4.6 Poverty and Income Inequality
If there is a signature issue associated with human services work, it is poverty. Perhaps no other single factor is as connected to social injustice and inequality. Poverty has a destructive impact on everything in one’s life, from housing to education to life expectancy. While people of every race, religion, family composition, sex, and sexual orientation are affected, the intersection of poverty with other aspects of marginalization compound disadvantages. Professionals who work in the public assistance system deal with poverty every day, but they also confront the impact of substandard incomes on a range of family issues.
4.6.1 Activity: Addressing a Social Problem, Hungry Children
The United States is one of the richest nations in the world. Many Americans live in luxury or at least are comfortably well-off. Yet, as this poignant news story of childhood hunger reminds us, many Americans also live in poverty or near poverty. Poverty is a social problem.
- What resources and programs exist in your community that help people coping with poverty, specifically related to food insecurity (not having enough food or not knowing if you will have enough food day to day)?
- Are most of those programs preventative, intervention-based, or remediation-based?
- How might policies and programs look different if poverty were viewed more as a social problem rather than a personal failing?
4.6.2 Social Justice and Poverty
Social justice is the belief that all people deserve equal rights, opportunities, and access to economic and political resources. Obviously, the existence of widespread poverty is practically the antithesis of social justice, so it only makes sense that it is a major focus of human services efforts today. There are some who would say that anyone in the United States is capable of rising above poverty, and others would assert that there are too many structural barriers preventing people from moving out of difficult circumstances.
4.6.3 Activity: Are the Poor Allowed to Have Some Nice Things?
- 99.6% have a refrigerator
- 92% have a microwave
- 78% have air conditioning
- 43% have internet service
- 54% have a cell phone
- 16% have two or more computers (Sheffield, R, 2011)
Figure 4.7. Does having a kitchen equipped with a refrigerator and microwave mean that a person is not “poor”?
After reading those statistics, take a moment to think about your answers for the following questions:
- What do these numbers say to you? Is this enough information to know whether those families are poor? Why or why not?
- What circumstances could lead a poor family to have some valuable possessions?
The next section of this chapter looks at two major definitions that endeavor to identify who qualifies as poor using somewhat different approaches.
4.6.4 References
Katz, M. B. (1996). In the shadow of the poorhouse: A social history of welfare in America. BasicBooks.
Mangum, G. L., Mangum, S. L., & Sum, A. M. (2003). The persistence of poverty in the United States. The Johns Hopkins University Press.
Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) (2016). Poverty rates and poverty gaps, 2012 or latest available year. OECD Factbook 2015-16: Economic, Environmental, and Social Statistics. https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/factbook-2015-table45-en/index.html?itemId=/content/component/factbook-2015-table45-en
Olson, L. K. (2010). The politics of Medicaid. Columbia University Press.
Poverty guidelines. (2022). ASPE. https://aspe.hhs.gov/topics/poverty-economic-mobility/poverty-guidelines
Sheffield, R. (n.d.). Understanding poverty in the United States: Surprising facts about America’s poor. The Heritage Foundation. Retrieved August 19, 2022, from https://www.heritage.org/poverty-and-inequality/report/understanding-poverty-the-united-states-surprising-facts-about
Social Security Administration, 2021. SSI federal payment amounts for 2022. https://www.ssa.gov/oact/cola/SSI.html#:~:text=SSI%20amounts%20for%202022,%24421%20for%20an%20essential%20person.
4.6.5 Licenses and Attributions for Poverty and Income Inequality
4.6.5.1 Open Content, Shared Previously
“Poverty and Income Inequality” is adapted from “Poverty and Financial Assistance” by Mick Cullen and Matthew Cullen, Social Work and Social Welfare and is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. Adaptations by Elizabeth B. Pearce include light editing, vocabulary and context changes to adapt for the human services field.
Figure 4.5. “Walmart Grocery Checkout Line in Gladstone, Missouri” by Walmart Corporate is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
Figure 4.6. “Poverty Guidelines” is in the Public Domain.
Figure 4.7. “Kitchen” by zloizloi is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.