Social Work, Poverty & Homeless

Poverty and Homeless March 20, 2012 Poverty and Homeless Poverty Poverty can be defined in several ways and can mean different things to people of different societies. Absolute poverty is to have inadequate funds to provide a minimum standard of living for oneself or one’s family. Relative poverty is defined as doing worse off financially than the average person in a given society. Persons living in relative poverty may have no car, no television, and no toys for their children but have enough money for clothing, food and shelter.

Relative to the average Americans, they are living poorly. A person or family living in absolute poverty, on the other hand, may not have enough money to pay for the rent or groceries for the month. These different ways of defining poverty are debated by government officials and researchers. How poverty is defined is integral to the task of reducing its prevalence in society. Statistics With 18. 2% (U. S. Census, 2006-2008) of people in the United States are living below the poverty level, it is increasingly important that the government should take measures regarding this context.

Poverty thresholds or income levels is dependent on the number of family members. Poverty in United States of America is unique in nature with 13-17% Americans live below the poverty line in America. Although extreme poverty is virtually nonexistent in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries, national measures indicate the presence of economic deprivation. For example, in the United States in 2006, 38. 8 million people, or 13. 3% of the population, fell below the federal poverty line (Fields, 2000).

In the United States, the poverty threshold was established in 1965 based on the cost of food, taking into account household size and composition but making no adjustment for regional differences in cost of living. The threshold is adjusted annually for inflation. For example, in 2007, the federal poverty threshold for a family of three, with one adult and two children, was $16,705—far above the extreme world poverty measure but well below the national average income (Filmer, 2001). Geographic Locale

Of the people living below the poverty level in the United States, 44% live in rural areas, and approximately 56% live in urban/suburban locales. Many of the contemporary stories depict characters in urban and suburban settings where people are living on the streets, in shelters, in their cars, or in apartments and homes. Race/Ethnicity An analysis of the portrayal of race is very complicated. In the United States Census Bureau (2006-2008) shows that there is more White people living in poverty in the United States than any other racial group.

However, if one looks at the percentage of people living below the poverty line within racial groups, the statistics For instance, of the total number of poor people living in the United States, 46. 06% are White; however, of all of the White people living in the United States, only 9. 2% are poor. Also, while only 1. 5% of the poor people living in the United States are Native Americans, within that population, 25. 3% are living in poverty. In other words, one out of 10 White people live in poverty versus one out of four Native Americans living in poverty (Hanushek, 2007).

Negative Effects of Poverty 1. Increasing the debt and loans to meet individual consumer needs and necessities instead of working on plans for Renaissance and the construction and reconstruction. 2. Peoples’ economic dependence of countries and peoples of the donor loans and debt, and the consequent negative impact in all aspects and sides. 3. Increase the exploitation and monopoly, and thus increase the poor poorer and the rich richer, because the poor because of their strong need to be unable to compete are subject to the conditions. . Poor often cannot because of lack of money to have on the use of modern technology and modern techniques. 5. Poor often are busy filling his hunger for knowledge and culture; there remains sufficient time for learning and culture. 6. Illiteracy, ignorance and backwardness as stated above. 7. Increasing the rate of mortality, where the link between all the experts most of the diseases of poverty, and thus the death of many people have mentioned the impact of hunger in the death of children (Levin, 2004). Root-Cause of Poverty

Poverty is a big subject and an area of policy which affects every part of the USA. It is not much known about but impossible to hide. The poor suffer it, the middle class and the rich pay taxes to relieve it but at the same time they have always sought measures to contain and neutralize the poor. Multiple factors operating at various interconnected scales cause poverty. Globally, uneven trade and capital flows lead to poverty through exclusion from the benefits of economic growth. Access to water and natural resources, transportation, and climate also shape physical abilities and economic opportunities.

International and national policies influence poverty directly, through aid, subsidies, and antipoverty programs, and indirectly, through economic policies that affect the allocation of resources between people, regions, and industries. While some argue that individual characteristics such as education and the work ethic are paramount in explaining poverty, others insist that social and economic structures define capabilities based on gender, class, caste, race, religion, and other forces. Women are often denied access to education, paid employment, health care, financial resources, and political participation because of their gender.

While these socially embedded practices deprive women of economic opportunities and basic freedoms, they also contribute to poverty indirectly through fertility and child care (Psacharopoulos, 2004). In the United States, the rise of “working poverty” has been linked to economic restructuring and the decline of the welfare state. The role of these factors varies from place to place and underscores the importance of geography in understanding poverty. Poverty has increased recently in Western Asia and remains fairly constant in Latin America. References Fields, G. (2000). Distribution and development: a new look at the developing world.

Cambridge & London: MIT Press. Filmer, D. , & Pritchett, L. (2001). Estimating wealth effects without expenditure data – or tears: an application to educational enrollments in states of India. Demography, 38(1). Hanushek, E. A. , & Wo? mann, L. (2007). The role of school improvement in economic development. NBER Working Paper 12832. Cambridge, Mass. : National Bureau of Economic Research. Psacharopoulos, G. , & Patrinos, H. (2004). Returns to investment in education: a further update. Education Economics, 12(2), Levin, B. (2004). Poverty and inner-city education. Horizons, 7(2),