Poverty_in_America

America is a country remarkably rich in resources and technological development, and is also a country that prides itself on its generosity and idealism. Yet in spite of these qualities, poverty remains a disturbing and consistent problem. Robert Reich writes: No nation talks more about the importance of charity towards the less fortunate. No people organize more concerts, bake sales, telethons, walkathons, and national hand-holdings to raise money for the hungry and homeless. None takes as seriously the problem of poverty or the ideal of equal opportunity. But few Western industrialized nation fail as miserably to bridge the gap between their richest and poorest citizens. There is little argument today over the injustice of poverty or that, theoretically, America has enough material wealth to eliminate it. But there is much disagreement over poverty=s causes and cures. The central question of the poverty debate is: Does poverty result from the failings of poor people, or the failings of society' Despite all the innovative programs, despite the hundreds of billions of dollars spent, the number of people classed as poor is higher than a decade ago. Poverty is caused by: 1) Old age. More people are reaching retirement age than ever before. Once out of the kob market, their incomes often slip below the poverty line. 2) Inflation. It=s driven people into poverty as prices rose faster than income. 17% of poor family heads worked full time, but couldn=t earn enough to rise above the poverty line. Those on fixed incomes are really hit hard. 3) The poverty cycle itself. Once in, it=s hard to get out. Poverty means poorly fed pregnant women. That means poorly fed fetuses in their wombs. That means fetuses that fail to synthesize proteins and brain cells at normal rates. That means a high rate of mortality of these infants. It means appallingly high rates of prematurity and mental retardation in the survivors. It means further lack of brain growth because of poor feeding in the crucial years of early childhood. It means millions of Americans today have permanently stunted brains. 4) Automation. Unskilled and semi-skilled workers simply can=t get jobs anymore. The nation=s unemployment rate varied between 3% and 4% in the 1960s. Now it=s 8% to 10%. The government used to define Afull employment@ as just that: every one works. Then it said 3% is full employment@. Now the goal is 5% and heading up. Each recession is a little worse. We=ve always relied on the job market to provide jobs and income for the American people. But it doesn=t work anymore. Recently, President Clinton and members of Congress have proposed an increase in the minimum wage from $4.25 to $5.15 or $5.25 an hour. Bread for the World, the nation=s largest Christian anti-hunger lobby, fully endorses such an increase. It is one of several crucial measures needed to ensure that jobs in the United States provide a liveable wage. While Congress has consistently voted for increases in their own salaries, they have not passed an increase in the minimum wage in five years. The real value of today=s minimum wage is lower than it has been in 40 years. The United States has the largest wage gap - the difference between the top 10 percent and bottom do percent of wage earners - of any industrialized country in the world. A recent ABC News poll found that 83 percent of respondents wanted to see the minimum wage raised. It is clearly past time for Congress to increase the minimum wage. The United States is one of the richest countries in the world. Yet more than 14 million children are poor in the United States--- about one in five. Among infants and toddlers, the rate is even higher---about one in four. One of every nine preschooler lives in extreme poverty is such in the U.S. that there are more children suffering from hunger here than there are children in such countries as Angola, Haiti, Zimbabwe, El Salvador, or Cambodia. The largest ethnic group of poor children in the U.S. is white. A black child is more likely to be poor than a white or Latino child, but blacks make up only a minority (on-third) of all poor children. And only 10 percent of all poor children live in a black female-headed family on welfare in the central city. Poverty rate are growing fastest among Hispanic and Asian children. The fastest growth in child poverty is in the suburbs, where rates grew by 63 percent from 1973 to 1989. In contrast, they grew by 44 percent in the cities and declined slightly in rural areas. The U.S. experienced sustained economic growth from 1982 to 1989, and by 1990 the country=s gross national product (GNP) had reached an all-time high. Yet the poverty rate soared to a 20-year high and the number of children in poverty rose by about 2.2 million during the 1980s. Government programs to help poor parents meet their needs and those of their children were even less effective at lifting families out of poverty by the end of the 1980s than before. AFDC benefit levels, adjusted for inflation, fell by 39 percent on average between 1970 and 1990. Other benefits such as housing assistance, food stamps, and supplemental food assistance dropped as well. Overall transfer payments for poor families with children fell by 21 percent between 1979 and 1987. The effectiveness of government transfer programs in reducing poverty is much greater for the elderly than for children of other adults. Three of every four poor elderly persons receive enough government aid to escape poverty compared with one of every 10 children. An increase in the minimum wages is the first step to assist low-income people off of welfare and enable a full-time worker to adequately provide for a family. Bread for the World sees a minimum wage increase as one of several policy steps needed to Amake work Pay.@ Congress must also maintain or expand the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), a government supplement to low-income workers. Investing in education, especially job training, is important, as is more emphasis in broad economic planning on full employment. A combination of these efforts is needed to assure that every American has the chance to earn a secure livelihood. Many poor families manage by cutting back on food, health care, housing, transportation, and child care. The results: Poor children are a higher risks of dying, being disabled at birth, being hungry, sick, and homeless, problems that follow them throughout their adult lives. GNP---this country could have lifted every poor family with children above the poverty threshold in 1991. This amount is less than the amount the federal government would have saved ($41 billion in 1992) by revoking income tax breaks granted to the wealthiest on percent taxpayers in the 1980s. And it is far less than the economic toll of poor health, school failure, teen pregnancy, increased violence, and loss of productivity---which are just some of the costs brought on by child poverty. Bibliography William, Dudley, Poverty. Minnesota, II Series, 1964 Feed America Organisation. Web Site:HTTP:\WWW.FEEDAMERICA.ORG\CHILDPOVERTYHTM Web Site:HTTP:\ZOMBIE.MEDIAFAX.COM\MFCOM\MFCOM\MIKE\HOTTOPICS\DOCUMENT\7.31.1996.O.HTML