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

“Survey: More US Kids Go to School Hungry,” the headline said. As the US economy continued to struggle, a nationwide survey of 638 public school teachers in grades K–8 conducted for Share Our Strength, a nonprofit organization working to end childhood hunger, found alarming evidence of children coming to school with empty stomachs. More than two-thirds of the teachers said they had students who “regularly come to school too hungry to learn—some having had no dinner the night before,” according to the news article. More than 60 percent of the teachers said the problem had worsened during the past year, and more than 40 percent called it a “serious” problem. Many of the teachers said they spent their own money to buy food for their students. As an elementary school teacher explained, “I’ve had lots of students come to school—not just one or two—who put their heads down and cry because they haven’t eaten since lunch yesterday” (United Press International, 2011).

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.

  1. 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)?
  1. Are most of those programs preventative, intervention-based, or remediation-based?
  1. 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?

It is not difficult to find some people saying that most Americans living in poverty “don’t really have it that bad.” Perhaps that is an honest belief; perhaps they simply have been fortunate enough not to see poverty up close very often in their lives. One news program noted the following statistics from The Heritage Foundation (a conservative think tank) to claim that people in poverty are not really suffering all that much:
  • 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)

Inside a kitchen, picturing refrigerator, stove, microwave, sink and dishwasher

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.

License

Introduction to Human Services 2e Copyright © by Elizabeth B. Pearce. All Rights Reserved.

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