Poverty: causes and consequences (GRADED DISCUSSION)

Read chapters 1 and 2 of Poverty, By America. Write 2 paragraphs answering the following questions:

• Matthew Desmond claims that the US government spends billions of dollars assisting poor Americans. However, poverty continues at the same level. Why does the poverty rate remains stable and the number of poor people does not decline? How does Desmond answer this question?
• Do you agree with him? Why?

• Notes From Chapter 1 of Poverty, By America

  The poverty line: food X 3. Created by Mollie Orshansky at SSAThe story of Crystal Mayberry (a pseudonym): mental illness, child abuse, more than 20 foster care and group homes, 5-year living with her aunt, SSI. Mental illness: bipolar disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, reactive attachment disorder, borderline intellectual functioning.Poverty is not simply a matter of small incomes.

  • Poverty is about money, of course, but it is also a relentless piling on of problems. (p.13)
  • Poverty is pain, physical pain. (p 13-14)
  • The lives of the poor are marked by violence, gun violence. 8 in 10-gun victims nationwide survive the attack, often forced to live out their days in pain (p. 14).
  • Many people living in poverty witnessed one murder as children. Many parents who are investigated by Child Protective Services grew up with violence in their homes and many were victims of sexual abuse.
  • The lives of the poor are marked by illness, physical illness, and mental illness.
  • Poverty is traumatic: sexual abuse as a child, children witnessing murder, becoming orphans, moving constantly from foster care homes, moving frequently from group homes.
  • Poverty is regulated by police, courts, the criminal justice systems, and prisons.
  • Poverty is instability: rent increases, evictions, starting constantly all over again, losing jobs, changing jobs.
  • The federal government provides housing assistance to only 1 in 4 families who qualify for it. (p 15-16)
  • Half of the new positions in the labor market are eliminated within a year. Temp workers are found in every sector: hospitals, universities, manufacturing, high tech companies. Long-tern jobs have steadily declined, particularly for men. Temp jobs are expected to grow faster than all other jobs. (p 16).
  • Income volatility. (p16)
  • America has welcomed the rise of bad jobs at the bottom of the market- jobs offering low pay, no benefit, and few guarantees. (p 16)
  • Some industries such as retail, leisure and hospitality, and construction see more than half their work force turn over each year.
  • Workers quickly learn they are expendable, easily replaced, while young people are graduating into an economy characterized by deep uncertainty. (p16)
  • As lived in reality, there is plenty of poverty above the poverty line: trying to raise two kids in a $50,000 job, paying 50% of your income in housing.
  • One in eighteen people in the US lives in deep poverty. Half the poverty line.
  • Poverty is the loss of liberty. The overwhelming majority of current and former prisoners are very poor. Poverty measurements do not include institutionalized populations.
  • Poverty is feeling that the government works against you.
  • Criminal justice agencies levy steep fines and fees on the poor.
  • Prisoners are forced to work below minimum wage.
  • Today, scores languish in jail, not because they have been convicted of a crime, but because they missed a payment or cant make bail.
  • Poverty is intensified by racial privileges.
    • Black and Hispanic Americans are twice as likely to be poor, compared to white Americans.
    • The Black unemployment rate remains nearly double the white unemployment rate.
    • Studies show that Black jobseekers are just as likely to face discrimination in the labor market today as they were 30 years ago.
    • Poor white families tend to live in communities with lower poverty levels that poor Black and Hispanic families.
    • Poor white children attend better-resourced schools, live in safer communities, experience lower rates of police violence, and sleep in better homes that their poor Black and Hispanic peers.
    • Poverty not only resides in people, it lives in neighborhoods.
    • The wealth gap between Black and whites families is today as large as it was in the 1960s.
    • The median white household net worth in 2019 was $188,200. The median Black household net worth in 2019 was $24,100.
    • The average white household headed by someone with a high school diploma has more wealth than the average Black household headed by someone with a college degree.

