The Invisible Poor Essay Example for Free

The Invisible unfortunate EssayThere concord been umteen writers, columnists, politicians, sociologists and economists who have written nearly the concept of destitution in the United States. Though their views a good deal differ as to the causes, and solutions, the underlying green between all of those who have written about this issue remains that the current state of the American public is short(p)er than it has been in decades. The comparison of the pursuance writers enables a reader to gain perspective on issues much(prenominal) as this. The ways in which different writers address, define, and respond to issues such as poorness, can allow for a reader to find their own understanding of the issue as well as its possible cure. The following paper will seek to examine the lives of the invisible poor, the sociology behind such a ships company and at the end of the paper extend a suggestion as to how poverty can be cured. Marg atomic number 18t Andersen, Eugene Le wit, and throng Fallows address the issue in differing ways however with much the same message. There is a difficulty with poverty in the United States. The concepts of the working poor the disenfranchised as well as the general wiped out(p) peoples of the United States ar growing. According to Andersen, the main occupation is rooted in the residual make of the pre-Civil Rights era. The accumulation of wealth over time, by dint of inheritance and long term investment is lost on the groups which have been discriminated against since the dawn of the Untied States. Andersen states that racial exclusion in lending, housing segregation, and historical patterns of discrimination have created significant differences in the contemporary class standing of murkys and whites. (Andersen 184) This racial disparity was not limited to black and poor whites it in like manner included Hispanics and Asian-Americans. (Anderson 185)In the inequality involved in poor women in the manpower in t hat respect is a sociological view of how this inequality is categorized Kinglsey Davis and Wilbert Moore gave sociology the theory of helpalism. This theory states that every society separates its products, its m aney, and its services on the grounds of furrow difficulty and relevance to a society, or on the function that a specific job provides more for a society. Due to a job and what gender performs that job function being more substantial to society or more functional, then society is voluntary to play the stratification game. Since these functional jobs and the difference between the assumed capabilities of men or women performing them there is also stratification in monetary reward. Society has a top echelon of jobs which they consider able to be filled lone(prenominal) by a man or only by a women The unhorse rung of this system includes mostly the feminine persuasion. Functionalism fully believes in the rat race of society and exemplifies it through and through the pow er elite system and through gender inequality. Functionalism states that there are critical jobs, ones so important to society (like saving a life) that the measurement of that persons importance has to be reflected monetarily. Functionalist expresses inequality through the bases of the nature of the occupational system. As Davis and Moore state, Social inequality is thus an unconsciously evolved device by which societies date that the most important positions are conscientiously filled by the more qualified persons(Baldridge, 158). With this reality it becomes more and more clear that women are being discriminated against in the workforce, but more so if they are mothers. Just because families, or single mothers are moving from welfare to work does not mean that they are above the poverty line. Although earnings are seemingly increasing mothers who try to live on minimum wage cannot deport a family of even one churl.In the new-make nineties, the submit shows, families headed by working single mothers experienced rising earnings due to the strong economy, work supports like the Earned Income Tax Credit and child care, and a reformed welfare system. Yet these increased earnings were fully offset by a disdain in the benefits that government safety net programs provide, leaving these families no better off as a group and pushing those who remained poor deeper into poverty (CBPP 2001).The rise in crime, increased rates of adolescent pregnancy, drug use and the increased numbers of children and adults on government assistance are all attributed to the decline of the American family according to Popenoe. However, his assertions lacked any empirical support. This issue was taken up by Sharon Houseknecht and Jaya Sastry in 1996. The study conducted by the research team looked at the state of the family unit, and sought to find whether the decline that Popenoe described was unornamented or not (Houseknecht 1996).The model that the research team used was based on Popenoes assertions that those family unites that are furthest away from the traditional view of family are more in decline. The group took samples from quatern countries, Sweden, the United Stated, former West Germany, and Italy. Looking at non-marital birthrates, divorce rates, crime rates and child-wellbeing, the group strand that, according to Popenoes model, Sweden had the greatest decline in the family unit followed by the United States in second.The problem that Andersen addresses is further exacerbated by the decline in real wages over the period from the 1970s to the late 1990s. (Anderson 185) The fall in the value of the American dollar, coupled with the increased inflation meant that a actor making the median wage in 1989 made $13.22 an hour however by 1997 that same take wage was only worth $12.63. (Anderson 185) The lower 80% of wage earners suffered more with a loss of 6.7% of their jibe wage power. Eugene Lewit addresses the issue of poverty by writing about the number of children financial support in poverty. Lewit begins his ingathering against the growing problem by noting that in 1991 there were 13.7 one thousand thousand children invigoration in poverty in the Untied States a number that included an increase of nearly one million from the previous year. (Lewit 