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Theories of poverty
Theories on the causes of poverty are the foundation upon which poverty reduction strategies are based.
While in developed nations poverty is often seen as either a personal or a structural defect, in developing nations the issue of poverty is more profound due to the lack of governmental funds. Some theories on poverty in the developing world focus on cultural characteristics as a retardant of further development. Other theories focus on social and political aspects that perpetuate poverty; perceptions of the poor have a significant impact on the design and execution of programs to alleviate poverty.
When it comes to poverty in the United States, there are two main lines of thought. The most common line of thought within the U.S. is that a person is poor because of personal traits. These traits in turn have caused the person to fail. Supposed traits range from personality characteristics, such as laziness, to educational levels. Despite this range, it is always viewed as the individual's personal failure not to climb out of poverty. This thought pattern stems from the idea of meritocracy and its entrenchment within U.S. thought. Meritocracy, according to Katherine S. Newman is "the view that those who are worthy are rewarded and those who fail to reap rewards must also lack self-worth." This does not mean that all followers of meritocracy believe that a person in poverty deserves their low standard of living. Rather the underlying ideas of personal failure show in the resistance to social and economic programs such as welfare; a poor individual's lack of prosperity shows a personal failure and should not be compensated (or justified) by the state.
Rank, Yoon, and Hirschl (2003) present a contrary argument to the idea that personal failings are the cause of poverty. The argument presented is that poverty in the United States is the result of "failings at the structural level." Key social and economic structural failings which contribute heavily to poverty within the U.S. are identified in the article. The first is a failure of the job market to provide a proper number of jobs which pay enough to keep families out of poverty. Even if unemployment is low, the labor market may be saturated with low-paying, part-time work that lacks benefits (thus limiting the number of full-time, good paying jobs). Rank, Yoon and Hirschl examined the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP), a longitudinal study on employment and income. Using the 1999 official poverty line of $17,029 for a family of four, it was found that 9.4% of persons working full-time and 14.9% of persons working at least part-time did not earn enough annually to keep them above the poverty line.
The investor, billionaire, and philanthropist Warren Buffett, one of the wealthiest people in the world, voiced in 2005 and once more in 2006 his view that his class, the "rich class", is waging class warfare on the rest of society. In 2005 Buffet said to CNN: "It's class warfare, my class is winning, but they shouldn't be." In a November 2006 interview in The New York Times, Buffett stated that "[t]here's class warfare all right, but it's my class, the rich class, that's making war, and we're winning."
One study[when?] showed that 29% of families in The United States could go six months or longer during a hardship with no income. Over 50% of respondents said around two months with no income and another 20% said they could not go longer than two weeks. Low minimum wage, combined with part-time jobs which offer no benefits, have contributed to the labor market's inability to produce enough jobs which can keep a family out of poverty is an example of an economic structural failure.
Rank, Yoon and Hirschl point to the minimal amount of social safety nets found within the U.S. as a social structural failure and a major contributor to poverty in the U.S. Other industrialized nations devote more resources to assisting the poor than the U.S. As a result of this difference poverty is reduced in nations which devote more to poverty reduction measure and programs. Rank et al. use a table to drive this point home. The table shows that in 1994, the actual rate of poverty (what the rate would be without government interventions) in the U.S. was 29%. When compared to actual rates in Canada (29%), Finland (33%), France (39%), Germany (29%), the Netherlands (30%), Norway (27%), Sweden (36%) and the United Kingdom (38%), the United States rate is low. But when government measures and programs are included, the rate of reduction in poverty in the United States is low (38%). Canada and the United Kingdom had the lowest reduction rates outside of the U.S. at 66%, while Sweden, Finland and Norway had reduction rates greater than 80%.
Redlining intentionally excluded black Americans from accumulating intergenerational wealth. The effects of this exclusion on black Americans' health continue to play out daily, generations later, in the same communities. This is evident currently in the disproportionate effects that COVID-19 has had on the same communities which the HOLC redlined in the 1930s. Research published in September 2020 overlaid maps of the highly affected COVID-19 areas with the HOLC maps, showing that those areas marked "risky" to lenders because they contained minority residents were the same neighborhoods most affected by COVID-19. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) looks at inequities in the social determinants of health like concentrated poverty and healthcare access that are interrelated and influence health outcomes with regard to COVID-19 as well as quality of life in general for minority groups. The CDC points to discrimination within health care, education, criminal justice, housing, and finance, direct results of systematically subversive tactics like redlining which led to chronic and toxic stress that shaped social and economic factors for minority groups, increasing their risk for COVID-19. Healthcare access is similarly limited by factors like a lack of public transportation, child care, and communication and language barriers which result from the spatial and economic isolation of minority communities from redlining. Educational, income, and wealth gaps that result from this isolation mean that minority groups' limited access to the job market may force them to remain in fields that have a higher risk of exposure to the virus, without options to take time off. Finally, a direct result of redlining is the overcrowding of minority groups into neighborhoods that do not boast adequate housing to sustain burgeoning populations, leading to crowded conditions that make prevention strategies for COVID-19 nearly impossible to implement.
