Poverty is one of the most acute social problems of nowadays. Today, it seems that the technological advancements as well as the profound changes in social structures make it possible to get rid of poverty entirely, especially in well-developed industrialized countries like the United States. However, poverty is not as easy to vanquish as one might think. In order to understand how to eliminate this social failure of even the most advanced societies, one should understand clearly the factors which lead to it in the first place. The story of Sue Christian, described by a journalist Monica Potts in her article Pressing on the Upward Way, is very illustrative in this regard. It shows clearly that poverty is not a simple problem, whatever sociological theory is devised to apply to it. It involves a great number of conditions which need to be improved. The most daunting challenge is, however, that they are hardly possible to improve all together in the blink of an eye.
In a nutshell, the story of Sue Christian's rough path towards prosperity is the following: the woman was born to a poor family, neglected her education, got married twice – and both time to a poor man, and got two children which had problems of their own. She managed to get employment to make the ends meet, but, when the changes came about, and they were bound to come about, she was not prepared to face them. Nevertheless, Potts made sure to portray Sue Christian not just as a feeble victim of unfavorable circumstances, but as a hard-working thrifty woman who, despite her rough start in life, was struggling to get “upward”. There are several practical conclusions that can be made about poverty based on Sue Christian's life story.
When one starts exploring the issue of poverty, one hardly knows where to start. I think it would be the best to start with the origins. There is always a chance for a person to become rich even if he or she was born to a poor family, but it is hard to argue with the idea that one has considerably bigger chances of becoming rich if he was born to a rich family than one who was unlucky to be born to a poor one. This is not just a question of inheriting the wealth of the parents, it is rather a question of upbringing and the conditions of starting out in life. Sue Christian was born to a poor family with very bad prospects. This conditions brings about not just the issue of the lack of proper education, but the mindset and upbringing as well. The place where Sue was brought up belonged to the list of one of the poorest in the United States, and people living there had little access to different social advantages like good schooling.
One might argue that it is not appropriate to blame the circumstances for whatever failure a person experienced in life. Indeed, at least to some extent, one is able to face the circumstances and fight them in the search for improvement. Sue Christian made several bad choices early in life – like getting married at the age of fifteen and neglecting her education afterward – and was unprepared to face changes – like the closure of SourceCorp, the company which employed her. In earning her living, Sue Christian had relied on one skill only – the ability to type fast – since she was fifteen years old. Moreover, this skill could get her minimum wage – but nothing more. In other words, working for data-entry companies was a dead-end job without any prospects for professional development and better pay. Her entire life, till the age of thirty, Sue Christian was a low-skilled minimum-wage worker, thus belonging to the segment of the most vulnerable workers on the job market. Not only low-skilled workers are easy to lay off, but it is also hard to find some decent employment afterward. Moreover, relying just on one skill for twenty years is not the wisest choice one can make in the modern world. The times when one skill and one job could get a person through life are long gone: the modern world is a rapidly changing one, and so is the job market. Thus, in order to stay afloat, one should be able to change with it.
When the blew came and Sue Christian ended up without employment, she realized that she needed to change something. The woman decided to enroll in college, being already a middle-aged married mother of two. This decision has brought about new hardships. Despite the fact that Sue was able to benefit from education grants and scholarships provided by anti-poverty programmes to pay for her education, her family lacked her paycheck badly. This episode in Sue Christian's story illustrates well another social failure that leads to poverty: it is hard to get education if one is not a young person fresh out of high school with someone to support him or her instead of someone demanding his or her support. In other words, the condition of a family where both parents work is bound to worsen if one of the parents enters a university and thus deprives the family of a considerable amount of income. Sue was a breadwinner of her family. Even though that her decision to seek education paid off in the long run, it threw her family under the poverty line during the four years of her studies. Thus, one can make a conclusion that, for poor people, it is hard to break free from poverty because they risk to sink even deeper in it if they decide to change something. They end up in a vicious circle.
Another circumstance that aggravates poverty is connected to the expectations in society. Recently, it has become normal for middle-aged people to enter universities and seek to change their qualifications. Nonetheless, it is easy to notice that young people are still the priority in college while middle-aged students are likely to be neglected. Sue Christian said the following about her college experience: “Professors seemed to be more focused toward that age group fresh out of high school. So, if you're past that, it's like 'Catch up or get out'” (Potts 176). Due to the natural decline of learning abilities, older students might need more attention from the faculty. However, it seems that no one is interested in older people in this regard, perceiving them as ones who have already had their chance in life and, by entering a university, might even take away this chance from the young ones. However, the world is changing, so people have to change along with it and keep the pace. Soon, it will not be unusual for a person to change several professions in a lifetime, so the education system should suit this kind of demand.
The last but not the least, the place matters when it comes to poverty, a place matters. Potts devoted much space in her article to describe the condition in Owsley County, Southeast Kentucky, where Sue Christian comes from. One episode is extremely illustrative in this regard: Kody, Sue's son, bought out a shirt-printing business, but it was hard to make it profitable because the poor county could not provide enough customers to support it. Owsley County belongs to those areas which people quit if they have an opportunity to do it in a search of a better life. It is one more vicious circle which supports poverty: young people move out because there are no jobs and no prospects, but it is hard to create new jobs and open new businesses because there are no customers well-off enough to support them. The economic laws of supply and demand are merciless: poor areas are likely to have the majority of poor residents in comparison to the richer ones. Owsley County illustrates this conclusion with its forty percent of residents living in poverty and thirty percent living just above the poverty line (Potts 176).
The story of Sue Christian who struggled against poverty provides much food for thought. It makes the reader understand that such social problem as poverty does not come from one condition, but from many. One can conclude that the issue of poverty goes beyond the issues of origin and personal incompetency. It involves a broader scope and has to be dealt accordingly.
Works Cited
Potts, Monica. “Pressing on the Upward Way”, pp. 175 – 191.
