Generational Poverty Angela Lipford BSHS/345 December 23, 2013 Chelie Saffeels Generational poverty explains poverty that continues from generation to generation. The definition of generational poverty is poverty that extends through at least two generations (“Urban Ventures”, n.d.). There are several characteristics of generational poverty. There are also several reasons why generational poverty is so hard of a cycle to break. In this paper, we will discuss these characteristics and reasons.
Many people living in poverty are divorced, are single parents, or have unhappy marriages. They tend to have higher rates of dropping out of school, arrest, and mental disorders. Because of limited access to health care, they are more likely to suffer from poor physical health than are people considered middle class or above. Many sociologists have written about the problem of poverty and a great deal of their writings focus on the idea of an American underclass. This underclass is thought to be caught in a cycle of poverty
The importance of this was, that by changing the attitudes of those most powerful in society they could influence change in the administration of the government, in how they were ensuring help for the poor. Individuals like of Charles Booth appealed very effectively to changing the views of society, about poverty. Booth was a wealthy entrepreneur,
Child poverty is still one of the biggest barriers to children and young people attaining a decent standard of living. It’s predicted and acknowledged by various organisations that the number of children living in poverty will increase further over the foreseeable future due to the current economic climate and the continuing cuts to welfare and services. The causes of child poverty are all intricately woven into each other. Firstly and unsurprisingly one of the major factors that causes this is those families without work. In 2009/2010, 42% of families below the perceived poverty line were out of work.
They have a reactive mentality. This leads to lack of organization and planning their life and their family’s life. Further, their money is for entertainment and entertaining others. Many combined disadvantages make it almost impossible for individuals to break the cycle. Economic instability, lack of resources, lack of education and lack of unity from society keeps special population groups in hardship.
With inflation comes rising cost and lower income families’ resulting in higher numbers of welfare recipients. In the United States the income distribution arrangement is extremely unusual from that of a third world nation, whereas, a small number of families may be very affluent while a majority of families are very deprived. Most distressing is the modification in income distribution. In our society, the underprivileged do not profit from the increased prosperity of our country. Low income families and high income families consist of an extensive income difference.
This gap has led to the decreasing of education’s quality, and the inequality in residents’ income. Income inequality has put the United States in bad shape. Because of this unfairness, the rich are getting richer whereas the rest are struggling to survive. According to Robert Frank, a New York Times writer, excessive spending by the wealthy has “made it even more expensive for middle-class families to achieve basic financial goals” (Frank; 582). The squeezed society’s neglecting of investment has put both the rich and the poor in a society with low quality infrastructure.
So one thing we know for sure is that poverty, crime and violence is nothing new in America. How can we end poverty, crime and violence with a government that is built on using it’s powers and wealth to keep the poor, poor? While creating an environment for the wealthy to get richer off the less fortunate. Poverty in America is old and new (Lauer, R. H, Lauer, J. C., et al. 2008, pg 161).
Poverty and social exclusion are causes of homelessness across developed the country. A comparative perception on the ways that social policies and cultural practices in the United States shape both levels of inequality and the particular groups who lack resources, and hence both rates of homelessness and the groups who are most likely to experience it. It argues that patterns of social exclusion are related to homelessness at two levels they influenced the overall generosity of social welfare programmers and they affected the ability of particular households to access income, wealth, jobs and housing. Structural factors such as poverty and social exclusion may interact with individual vulnerabilities to produce and maintain homelessness The relationship between structural factors in American society individual short-comings and inadequacies did start explaining the rise of homelessness over the past decades. In particular, it will posit that structural and individual factors are often inextricably linked in the cycle of poverty and homelessness, and that they tend to re-enforce each other as they are manifest socially, politically, and economically in American society.
In Europe, the aristocracy and lords owned the land, and they abused the peasants that lived on it. America presented an opportunity, one that was difficult to refuse, an opportunity to be free from tyranny. However, at the onset of the Industrial Revolution, the American Dream was redefined, in large part to the meteoric rise of Andrew Carnegie. The American Dream, then, became the economic uplifting of oneself out of poverty, and into riches. Poverty becomes un-American because the mythology of the day decrees, that in America you become wealthy if you are enterprising, and you work hard enough, and anybody that does not manage to bring themselves out of poverty is of a lesser pedigree.