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How can poverty realistically be solved
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For a group of people in every country, poverty is an unfortunate way of life. Without a doubt, those living in poverty would not live this way if there was a way to get out of it. Since most, if not all, of one’s income would go towards housing, food, utilities, insurance, and other necessities, it would leave very little to none at all towards the steps needed to gain better, higher paying employment. Those steps can include improving ones education to increase job prospects. One way state governments have chosen to aid those in poverty is through the implementation of welfare programs. These programs help those in poverty by providing housing, food, and/or money. This creates more breathing room and allows more of one’s own money and time to be put towards the proper steps for gaining the skills for better employment. However, how effective these programs are at lowering the poverty rate is limited to how much is spent on those programs. The effectiveness of a program that only gives those in poverty very little to help would be small, while a program that gives more, helps more. I theorize that countries that spend more on their welfare programs have a lower poverty rate than those that spend less.
To begin, we must define what poverty is in order to have a clear view of those who are considered impoverished. There are two main approaches to this. The first approach works in terms of absolutes. It assumed that there is a minimal standard of living, and that this standard is universal. This could be understood by the concept of ‘enough’. According to this approach, there is ‘enough’ food, clothing, and shelter, plus s few extras to get you by (Stein 1971, 5). One example of this is the concept of a ‘poverty line’. Those that f...
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...it could be significantly less expensive than in the US. The second option, and probably the overall best option, to improve one’s education is also very possible. The parent does not have to worry about losing money by not staying at home when it could be necessary. It also gives the child, through the allowances, a fair chance gain an education and not become impoverished as their parent(s) were, and reducing the future poverty rate.
Works Cited
Ozawa, Martha N., 2004. “Social Welfare Spending on Family Benefits in the United States and Sweden: A Comparative Study.” Family Relations 53 (April): 301-309.
Stein, Bruno. 1971. On Relief: The Economics of Public Welfare. New York: Basic Books Inc., Publishers
Smeeding, Timothy. 2006. “Poor People in Rich Nations: The United States in Comparative Perspective.” Journal of Economic Perspectives 20 (Winter): 69-90.
David K. Shipler in his essay At the Edge of Poverty talks about the forgotten America. He tries to make the readers feel how hard is to live at the edge of poverty in America. Shipler states “Poverty, then, does not lend itself to easy definition” (252). He lays emphasis on the fact that there is no single universal definition of poverty. In fact poverty is a widespread concept with different dimensions; every person, country or culture has its own definition for poverty and its own definition of a comfortable life.
Although poverty has minimized, it is still significant poverty which is characterized by a numerous amount of things. There are two types of poverty case and insular. “Case poverty is the farm family with the junk-filled yard and the dirty children playing in the bare dirt” (Galbraith 236)Case poverty is not irretraceable and usually caused if someone in the household experiences “ mental deficiency, bad health, inability to adapt to the discipline of industrial life, uncontrollable procreation, alcohol, some educational handicap unrelated to community shortcomings” (Galbraith 236).Case poverty is often blamed on the people for their shortcomings but on some levels can be to pinpoint one person's shortcomings that caused this poverty. Most modern poverty is insular and is caused by things people in this community cannot control. “The most important characteristic of insular poverty is forces, common to all members of the community, that restrain or prevent participation in economic life and increase rates of return.
Murray, Sara. “Numbers On Welfare See Sharp Increase.” The Wall Street Journal. 22 Jun. 2009. 20 May. 2012.
Jeff Grogger, Lynn A. Karoly, Jeff Grogger. Welfare Reform: Effects of a Decade of Change. New York: Harvard University Press, 2005.
Blau, J. (2004). The dynamics of social welfare policy. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, Inc.
