Frontline Two American Family Reflection Paper

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In preparation for this reflection paper I watched Frontline: Two American Families, read two peer reviewed articles, and reflected on the personal experiences I had with poverty in my own life. As I watched the families of the Newman’s and the Stanley’s grow over the course of twenty years I could not help but notice how their lives are a mere reflection of not just my life, but the lives of almost every family in America who struggle to put food on the table and clothes on their children’s back. This documentary served as a representation of many social issues, one in particular is poverty. A moment with the father of the Stanley household stood out to me the most. It was a moment when he was being interviewed at the age of sixty, still working himself to the bone to try to provide for his family. The interviewer asked him the question, “how …show more content…

Like these two families, I’ve watched everyone in my family end up under the curse of poverty, allowing me to come to the biased opinion that there is no way out. Before my research, I thought more towards the ideas of the structural causes of poverty, living with the fear that just like my family I may end up in poverty. The differentiating perspectives allowed me to see both sides of this social issue. Berg’s viewpoint made me realize that taking away welfare programs, may create an incentive for individuals to work harder if the welfare systems that they’ve use as a crutch were taken away. While Edmans argument on jobs with higher wages, gave me new insights on how having higher wages will help benefit those in poverty. My opinion on this issue is that the government should put money into more programs that benefit the people. One of this should include education, the average college student goes to school, only to come out thousands of dollars in debt. How can we be expected to get out of poverty when we go to college only to end up in

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