Introduction
Poverty as all know is an imperative issue in today’s world. In order to define poverty; it can be defined as a state in which individuals do not have enough money for the food, shelter and clothing they need” and suffer from terrible circumstances. The United States of America is considered to be one of the more stable economies in the world today and yet it too has a number of citizens suffering from the above defined state of poverty.
Discussion
In the year 2002 alone, the number of people living in a state defined as poverty was around thirty five million. In order to understand, the issue of poverty, how it has come about in an economy like that of the states and what could be a possible solution to this issue –the following paper would carry out the following analysis.
For the people living in America, the state of poverty exists when the family does not have access to a reasonable form of shelter, proper food and life’s amenities. However, while are cases where this state can exist the severity of the above happening is quite limited in its scope. The “poor” in America on average are from being undernourished, have better living standards than most of the average people in the European Union countries, own amenities such as microwave, colored television etc.
However, there are still scenarios where the state of poverty can result in food shortages. According to a survey carried out by the Department of Agriculture in the states, about thirteen percent of poor families and 2.6 percent of poor children experience hunger (Johnson, 2004).
The living conditions of the average poor American might be better than that of a poor person living in some other county, but at the same time there is a range of people who live in conditions that are quite deplorable. A third of people suffer from overcrowding, temporary hunger and difficulties in paying rents, getting medical care etc.
The reasons behind such an occurrence can be attributed to tow major social causes; the lack of work done by the parents and the people themselves, and the absenteeism of the father figure resulting in rising poverty levels in single parent houses.
The typical poor family’s work record is only that of 800 hours of work over a year, translating into merely 16 hours of work in a week. If the same amount was to rise to 40 hours of work in a week, than the people currently labeled as “poor” would be shifted to the middle class region of classification. The major issue that is faced by these people is that of non-payment of bills regarding their rent and utilities. Around 22 percent of people falling in this income group bracket suffered from this issue (Johnson, 2004).
By increasing the number of hours worked, this issue of non-payment would be tackled quite effectively. The other issue of poverty in single parent houses has been alleviated by a number of anti-poverty polices such as making it a mandatory for single mothers to get jobs or prepare for work in order to received financial assistance. As a result, the poverty rates amongst the single parent houses dropped majorly from 53.1 percent to 39.8 percent in 2001 alone. Another way of tackling this issue can be to support the institution of marriage rather than penalizing It.
Hence, two major causes of poverty were outline above with adequate solutions provided in order to overcome this inequality in income distribution.
Works Cited
Rector,R and Johnson, K” Understanding poverty in America” How Poor are America’s Poor? Examining the “Plague”of poverty in America. 2004. Web.