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Francis Millette Final Paper

In America there is a supposed five class system which can rival with the top

class systems of the world. The majority of the time this system is blurred and there are

only three obvious groupings. These are poor, middle and upper class. Poverty according

to the dictionary is the state or condition of having little or no money, goods, or means of

support ("poverty.”) The poverty line refers to annual cash income, ignoring non-cash

federal assistance such as housing subsidies and food stamps. But it is also a pre-tax

figure, so it ignores cash income from the earned income tax credit that some working

families with children are eligible to receive.

There are several essentials to understanding the poverty problem. In order to

determine what poverty is, Mollie Orshansky, an economist working for the Social

Security Administration (SSA) in 1965, used data from the Department of Agriculture

(DOA), enabling her to estimate the cost of the D.O.A’s recommended basic minimum

basket of food typical for the budget of low income families. She then used data on

middle-income families to estimate that families spent roughly one-third of their income

on food. In doing so she realized that by multiplying the cost of a low income food basket

by three, she could estimate a measure of income needed to provide basic needs for a

family (Fisher).

For 2004, the poverty level for a single head of household over 65 was 9,060

dollars a year. For a family of three with two children, it was 15,219 dollars, and for a

family of four with two children, it was 19,157 dollars (all estimations represent per year)

(Poverty Thresholds). According to the 2004 census bureau statistics, thirty-seven million

Americans lived in poverty. Of these, thirteen million were American children posing a
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ratio that showed the fact that three in every seventeen children were impoverished.

These figures were based on the premise that the numbers rise roughly 200,000 in one

year, i.e. about 3,000 children fell into poverty each week. Looking at the table entititled

“People in Families with Related Children Under 18 by Family Structure, Age, and Sex,

Iterated by Income-to-Poverty Ratio and Race: 2004 Below 100% of Poverty - All

Races” we are able to see that the highest poverty rates occur in families headed by single

African-American women. About fifty-eight percent of all poor blacks fall into this

constituency. When separated by age group, the numbers are even more staggering with

forty-three percent of all poor blacks being under eighteen. In contrast to blacks, families

headed by single women account for thirty-four percent of poor Hispanics, and twenty-

four percent of poor whites. Hispanic children account for forty-five percent of poor,

while whites do twenty-seven percent of their respective categories. In the nation as a

whole, children make up thirty-five percent of the poor, and the number is equivalent for

people in families headed by women. Black and Hispanic children make up sixty-two

percent of all poor children sharing it evenly at thirty-one percent a piece. This similarity

suggests that poverty is more complicated than family structure.

Even though there were earlier attempts to combat poverty as seen in President

Johnson’s 1964 term, most Americans were still oblivious to the plight of the poor until

shortly after the Census Bureau released the above figures and extended their coverage of

the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. A resulting effect was a change in attitude among

many Americans because the challenges the population faced in that sharp time of relief

were finally brought to light on the national level. Television screens in homes across the

country put a face on poverty statistics that was hard to ignore. The poor are
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disproportionately Black, women, and children. While most Americans were alarmed to

learn how unstable life is for poor people, conservative media figures like George Will

dismissed poverty as simply the result of “too many black babies and too many

irresponsible black men” (Rosenberg). That cold assessment ignores the Census Bureau

report, and does not help Americans understand the real problem facing America’s poor,

many of whom get up and go to work everyday.

What I don’t understand is if you have never been poor (in reference to the

government officials), then how can you fight poverty? The majority of the people who

vote have a home address (excluding homeless shelters). So the minority in this case are

the poor people because they end up with no representatives advocating for their cause.

Instead of complaining and saying “We have too many poor Americans”, or “I’m sick

and tired of people tapping on my car window looking for change,” we need to generate

more jobs for these people. Instead of spending what was at that time 260 billion dollars a

day on a war that the people didn’t want in the first place, they could have been working

on ways to lower inflation and build more industries to generate a relatively high number

of needed jobs that would help alter the poverty numbers. Why send foreign aid packages

when your own citizens need it here on your own soil?

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Work Cited:

Fisher, Gordon M. “The Development and History of the Poverty Thresholds.” Social

Security Bulletin 55.4 (1992): 3-14.

"poverty." Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1). Random House, Inc. 26 Nov. 2008.

<Dictionary.com http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/poverty>.

Poverty Thresholds 2004. U.S. Census Bureau. 29 Aug. 2006

<http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty/threshld/thresh04.html>.

Rosenberg, John. ““Paradigms” Of Poverty And Preference.” Weblog posting.

Discriminations. 5 Mar. 2006.
<http://www.discriminations.us/2006/03/paradigms_of_poverty_and_prefe.html>

United States. Housing and Household Economic Statistics Information. People in

Families by Family Structure, Age, and Sex, Iterated by Income-to-Poverty Ratio
and Race: 2004 Below 100% of Poverty -- All Races. U.S. Census Bureau. 2 Nov.
2006 <http://pubdb3.census.gov/macro/032005/pov/new02_100_01.htm>

---. People in Families with Related Children Under 18 by Family Structure, Age, and
Sex, Iterated by Income-to-Poverty Ratio and Race: 2004 Below 100% of Poverty
- All Races. U.S. Census Bureau. 2 Nov. 2006
<http://pubdb3.census.gov/macro/032005/pov/new03_100_01.htm>