    • Notes From Chapter 2 of Poverty, By America

      • The poverty rate has remained flat over the years. As estimated by the federal governments poverty line, 12.6 percent of the U.S. population was poor in 1970; to decades latter it was 13.5 percent; in 2010, it was 15.1 percent; and in 2019 it was 10.5 percent.
      • Standards of living have increased but poverty has not fallen.
      • Access to certain consumer goods (TV, cell phones, washing machines, clothing) has increased, prices for many consumer goods have fallen.
      • A cell phone does not grant you stable housing, affordable medical and dental care, or adequate childcare (p 25).
      • The cost of the most necessary of lifes necessities, such as childcare, utilities, fuel, housing, and healthcare, has increased.
      • Americas effort to reduce poverty had stalled because we had stopped trying to resolve the problem (p26). That is not the case.
      • Regan Neoliberalism: expand corporate power, reduce taxes on the rich, roll back spending on antipoverty initiatives especially housing. Ronald Regan tried to reduce social security benefits. But antipoverty spending did not shrink, it increased.
      • The United States has the unique distinction of lacking universal healthcare while still having the most expensive healthcare system in the world. (p27).
      • The U.S government spends more on Medicaid than in cash welfare, or the Earned income tax Credit. However, federal government expenditures in means-tested programs for the poor has increased in spite of neoliberal ideology.
      • The poverty rate has remained flat even as federal relief for the poor has surged.
      • A fair amount of government aid earmarked for the poor never reaches them. The welfare reform of 1996 changed direct cash to the poor to block grants to the states that gives states considerable leeway in deciding how to distribute the money.
      • Nationwide, for every dollar budgeted for TANF in 2020, poor families directly received just 22 cents. Only Kentucky and the District of Columbia spent over half of their TANF funds on basic cash assistance.
      • Of the $31.6 billion in welfare funding in the year 2020, just $7.1 billion was realized as dollars-in-hand relief to the poor. Most of the money went to:
        • Job training programs
        • Offsetting childcare cost
        • Juvenile justice administration
        • Promoting financial literacy
        • Marriage Initiative (Oklahoma)
        • Abstinence-only sex education (Arizona)
        • Anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers (Pennsylvania)
        • Christian summer camps (Maine)
        • And then, there is Mississippi where TANF funds are use for: hire an evangelical worship singer, purchasing cars for the head of a local nonprofit and her family members, paying a former NFL quarterback millions for speeches he never gave. TANF funds were also used for college football tickets, a private school, fitness camps, wellness center for the University of Mississippi and for religious speakers. Mississippi has a child poverty rate of 28% (similar to Costa Rica).
      • States are not required to spend all of their TANF dollars each year, and many do not, carrying over the unused money into the next year.
        • In 2020, states had in their possession 6 billion in unspent welfare funds.
        • Nebraska: 91 million
        • Hawaii: 380 million
        • Tennessee: 790 million
      • Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI)
        • In the mid-1990s, half the new disability applications were approved, today only a third.
      • Supplemental Security Income (SSI): alternative disability program. Most SSI applications are rejected.
      • The American welfare state is a leaky bucket (32).
      • Some programs spend 85-93% on aid to the poor: Food stamps (85%), MEDICAID (93%) and SSI.
      • What does NOT cause poverty is: immigration and single motherhood. These have been common and popular explanations of poverty. There is no evidence supporting them.
      • Immigrants have not increased the poverty rate. States with the most immigrant populations have not experienced an increase in the poverty rate. On the contrary, they have experienced a decline in the poverty rate. (33)
        • Immigrants have some of the highest rates of economic mobility, particularly the children of immigrants. (34)
        • Immigrants mainly compete with other immigrants for jobs, not with the native born. (35)
        • Undocumented immigration has slowed in recent years. Undocumented population peaked in 2007. (35)
        • Employers have not responded to a shrinking undocumented workforce by hiring native-born at competitive wages. Instead, they have responded by automating their jobs, hiring other immigrants (H-2A visas), or simply closing up shops. (35) (see footnote 28).
        • In 2000, workers in California harvested 37,000 acres of asparagus, which cannot be mechanically picked. In 2020, they harvested only 4,000 acres.
      • In 1959, about 70% of poor families were composed of a married couple. Today, most poor children are born to single mothers. One in 3 families headed by a single mother is poor. (36). 2 out of 3 single-mother families are not poor.
        • A study of 18 rich democracies found that single mothers outside of the US were not poorer than the general population. Countries that make the deepest investments in their people, particularly through universal programs that benefit all citizens, have the lowest rate of poverty, including among households headed by single mothers. (36)
        • Marriage has become something of a luxury good. It comes after a couple believes they have achieved a level of financial stability (37).
        • When real economic opportunities are extended to poor Americans, marriage typically follows. The New Hope program in Milwaukee (37).
        • Most American social policy remains hostile to family. Mass incarceration as example (38).
        • Slavery was hostile to families.
        • Many of our welfare policies are antifamily: SSI, rental assistance, public housing, food stamps, Earned Income Tax Credit (38).
        • Policies discouraging marriages: bad jobs, unobtainable college degrees, mass incarceration, unaffordable childcare.
      • Tens of millions of Americans do not end up poor by mistake of history or personal conduct. Poverty persists because some wish and will it to. (49)

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