Insular poverty, elucidated by Professor John Kenneth Galbraith in his 1969 essay, The Position of Poverty, refers to the collages of people who are poor because the designation of their lives trap them on ‘social islands’ where nearly everyone is living in these standards. (Galbraith 404) Poverty has flagrantly become a ‘back of the mind’ subject in America. The underlying question remains; is American society responsible for the uprise of insular poverty? Despite the "efforts" America puts off to relieve the world of insular poverty, American society is indefinitely responsible for its popularity due to the absence of will for the impoverished to climb out of the hole of poverty, the absence of opportunities given to poverty minority, the absence of compassion for the povertized.
Albelda, Randy. “Fallacies of Welfare-to-Work Policies”. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. Vol. 577, JSTOR Sept. 2001. 66-78.
Miller, William H. ?Surprise! Welfare reform is working.?Industry Week. ProQuest. Fordham University Library. New York, 19 Nov.2003
Everyone knows what the word poverty means. It means poor, unable to buy the necessities to survive in today's world. We do not realize how easy it is for a person to fall into poverty: A lost job, a sudden illness, a death in the family or the endless cycle of being born into poverty and not knowing how to overcome it. There are so many children in poverty and a family's structure can effect the outcome. Most of the people who are at the poverty level need some type of help to overcome the obstacles. There are mane issues that deal with poverty and many things that can be done to stop it.
Dolgoff, R. & Feldstein, D. (2003). Understanding social welfare (7th ed). New York, Allen & Bacon
Imagine yourself living on $14,000 each year under the poverty line. One might have trouble paying for child care, medical assistance, or even feeding their own children. One might struggle in finding a stable job or have a difficult time paying for social security income. The following paper will discuss, how welfare and poverty have affected the United States, what type of people are affected in the process, and how one can help provide cash payments for needy families who are under the given poverty line.
Poverty, also known as the silent killer, exists in every corner of the world. In fact, almost half of the world’s population lives in poverty. According to the United States Census Bureau, there were 46.7 million people living in poverty the year of 2014 (1). Unfortunately, thousands of people die each year due to this world-wide problem. Some people view poverty as individuals or families not being able to afford an occupational meal or having to skip a meal to save money. However, this is not the true definition of poverty. According to the author of The Position of Poverty, John Kenneth Galbraith, “people are poverty-stricken when their income, even if adequate for survival, falls radically behind that of the community”, which means people
There are two ways to categorize poverty from a sociologist viewpoint. Absolute poverty simply refers to the condition in which one is unable to afford the necessities of life, whereas relative poverty refers to the condition in which one is unable to afford that which is considered a normal standard of living in society. Absolute poverty is far more worse than relative poverty because they could quite possible not have a house or food to live on for everyday survival. There are basically five different categories in which each poverty stricken person can be placed in. The first category are those who are not able to work because they are too old, too young, disabled, or tied down by social responsibility. The second category are those who are able and qualified to work but can not find work. The third category are those who are not equipped to fill available jobs either because they are undereducated or because their skills have become outdated. The fourth category are those whose social and personal problems have brought them to a point of self-defeating discouragement. The last category are those who are underpaid, or unable to get a fair price for what they have to sell. After defining which people are in poverty, these categories can answer my question of why are they in poverty and how they can be helped.
Poverty is generally defined as a state of deprivation in well-being. The conventional perspective connects well-being basically to control over commodities, so the poor are individuals who do not have sufficient income or consumption to place them above some adequate bare minimum threshold (Lyman et al, 2004). Poverty is also tied to a particular type of consumption, for instance people may be considered health poor, house poor or food poor. The poverty dimensions can often be determined directly. For instance it can be measured by assessing malnutrition or levels of literacy (Alla...
Poverty is an issue dealt with throughout the world, but we are not all aware of its conditions. Poverty is a very serious problem around the world. Poverty is defined as the equality of poorness and impoverishment -- (the state of having little or no money and few or no material possessions). A question to ask ourselves is: “Should poverty be defined strictly in terms of monetary income, as opposed to some qualitative formula which takes into consideration styles of life as well as material possessions?” (Sheppard 13) Because there are so many different ways we can express the term poverty, maybe there should be a certain way we can determine poverty worldwide?