America, just like any other continent of the world is being faced with the social evil of Poverty. The current situation in this era of economic crisis and recession of 2008-2009 is worse than the Great Depression experienced in the 1930’s. This paper, therefore, discusses the challenges, concerns and various perspectives of poverty in America.
Poverty experienced by children is one of its kinds due to the hardships they go through. This is not just based on the lack of proper nutrition but also on the psychological and hormonal imbalance they go through. This consequently interferes to a large extent with their development as far as memory and language acquisition is concerned.
Hunger is yet another challenge facing America as a result of poverty. Many households go without food. This has been caused by the challenge of food insecurity facing America, and this has forced the government to intervene by coming up with genetically modified foods. These foods have greatly led to the increased levels of cancerous diseases in America.
Poor and or inadequate housing has seen the development and increased numbers of street families. Many Americans who are living below the poverty line cannot afford to pay rent and hence, find shelter in abandoned vehicles or under the bridges and other dangerous places. Surprisingly, not all these people living in these hostile environments are drug addicts or mentally incapacitated individuals. Rather, there are right-minded citizens who happen to find themselves in such environments due to the high levels of unemployment prevailing in America. Underpayment is yet another thorn caused by the high poverty levels. The “working poor”, so to speak receive peanuts in the name of salaries that cannot cater for and support their many and ever increasing needs hence making it difficult for them to survive. As a result of poverty, well-paid unionized manufacturing jobs have been turned to non-unionized service jobs such as shoe shining, barbershops and barbeques just to mention but a few. This can be translated to the increased levels of exploitation with more work with less payment.
There is also the aspect of increased dependency levels. The poor people who are not able to work look up to the government for assistance. Evidently, the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), established in 1935 played a major and critical role in offering such assistance to widows before it came down crumbling in 1996 after it was accused of discouraging the widows from getting married again. This was replaced by Temporary Assistance to the Needy Families (TANF) which also failed because of the rigid and harsh conditions that it operated on. The same was because the states were given fixed amount of money to begin projects or programs where the poor would work for pay or undergo training but only for a period of five years.
The large numbers of women in poverty is also worth mentioning. This is due to divorce, and retirement, widowhood or even being single mothers who bear the burden of taking care of their children single-handedly. Wage discrimination has also seen many women being barricaded by this evil of poverty. Despite the fact that America has come a long way in the fight against racism, this has been killing them slowly like cancer. Reports indicate that there are more poor people who are black as opposed to the whites. Additionally, there is the job stratification in the sense that the most lucrative and high paying jobs are left for the whites while most of the blacks occupy the low paying jobs.
Regarding perspective, Americans hold and believe that have greater social mobility than the Europeans. According to the Americans, poverty is as a result of the doing of oneself and that external structural factors play no role. Due to their capitalistic nature, Americans strongly hold that the individuals working habits will always impact positively or negatively to their living standards. Therefore, the lazy individuals will always wallow in poverty while the hardworking and industrious men will flourish in riches hence self-satisfaction. The Europeans, on the other hand, blame poverty on the structural factors such as lack of proper education and unemployment. The Americans will, therefore, keep condemning individuals who should be considered as less fortunate due to the prevailing structural forces which are not under the individual’s control.
Bad politics of the day is also to blame for increased poverty levels. Many Americans uphold this utopian and fictional notion that the government in power will always advocate the needs of the minorities who are always at the very bottom of the ladder. This makes most of them give support to present political system with the hope that there will be a trickling effect of the national cake. These views are perceived as archaic by their European counterparts who have always scored highly in the fight against poverty.
Works Cited
Shinn, Marybeth. "Homelessness, Poverty and Social Exclusion in United States and Europe." European Journal of Homelessness (2010): 19-43.
Waldfogel, Jane and Timothy Smeeding. Fighting child poverty in the United States and United: An Update. Wisconsin: Institute for Research on Poverty University of Wisconsin, 2010.
Wison, William. "Being Poor, Black and American." American Educator (2011): 10-46.
