Poverty In America Essay

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Poverty is the state or condition of having little or no money, goods, or means of support; condition of being poor. An author for United States Census Bureau said, “In 2014, the official poverty rate was 14.8 percent. There were 46.7 million people in poverty” (DeNavas-Walt and Proctor 2015). It has become a crisis effecting individuals and family’s world wide. Many individuals that have been raised or fallen into poverty struggle to ever get out. A major issue the causes poverty in America is the inequality. Every American lives a different life than their neighbor, but they all seem to assume they know what every other person is going through. Poverty is very dangerous for the individual suffering’s health and safety. There are many poverty …show more content…

Although most of the people in America do not suffer from starvation many do stuffer from undernourishment. Almost half of the world lives on less then two dollars and fifty cents a day.
Poverty is nothing new, it has been around for many decades. People can be struck by poverty any day of their life. Job losses, illnesses, accidents, and other tragic events can effect anyone’s financial situation. The culture of poverty, which is a false assumption people have of those who are poor and poverty stricken. This belief states that, the poor are where they are because they have low standards and poor morals. They like to be poor because they don’t pull themselves out of poverty. They teach these beliefs of laziness and bad morals to each new generation and perpetuate poverty. That is why individuals that were raised in poverty seem to be more likely to be stuck in it their whole life, rather than those who were not. People that are raised in poverty often lack the funds it takes to educate them to succeed in life. In this century, a high school education is usually required for jobs, and most careers require a college degree. The United States of America is a country that does not have free …show more content…

There are many cases where individuals become ill and they receive many medicals bills in which they can not afford, but they have to get the surgery in order to live. If people do not have good insurance and help from programs, such as Obamacare, it may require them to spend more money out of pocket. People can get illnesses or in accidents randomly, causing them to no longer be able to work, without a job there is no income. Unfortunate situations can cause people to become homeless and hungry. Which is how the culture of poverty can affect the world, because people assume that individuals are just lazy if they are poor or do not have jobs, but that is not always the case. When the economy dropped people got laid off, and sometimes even fired. This is a system blame for why individuals became poverty struck because without funds to provide jobs for individuals, people will suffer from lack of money. According to the authors of Social Problems, “A second reason for using the system-blaming perspective is that the subject matter of sociology is not the individual – who is the special province of psychology – but society” (Eitzen, Zinn, and Smith 2014: 15). People that have jobs and work hard for their money are often first to judge those who do not work because they

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