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Theories of poverty
Theories on the causes of poverty are the foundation upon which poverty reduction strategies are based.
While in developed nations poverty is often seen as either a personal or a structural defect, in developing nations the issue of poverty is more profound due to the lack of governmental funds. Some theories on poverty in the developing world focus on cultural characteristics as a retardant of further development. Other theories focus on social and political aspects that perpetuate poverty; perceptions of the poor have a significant impact on the design and execution of programs to alleviate poverty.
When it comes to poverty in the United States, there are two main lines of thought. The most common line of thought within the U.S. is that a person is poor because of personal traits. These traits in turn have caused the person to fail. Supposed traits range from personality characteristics, such as laziness, to educational levels. Despite this range, it is always viewed as the individual's personal failure not to climb out of poverty. This thought pattern stems from the idea of meritocracy and its entrenchment within U.S. thought. Meritocracy, according to Katherine S. Newman is "the view that those who are worthy are rewarded and those who fail to reap rewards must also lack self-worth." This does not mean that all followers of meritocracy believe that a person in poverty deserves their low standard of living. Rather the underlying ideas of personal failure show in the resistance to social and economic programs such as welfare; a poor individual's lack of prosperity shows a personal failure and should not be compensated (or justified) by the state.
Rank, Yoon, and Hirschl (2003) present a contrary argument to the idea that personal failings are the cause of poverty. The argument presented is that poverty in the United States is the result of "failings at the structural level." Key social and economic structural failings which contribute heavily to poverty within the U.S. are identified in the article. The first is a failure of the job market to provide a proper number of jobs which pay enough to keep families out of poverty. Even if unemployment is low, the labor market may be saturated with low-paying, part-time work that lacks benefits (thus limiting the number of full-time, good paying jobs). Rank, Yoon and Hirschl examined the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP), a longitudinal study on employment and income. Using the 1999 official poverty line of $17,029 for a family of four, it was found that 9.4% of persons working full-time and 14.9% of persons working at least part-time did not earn enough annually to keep them above the poverty line.
The investor, billionaire, and philanthropist Warren Buffett, one of the wealthiest people in the world, voiced in 2005 and once more in 2006 his view that his class, the "rich class", is waging class warfare on the rest of society. In 2005 Buffet said to CNN: "It's class warfare, my class is winning, but they shouldn't be." In a November 2006 interview in The New York Times, Buffett stated that "[t]here's class warfare all right, but it's my class, the rich class, that's making war, and we're winning."
One study[when?] showed that 29% of families in The United States could go six months or longer during a hardship with no income. Over 50% of respondents said around two months with no income and another 20% said they could not go longer than two weeks. Low minimum wage, combined with part-time jobs which offer no benefits, have contributed to the labor market's inability to produce enough jobs which can keep a family out of poverty is an example of an economic structural failure.
Rank, Yoon and Hirschl point to the minimal amount of social safety nets found within the U.S. as a social structural failure and a major contributor to poverty in the U.S. Other industrialized nations devote more resources to assisting the poor than the U.S. As a result of this difference poverty is reduced in nations which devote more to poverty reduction measure and programs. Rank et al. use a table to drive this point home. The table shows that in 1994, the actual rate of poverty (what the rate would be without government interventions) in the U.S. was 29%. When compared to actual rates in Canada (29%), Finland (33%), France (39%), Germany (29%), the Netherlands (30%), Norway (27%), Sweden (36%) and the United Kingdom (38%), the United States rate is low. But when government measures and programs are included, the rate of reduction in poverty in the United States is low (38%). Canada and the United Kingdom had the lowest reduction rates outside of the U.S. at 66%, while Sweden, Finland and Norway had reduction rates greater than 80%.
Redlining intentionally excluded black Americans from accumulating intergenerational wealth. The effects of this exclusion on black Americans' health continue to play out daily, generations later, in the same communities. This is evident currently in the disproportionate effects that COVID-19 has had on the same communities which the HOLC redlined in the 1930s. Research published in September 2020 overlaid maps of the highly affected COVID-19 areas with the HOLC maps, showing that those areas marked "risky" to lenders because they contained minority residents were the same neighborhoods most affected by COVID-19. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) looks at inequities in the social determinants of health like concentrated poverty and healthcare access that are interrelated and influence health outcomes with regard to COVID-19 as well as quality of life in general for minority groups. The CDC points to discrimination within health care, education, criminal justice, housing, and finance, direct results of systematically subversive tactics like redlining which led to chronic and toxic stress that shaped social and economic factors for minority groups, increasing their risk for COVID-19. Healthcare access is similarly limited by factors like a lack of public transportation, child care, and communication and language barriers which result from the spatial and economic isolation of minority communities from redlining. Educational, income, and wealth gaps that result from this isolation mean that minority groups' limited access to the job market may force them to remain in fields that have a higher risk of exposure to the virus, without options to take time off. Finally, a direct result of redlining is the overcrowding of minority groups into neighborhoods that do not boast adequate housing to sustain burgeoning populations, leading to crowded conditions that make prevention strategies for COVID-19 nearly impossible to implement.