Poverty On The Rise?
There is a very wide range of income for individuals and families. This is
why we
have people that are very wealthy which are referred to as the upper
class and there is the
middle class that makes an average income, and the
bottom of the income bracket lies the
people in poverty. Poverty is a
condition in which a person or family does not have the
means to satisfy
basic needs for food, clothing, shelter, and transportation. Your race
does
not matter, every race has people that are in poverty. But as it is
statistically shown,
different races have a different number of people in
poverty. In 1996, the federal
government established a minimum income level
below which a person or family is
declared in "poverty." If a single person
makes less than $7,995 then they are living in
poverty, and a family has to
exceed $16,036 or are also in poverty.
From 1996 to 1997 the poverty rate
has decreased by .4% In 1996, there was
36.5 million people at the
poverty level and in 1997 the number of people in poverty
decreased to 35.6
million people. Since a decade ago the poverty level has increased
from
32.4 million people to as high as 39.3 million in 1993, but since
1993 the number of
people living in poverty has decreased to 35.6 million
people.
The percent of the population a decade ago below the poverty was
13.1%, which
has increases up to 15.1% but here recently the poverty rate is
back down to 13.3%
Gentry-2
Since the previous year the poverty
rate was lower by .4% for the general
population. The poverty rate of
children under the age of eighteen has also decreased by
.6%. The black
poverty rate decreased the most from 28.4% to 26.5%. The Asians
and
Pacific Islanders had a decrease in their poverty rate by .5%. The
whites had the smallest
decrease out of all races because they decreased only
by .2%. There are many different
factors that contribute to the decreasing of
the poverty rates, from the decrease of the
unemployment to the decrease in
government income maintenance programs.
A lot of the poverty population
is made up of income-maintenance programs. I
would like to talk about few of
the programs that the government offers for people in
poverty. Social
insurance programs is the first. There are many different types to the
social
insurance program. The first two are OASDHI and Medicare. OASDHI is
also
known as social security, which replaces wages lost after retirement.
Medicare provides
hospital insurance for the elderly and disabled. The third
type is unemployment
compensation which allows workers that are unemployed
for a while to collect thirty-five
percent of their lost wages. The second
program is Pubic Assistance. The first type is
Supplemental Security
Income(SSI) this program allows disabled people to receive a
minimum income.
Aid to Families with Dependent Children(AFDC) and Medicaid usually
are linked
together. Medicaid will pay for hospital bills. AFDC provides certain
families
with children financial support. Medicaid is also offered to SSI
recipiances. The food
stamp program is the last type. It provides Americans
with coupons that can be used for
food. The government spends about 736
billion of its dollars on these different types
of
programs.
Gentry-3
The government provides people in poverty
that are in the public assistance
programs with three different plans. They
are supposed to help able-bodied, nonretired
individuals get out of poverty.
The three different plans have many different conflicts.
Some of the
conflicts are that the government is paying too much money out to the
people,
which means they will be dependent on the government for their income instead
of
working for it. Another conflict is that it is very costly to the
government to keep paying
for able-bodied workers. These conflicts are what
stir up many different welfare reforms.
All fifty states have
income-maintenance programs, but the qualifications and rule
vary from state
to state. In each state, they calculate their poverty rates. The number
of
states that had an increase in poverty rate, in 1995 to 1997 was
twenty-two states. The
other twenty-eight states had a decrease in poverty
rate. From 1996 to 1997 there were
three states: Alabama, Mississippi, and
South Carolina that had a poverty decrease while
two states Arkansas and New
Hampshire showed increases in their poverty rate.
To answer the question,
is poverty on the rise? The answer is no. Poverty for the
time being is
declining. There are more and more people giving better jobs or getting
off
public assistance programs. In my own opinion, poverty is decreasing
because people are
realizing that public assistance programs are getting
tougher and tougher to receive
benefits and they won’t be around for ever.
Today, it may have finally made it through to
people that the value of a
higher education is pretty much a necessity to succeed.
*FOR BETTER
UNDERSTANDING, SEE CHART & GRAPHS THAT FOLLOW*