunities their parents, community, and society provide" (Lindsey, 2009, p. 3). What defines childhood poverty? The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) defines child poverty as "a child is deemed to be living in relative poverty if he or she is growing up in a household where disposable income, when adjusted for family size and composition, is less than 50% of the median disposable household income for the country concerned" (Garofalo, 2012, p. 1). The United States Census Bureau for 2011 qualified the poverty threshold for a family of four as $22,281 annual income...
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...CHANGES 2 Abstract This report tells of the ratings of poverty in the United States and America. It tells how poverty is constantly changing the lives of men, women, and children on an everyday basis. It speaks of things we can do as a society to help support and change the lives of those living in poverty. Poverty And It’s Everyday Life Changes 3 Poverty is a very emotional and important issue in America. It is a fact that all social inequality creates poverty. There are generally two types of poverty that are discussed, which are relative poverty and absolute poverty .Relative poverty is the lack of resources of some people in relation to those who have more. Absolute poverty is the lack of resources that is life threatening. It has been reported by “Global Stratification “, that about one billion human beings, which is one person in six are at risk of absolute poverty (Sociology, Thirteenth Edition). In this wealthy country of the Unite States families still go hungry, and live in in adequate housing, and suffer poor health because of serious lack of resources. In 2002, it was reported by the Census Bureau that poverty in the United States was had reached a high of 35 million people (Rector and Johnson, 2004). It is fact that we as human beings must understand to not just focus on numbers, but the living conditions of our fellow citizens that the government deems to be poor. Many families lack of food, clothing, and reasonable shelter would be reason enough to suggest...
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...RUNNING HEAD: Children & Poverty in the United States Children & Poverty in the United States Kylon D. Shipp SOC120 University of Phoenix In the United States, there are millions of families with children who live at or below the poverty guidelines set by the federal government. The federal poverty income level is around $22,050 a year for a family of four, and it takes about twice that amount to cover the basic needs and expenses of a family of this size (National Center for Children in Poverty, August, 2010). Although most parents are employed, the low pay wages these days tend to leave these families in a constant struggle to provide for their children. Most states have programs that help families that have a lower income take care of their children’s basic needs such as food, shelter, and medical expenses. However, children who grow up in poverty may still be affected by poor health and mental health issues. Poverty has also been known to affect a child’s ability to learn and leaves them at a greater risk for emotional, social, or behavioral problems. Research shows that poverty is the highest threat to a child’s well-being (National Center for Children in Poverty, August, 2010). Since 1964 when the war on domestic poverty was declared, the United States has spent hundreds of billions of dollars helping large and small towns across the country. They have repaired old homes, helped people find jobs, and also provided free food for those who are living in...
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...issues that have continued to have a big impact on the lives of many people in the United States of America. Poverty and discrimination are closely related and intertwined since one always leads to the other and vice versa. Poverty is a state of having little or no resources such as money, goods, or means of support necessary to sustain life. Those who are stricken by poverty do not live a comfortable live, but merely survive. Poverty occurs in almost in all parts of the world. There are two types of poverty namely absolute and relative poverty. Absolute poverty is due to lack of basic human needs such as food, shelter and clothing. It is a life threatening condition. Absolute poverty is rampant in developing nations in Africa such as Zimbabwe. Relative poverty is whereby a comparison based on resources is done to determine the level of poverty. Discrimination refer to the differential treatment of people based on various factors such as their economic status, level of education, race, gender, ethnic group any other group that people may be associated with. Although America has undergone tremendous transformation since the era of Martin Luther King, discrimination is still very rampant in United States. Sociological theories of poverty in America Poverty is a complicated social phenomenon, and trying to discover the cause of poverty is equally complicated (Mason, 2006). In America the sociological theories and reasoning attributes poverty to personal failure of an individual...
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...A sweatshop can be defined simply as a shop or factory that employs workers at very low wages, working for long hours and in poor working conditions. Most of the workers employed in sweatshops are not offered benefits, and in most cases, are illiterate. Sweatshops are not only bad for the workers and the countries they are located in but also bad for America and the rest of the world. The common argument put forward by supporters of sweatshops, like that in the article by Nicholas Kristof (2009), is that they help unskilled workers gain skills and then further develop the economy. While this might appear to make sense on paper, a deeper analysis proves otherwise. Those who make this assumption fail to understand that some of the sweatshop workers...