176) Lewit also noted that the total number of Americans living in poverty in 1991 was over 35 million people more than 10% of the total population. The next issue that Lewit addresses is the number of problems faced by the impoverished children in comparison to their affluent counterparts. According to Lewit, poor children face increased risk of death, infectious and inveterate illness, and injury from accidents and violence. (Lewit 176) These children also tend to live in conditions which are filled with violence, deteriorating housing, and disrupted living conditions which increase the likelihood of depression, low self-confidence, and conflict with peers and authori ty figures. (Lewit 176) Lewit also bring attention to the problems in the comment of poverty. The federal thresholds which define poverty according to income, family size and location, suffer from, according to Lewit, inadequate adjustments for changing usance patterns, inflation, and differing family sizes and structures. (Lewit 177) Lewit also states that the poverty guidelines fail to account for the substantial geographic variation in the cost of living. (Lewit 177) Like Andersen, Lewit addresses the poverty tornado. According to Lewit, the amount by which the total poverty gap resided upon in 1991 was $37.2 billion. This meant that the lowest portions of the population of the United States were making nearly forty billion dollars less than the federal poverty level. This gap has long reaching repercussions, as these members of society also, as Lewit stated before, are more probably to become ill, injured or involved in violence which amounts to a further burden on the over all economy and social standing of any given area. Fallows describes the technology boom of the early 1990s as the same disproportionate, commanding-heights effect on todays culture as Wall Streets takeover-and-junk-bond complex had 15 geezerhood ago, and as the biotech-financial complex presumably will 15 years from now and it grants large fortunes to small groups of people, many of whom began in lower or middle class families. The boom took people who were living as, or at least identifying with the impoverished members of American society and catapulted them into the ultra-elite amassing fortunes which often topped 100 million dollars. Between these triplet writers, there is a common thread of though the poor are getting poorer. This fact is made worse by the disconnection of the wealthy and the poor. This disconnection is caused by the growing gap between the haves, and the have-nots. This gap increases the burden on the poor, mentally, as well as increases the difficulty i n finding ways to amend the causes of the vast amounts of poverty in the Untied States. Fallows ended his article with the realization that problems, like poverty, are one thing when considered abstractly poverty, inequality, racism, problems stated as if they were debate topics. They can be altogether different when affiliated with human beings real or fictional. This is true in the fact that all too often the only time poverty is truly addressed in a forum which can pop off it is during election campaigns and then only until that election is won.Experiment In order to better provide housing, jobs, healthcare, and so forth to the invisible poor the following audition should be considered. Take two groups of poor families one as control, the other as a variable. The control family will continue working the system for government aid, or living according to how they have always been living. The second family, the variable family, will be given cardinal items a new housing unit (in a different part of the city or in the suburb), $2,500 for beginning expenses and getting out of debt expenses (with a one time meeting with a financial advisor), and a job interview for a qualifying job for each capable working member of the family. The experiment will take place over a two year period, with updates on the family the first month, the triplet month, the sixth month, one year, one year and six months, and two years. The elements of the experiment which will arise are amount of debt, if any family member has gone to college, where family members are in their schooling (i.e. grades, extra curricular activities, etc), how the jobs are going, if theyve advanced, if theyve maintained their job or gotten hired at a different place for a higher(prenominal) payer job, and finally their finances will be looked at. The differences between these two families will be the backdrop to how, with a little bit of help, a family can overcome poverty. The control group will give a recognition to how a family will continue to struggle without any help, or with the same precaution from the government which they are already receiving. The contrast of these two families, will hopefully, allow for a way in which other government programs can better assist getting rid of the invisible poor, and to strike a balance of wealth and financial freedom for families. This experiment will seek to prove that the invisible poor is a great problem that needs to have an immediate solution. The poor across the world is only increasing and it is with this experiment that a way in which to curtail poverty and give families and individuals hope to an economically fruitful future is found.WORKS CITEDAndersen, Margaret. Restructuring for Whom? Race, Class, Gender, and the Ideology of Invisibility. Sociological Forum. Vol. 16, No. 2. June 2001. p. 181-201.Baldridge, J. Victor. Sociology A Critical blast to Power, Conflict, and Change. John Wiley Sons, Inc. 1975.Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP). Poverty Rate Among Working Single get down Families Remained Stagnant in Late 1990s Despite Strong Economy. (Online). Available http//www.cbpp.org/8-16-01wel-pr.htm.Fallows, James. The Invisible Poor. The New York Times Magazine. March 20, 2000. Date of Access March 3, 2008. URL http//www.courses.psu.edu/hd_fs/hd_fs597_rxj9/invisible_po or.htmHouseknecht, Sharon Sastry, Jaya. Family Decline and Child eudaimonia A Comparative Assessment. Journal of Marriage and the Family. 58 (3) (1996). Pp.726739.Lewit, Eugene M. Children in Poverty. The Future of Children. Vol. 3, No. 1. throttle 1993. p. 176-182.