Course Reflection Paper----social science
Poverty and Powerlessness
Chapter 11
Copyright © 2017 Cengage Learning. All rights reserved.
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Learning Objectives
After reading this chapter, students will be able to:
Explain the relationship between poverty and powerlessness.
Describe who the poor are, and understand how poverty is defined.
Describe the programs the government relies on to end poverty, and evaluate these programs’ effectiveness.
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Poverty as Powerlessness
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POVERTY AS POWERLESSNESS
Powerlessness: the inability to control the events that shape one’s life.
The poor depend on others for subsistence needs; their powerlessness derives from dependency.
The poor often experience alienation—separation from society—because of their lack of success in realizing life goals.
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Poverty in the United States
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Poverty in the United States
2013 U.S. Census reported over 45 million people in poverty, almost 15% of population.
The official definition of poverty emphasizes subsistence levels; describes poverty objectively as the lack of enough income to acquire the minimum necessities.
Excludes “in-kind” (noncash) benefits provided by the government, e.g. medical care, food stamps, school lunches, etc.
Includes welfare and Social Security income.
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Sources: www.census.gov/prod/3/98pubs/p60-203.pdf and www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty/data/
incpovhlth/2013/table3.pdf
FIGURE 11-1 Poverty in the United States
Poverty in the United States
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Is There a Culture of Poverty?
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Poverty as Subculture
Poverty as Economic Deprivation
Is There a Culture of Poverty?
Argument for the Culture of Poverty:
The poor have a characteristic lifestyle that helps them adjust to their world.
The lifestyle is passed to future generations, setting in motion a self-perpetuating cycle of poverty.
Children born into a culture of alienation, apathy, and lack of motivation learn these attitudes.
Future generations are prevented from exploiting opportunities.
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Is There a Culture of Poverty
Poverty as Subculture
Most of the poor subscribe to the “middle-class American way of life,” at least as a cultural ideal.
Culture of poverty as present-orientedness
Do not sacrifice present-day want for long-term needs.
Despair runs so deep that individuals cannot envision a successful future and plan for it.
Increased income is not likely to remedy poverty when the poor are present oriented.
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Figure 10-2
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Is There a Culture of Poverty
Poverty as Subculture (cont’d)
Situational explanation thesis: Poverty can be explained by the social conditions of the poor.
Differences in financial resources determine individual behavior.
Economic deprivation is the fundamental cause of the social pathologies that afflict the poor.
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Is There a Culture of Poverty
Poverty as Economic Deprivation
Opponents of idea of culture of poverty say this idea diverts attention from conditions which foster family instability and present-orientedness.
Do conditions of poverty create a culture of poverty or vice versa?
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Is There a Culture of Poverty?
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Is There a Culture of Poverty?
America’s Poor Children (cont’d)
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Is There a Culture of Poverty?
Have there been times in the past 12 months when you did not have enough money to buy food that you or your family needed?
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Social SECURITY BENEFITS, 2015
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Government and Social Welfare
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Social Insurance
In-Kind Welfare Benefits
Public Assistance
Welfare Reform
Government and SOCIAL Welfare
Nearly one-third of U.S. population receives some form of direct government benefit.
Social Security
Medicare, Medicaid
Disability, unemployment insurance
Veterans benefits
Food stamps, school lunches, and more
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Government and SOCIAL Welfare
Social Insurance
Designed to prevent poverty resulting from individual misfortune—unemployment, old age, death of the family breadwinner, or physical disability.
Relied on compulsory financial contribution through payroll deductions to their own protection.
Unemployment compensation is also an insurance program
The costs are borne solely by the employer.
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Government and SOCIAL Welfare
Public Assistance
The purpose of public assistance is to alleviate; to provide a minimal level of subsistence to certain categories of needy persons.
Supplemental Security Income (SSI) aids three categories of recipients: the aged, the blind, and the disabled.
Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) is federal block grants given to states to administer.
Other types referred to as general assistance.
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Government and SOCIAL Welfare
“In-Kind” Welfare Benefits
Noncash public assistance programs
The Food Stamp Program
Free school lunches
Medicaid
CHIP
Job training
Housing assistance
Educational programs
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Government and SOCIAL Welfare
Welfare Reform
The Welfare Reform Act of 1996
Gave money to the states and increased the states’ power in administrating welfare monies.
Focus on “welfare to work”.
Required to work within two years of receiving aid
States can deny assistance to children born to welfare recipients or unwed parents under 18 not attending school and living with an adult.
Medicaid coverage extended for recipients whose income makes them ineligible.
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Government and SOCIAL Welfare
Welfare Reform (cont’d)
Work Requirements
Adults required to begin working within two years of receiving aid.
Restrictions on Aid
Cannot be used for adults who have received welfare for more than five years
Medicaid
State Flexibility
Can establish a single set of eligibility and work requirements for food stamps, welfare checks, etc.
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Homelessness in America
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Street People
Decriminalization
Deinstitutionalization
Outside the Social Welfare System
Homelessness in America
“Homeless” is used to describe:
Transients in search of work
Sheltered homeless, often families with children
Those who have roamed the streets long term, usually single persons
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Homelessness in America
Street People
Ranks of street homeless expand and contract with the seasons.
Approximately one-half of the street homeless are chronic alcohol and drug abusers, another one-fourth to one-third are mentally ill.
Estimates suggest that 15% to 25% of the homeless are neither mentally ill nor dependent on alcohol or drugs.
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Homelessness in America
Deinstitutionalization
1960s and 1970s: Reform led by mental health care professionals and social welfare activists to release chronic mental patients from state-run mental hospitals.
Recognized that aside from drugs, no psychiatric therapies had success with chronic mentally ill.
Drug therapies could be administered on outpatient basis. Thus no one could be rightfully be kept in a mental institution against his or her will.
Population of mental hospitals declined from about 500,000 in 1960 to about 100,000 in 1990.
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Homelessness in America
John Sturrock / Alamy
Despite the commonly held perception that
the elderly are disproportionately
impoverished, the reality is that children are the
most likely population
to live below the poverty
line in the United
States. Poor children,
like those in this homeless family living in
their car, might carry
the burden of deprivation
with them for their entire lifetimes.
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Homelessness in America
Decriminalization
Vagrancy and public intoxication have been decriminalized.
Involuntary confinement abolished for the mentally ill and substance abusers
… unless such a person is adjudged in court to be “a danger to himself or others.”
Freedom to “die with their rights on.”
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Homelessness in America
Outside the Social Welfare System
Social welfare programs are frequently irrelevant to the chronic mentally ill persons and alcohol and drug abusers in the streets.
Most are “uncooperative.”
They are isolated from society—no family members, doctors or counselors to turn to for help
They may lose welfare benefits because they have no permanent address.
Welfare workers seldom provide aggressive care management.
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