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...Social stratification exists in America because the wealth and power belongs to a small portion of the population. Wealthy people possess an enormous amount of power over the political system and are held in high esteem by our society. There is a general feeling that those who are wealthy and powerful are superior to the average person. Social stratification involves not only socio-economic inequality, but the belief system held by people in America. A stratified society exists when there is an unequal distribution of wealth, power and prestige. In American society, political power and wealth are not distributed equally (Johnson, 1996). Paul Krugman is an economist and author of the book, 'The Spiral of Inequality' (1996). Krugman believes corporate greed, the decline of organized labor and changes in the way goods are produced are the causes of the growing social and economic inequality in the United States (Anderson, 2003). There is an unspoken general agreement in America that certain occupations deserve higher wages and more respect. Professions, such as physicians, lawyers, athletes and actors, are held in high esteem, whereas custodians, waitresses and trash collectors are considered professions that are not worthy of respect or praise and require minimal skill or intelligence. America most definitely needs skilled physicians and lawyers, but it also needs custodians, trash collectors and others who perform much needed tasks in order for society to thrive and function...
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...Americans were either lower or working class citizens including European immigrants. In The Bitter Cry of Children by John Spargo and The Promise Land by Mary Antin, the two authors discuss the similarities and differences of the economic and social societies of the working class as well as the immigrants in America. Today, these documents are valuable to us because it describes the events in the 1900s like children working in dangerous situations and how new immigrants were settling into America. Both Spargo and Antin describe the 1900s as a time where two similar, yet different, classes wanted to head towards the same goal, despite their different starting points. These two documents were grouped together because they both described the economic struggles and the social similarities of each class. John Spargo illustrated the working class using children who worked in mines since their parents were unable to make enough money. Similarly, Antin...
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...be described as a infant whose parents make very little income, and barely have enough to survive our everyday necessities such as bills, food and shelter.The child then suffers from their parents not having much to provide, and this causes the infant to grow in a mental state of depression, which causes the child to lack development in school and struggle through out their life. People who are considered poor usually suffer from low paying jobs that pays less than 30,00 dollars per year (Poverty In United States) or having no job at all. Poverty has been in America for a long time now, and is increasingly growing due to losses of jobs in America. This is causing families to lose their homes and suffer from hard living conditions, such as living in the streets and shelters. In this essay I am going to explain how poverty affects the younger youth and their physical development....
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...Poverty: Who are the poor in the United States? When most people think of the United States they think, the land of the free and the place were dreams come true. Living in the US, there is no limit for advancement and opportunity. No man, woman or child should ever go hungry or want for anything. Here in the US we have more cars on the road and more skyscrapers in large cities than anywhere. In small towns, there are wheat fields and cornfields for miles and miles. As an American living in the US, when we think of poverty we think of countries like India where women wash their clothes in ditches alongside main roads in Mumbai. In countries like Africa Ethiopian men, women and children may go days without a meal, sometime weeks. Examining third world countries and their poverty level, does it cross our minds that poverty really exist here in the United States? Poverty levels in the US do not compare to the poverty level in third world countries. Poverty in a third world country is measured in the terms of absolute poverty, where a person lives in conditions he/she does not have the means to meet the basic needs in life. Their living conditions could be life threaten. Here in the US, poverty level is measured in the terms of relative poverty. According to the article reviewed by Thomas J. Corbett entitled “Poverty” (2008), “Relative poverty is the condition of having fewer resources or less income than others within a society or country, or compared to worldwide averages....
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...Education and Poverty in America Historically, education has been considered the “great socioeconomic equalizer” of American society, allowing all children an equal opportunity to succeed. Furthermore, a high-quality education is considered both a human and civil right however, educational experiences for children living in poverty continue to be substantially separate and unequal. In the United States, poverty is a common social, political and economic issue that has troubled Americans for years. Despite being better off today nearly 50 million Americans, including more than half of which are children currently live in poverty. In his poem, “Cause I Ain’t Got a Pencil,” Joshua T. Dickerson describes the damaging effects poverty has on...
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...This journal analysis will describe, in a sociological context, my personal experience of being best friends with someone who was poor. My analysis will use 2016 Newman 11th edition textbook and a 2013 article from the BBC named “The Children Going Hungry in America” by Duncan Walker. My analysis will provide how I used Newman’s concepts of poor and absolute poverty to sociologically explain how my personal experiences relate to Walker’s article. When an individual is poor they don’t bring in enough income to pay bills, own a home or have enough money to eat daily (Newman 2016:298). Duncan Walker explains how children are going hungry in the United States, and how for two young children Kaylie and Tyler, they are extremely poor and their Mother...
