POVERTY

Poverty in American Society

Poverty in American Society

Thesis statement

“Poverty has adverse effects on society, and it leads to other social crises”

Introduction

The problem of poverty within families of America has been ironic. It has been disturbing a paradox in that impoverishment arises in the context of American prosperity. It has been disturbing because of the damaging results connected with poverty. This combination had given much of right validation of the declaration of war on poverty by President Lyndon Johnson (Coltrane, et al., 2008).

In a land of rich people, families must not lead their life in discouraging poverty. While the war on poverty tried to raise ethical and policy awareness of public, moreover, it set in motion the start of the modern understanding into poverty in America. Indeed, it was just with the beginning of war on poverty that America started to measure poverty officially. In the same time, America initiated a series of policy and academic analyses financed by the newly developed office of economic opportunity (Coltrane, et al., 2008).

Discussion

American Society

Approximately 80% of American population was rural in 1860, and more than half of the workforce was in agriculture. Still it is actually the case in the two extremely crowded state of the world, at the beginning of 21st century. The statistics of 2003 showed that 60% of Indian labor force was in agriculture, and 71% of the population was resident of rural areas in 2007. In 2006, 23% of Chinese population was in agriculture and in 2007, 58% of the population was resident of rural areas. At present, American society is overwhelmingly an urban society and less than 3% of population works in agriculture directly (Philips, 2008).

United States of America has a market economy or a free market economy; however, it is more accurate to say that U.S. economy is capitalist economy. America has the weakest labor movements both in terms of rights of labor and the proportion of the workforce and rate of union coverage (Conley, 2006).

Measures of Poverty

The United States of America did not have an official measure of poverty, till 1964. The measure of poverty were designed by an Economist Mollie Orshansky, his fundamental methodology stayed undamaged to this day and shows the most common measure of poverty established in governmental reporting and academic studies. Poverty was considered as the deficiency of a certain level of income essential to buy a basic basket of commodities and services for a minimum decent level of life style Total income of household is, therefore, the measuring factor to find out whether people and families fall below the poverty line. Household below a certain level of income is taken as poor. The poverty thresholds are adjusted every year according to the consumer price index, in order to account for inflation. The level of poverty differs itself relying on size of household (Kerbo, 2006).

Factors Associated With Poverty

Studies have evaluated the factors and reasons behind the poverty; the thrust of these studies has diverged from an evaluation into industrial capitalism as a basic ...