Ch 8 Poverty

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Ch 8 Poverty
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Poverty

• Defining poverty
• Describing the poor
• Explaining poverty

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Defining poverty

• How would you define poverty?
• Absolute definition
• Relative definition
• Cultural definition

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Defining poverty

• What are basic necessities of life?

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Absolute definition

• What income necessary to buy a low cost healthy
  diet times 3
• Annual guidelines set by U.S. DHHS
• http//www.aspe.hhs.gov/poverty/04poverty.shtml

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Absolute definition

• Criticism
• Dont spend 1/3 income on food
• Assumes no regional or rural/urban differences
• Child care not included in 1960s when definition
  created
• Recent policy change requires mothers to work

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Relative poverty

• How poor a person is compared to others in
  her/his neighborhood or community
• Relative to a standard shaped by lifestyles of
  others
• E.g., having indoor plumbing or not
• Lowest end of economic scale
• Bottom 15
• lt1/3 of median family income
• late 1990s 16,000
• 13 of pop

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Who are the poor?

• Location
• South
• Rural
• Inner-city

• Race
• African American Hispanic more likely to be
  poor
• White are majority of poor

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Who are the poor?

• Education
• The lower a persons education, the greater the
  likelihood is poor
• 2 college educated
• 25 high school dropouts

• Gender
• Femminization of poverty
• Due to
• Divorce
• Out-of-wedlock births
• Wages
• Most poor families are headed by women
• Half of all female-headed families are poor

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Who are the poor?

• Age
• Elderly less likely
• Children more likely

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Why is there poverty?

• Symbolic interactionist culture of poverty
• Functionalist
• Conflict

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Symbolic Interactionist

• Based on interaction socialization
• Culture of poverty concept developed by Oscar
  Lewis
• Michael Harrington, The Other America
• Some learn values behaviors that result in
  staying poor
• Fatalistic
• Focus on present, not deferring gratification
• Crisis oriented
• Passed on to next generation

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Culture of poverty

• Criticism
• William Ryan blaming the victim
• Lazy, lack intelligence is individualistic
  explanation focusing on person
• rather than social structure producing inequality
• Most poverty is short-term
• 12 lasts 5 years

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Functionalism

• Herbert Gans we have poverty because it is
  functional
• Will do dirty jobs for low pay
• Creates middle class jobs social workers, police
• Creates market for low quality, used goods
• Elevates status of non-poor
• Structural unemployment
• Economy jobs change businesses close
• People dont have skills for new businesses,
  services

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Conflict theory

• Marx
• Capitalists make greater profits
• if oversupply of labor
• Pay lower wages
• Institutions are controlled by the capitalists
• Tax system structured to their advantage
• Blue collar crime more severely punished
• Schools/churches
• justify those structures
• perpetuate myths, e.g., Horatio Alger stories

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What did you learn?

• What are the main points we learned about poverty?