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...Payton Gates HIS 135 01 Argument Draft March 27, 2016 The progressive era was a time in America where a variety of responses to the economic and social issues arose. However, there would not be any responses if no one were to show the problems to the rest of America. What caused these problems was the hasty transformation into industrialization and urbanization which was introduced in the 19th century . As a result of urbanization and rapid industrialization, childhood was something ignored, and child labor became a huge issue than both adults and children didn't understand or find a solution to. During the Progressive era, many effective actions were made to better children's poor lives and lifestyles, and the societal outlook on childhood changed from ignorance to realizing the issues of poverty and child labor, and the effects they had on everyone. A large issue that came from industrialization was that children of that time period up until near the end of the progressive era, were expected to basically become adults. Children from as young as eight were working and taking care of their families. In source two, the image is of mill workers in 1912, where children can be seen of nearly all ages, and none of them with shoes or decent clothing. This is a perfect example of how young workers were and how much they actually received from working. Since industrialization was one of the easiest ways to give an abundance of people jobs and wasn’t well regulated, the working...
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...Juvenile Offenders Paper Race, Ethnicity, Social Structure, and Crime/CJS/221(BSGZ1HW7T1) August 31, 2015 Race v. Crime Early in this nation, crime was mostly blame on the poor, especially the ones that were new comers to America. It may appear dangerous because of the fact that many of these individuals came from different cultural, ethnic and religious backgrounds. In the late nineteenth century, each wave of immigration that brought newcomers were threatening a new crime wave. From the beginning, juvenile justice engage in class favoritism that resulted to poor children being process through the system while middle class children were excused. Poverty with dangerousness has continued until the present day. It is especially expressed with the fear of gang behavior and violence from African American and Hispanic poor children. A number of black males are committed to civility and law abiding behavior. Often they have a hard time convincing others of this, because of their skin color, age, gender, appearance and general style of self-presentation. However, young women of color, and the minority girls often grow up in the very different from those of the white females. Because of poverty and racism, which go hand in hand, these girls are force to participate in violence, drug abuse and physical abuse. They are also to be likely attracted to gang membership as well. Overall, female arrest rates tend to increase slightly compared to males. Juvenile Crime Percentage Rates ...
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...Most times, these poor people are primarily presented as African-American. An Oxford University survey was conducted to find how news media distorts societal perception, specifically regarding African-Americans. Results of this poll found that, “Overall, African-Americans made up sixty-two percent of poor people pictured in these [news] stories, over twice their true proportion of twenty-six percent,” (Gilens 3). Because of this statistic, the hypothesis of their poll was to identify whether or not African-Americans would be overly represented in the stigma and perception of the average American, their results showed that, “residents of Michigan and Pennsylvania where African-Americans make up thirty-one percent of the poor, believe that fifty percent of the poor are black...In Washington and Oregon, blacks constitute six percent of the impoverished, yet residents of these states believe the American poor are forty-seven percent black… one percent of the poor in Idaho, Montana, Wyoming...are African-American…yet survey respondents from these states think that blacks account for forty-seven percent of poor people in the country,” (Gilens 4). People have been undoubtedly been enchanted by these false representations by media outlets, and those states that possess low overall population rates of African-Americans, rarely seeing people of such descent, are still so strongly...
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...Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America Carmen Arvelo Northwestern State University SOWK 3350 Barbara Pierce PHD, LMSW, ACSW March 04, 2013 Abstract The author Barbara Ehrenreich sets out on her quest to decide for herself if the working women in America are able to survive on low paying jobs. Accomplishing this will mean living on only what she makes to pay the rent, groceries and gas. The author makes up her mind to seek employment in three different cities around America, Key West, Florida, Maine and Minnesota. Her reasons for choosing each these cities varies and she realizes very quickly that making ends meet in any of these cities will not be easy to do if not impossible on a low salary. The author meets numerous people, including Holly a maid in Maine that she befriends. Ehrenreich’s view of low wage workers helps her understand their situation around the country as she comes to the realization that one cannot afford nutritious food, a protected living enviroment and provide for health insurance all on low earnings. My paper will discuss the repercussions of low wages on the working poor as well as how they are viewed by society. Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America The book Nickel and Dimed begins with the author, Barbara Ehrenreich (2011), contemplating how she will take on the task of living with limited money and assets as she has a Ph.D. in Biology, but her focus became social change. Ehrenreich must ground rules for her research...
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