Monday, November 21, 2022

8.5.1: Drawing the Poverty Line

 8.5: Poverty.2: Sociological Models of Social Class PT 

8.5.1: Drawing the Poverty Line To determine who is poor, the U.S. government draws a poverty line. This measure was set in the 1960s, when poor people were thought to spend about one-third of their incomes on food. On the basis of this assumption, each year, the government computes a low-cost food budget and multiplies it by 3. Families whose incomes are less than this amount are classified as poor; those whose incomes are higher—even by a dollar—are considered “not poor.” High rates of rural poverty have been a part of the United States from its origin to the present. This 1937 photo shows a 32-year-old woman who had seven children and no food. She was part of a huge migration of people from the Dust Bowl of Oklahoma in search of a new life in California. Credit: Dorothea Lange/Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Black-and-White Negatives/Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA[LC-USF34-T01-009095-C] 252 This official measure of poverty is grossly inadequate. Poor people actually spend only about one-fifth of their income on food, so to determine a poverty line, we ought to multiply their food budget by 5 instead of 3 (Chandy and Smith 2014). Another problem is that mothers who work outside the home and have to pay for child care are treated the same as mothers who don’t have this expense. The poverty line is also the same for everyone across the nation, even though the cost of living is much higher in New York than in Alabama. On the other hand, much of the income of the poor is not counted: food stamps, rent assistance, public housing, subsidized child care, and the earned income tax credit (Meyer and Mittag 2019). Despite these many criticisms, the official measure has not changed. Credit: By permission of John L. Hart FLP and Creators Syndicate, Inc. The assistant reads, “The king will now outline his plan to eliminate poverty.” The king says, “In the future, there will be no monetary amount used to define poverty.” One among the people says, “Gee, I feel richer already.” That a change in the poverty line can instantly make millions of people poor—or take away their poverty—would be laughable, if it weren’t so serious. Although this line is arbitrary, because it is the official measure of poverty, we’ll use it to see who in the United States is poor. Before we do this, though, how do you think that your ideas of the poor match up with sociological findings? You can find out in the following Down-to-Earth Sociology. Down-to-Earth Sociology What Do You Know about Poverty? Ten Quick Checks on What You Think You Know Check what you think you know with these answers. Are the following statements true or false? 1. Poverty is unusual. Click me 2. People with less education are more likely to be poor. Click me 3. Most poor people are poor because they do not want to work. Click me 4. Most of the poor are trapped in a cycle of poverty. Click me 5. The percentage of children who are poor is higher than the percentage of adults who are poor. Click me 6. Most children who are born in poverty are poor as adults. Click me 7. Most African Americans are poor. Click me 8. Most of the poor are African Americans. Click me 9. Most of the poor live in the inner city. Click me 10. The poverty rate of urban areas is higher than in rural areas. Click me

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