DB 2
Social Problems
James M. Henslin
Using your textbook and/or one primary outside resource, please substantively write about this discussion topic.
Chapter 7 Economic Problems: Poverty and Wealth
Learning Objectives
After reading this chapter, you should be able to:
1. 7.1 Summarize the major economic problems facing the United States, the three types of poverty, and the problems with the poverty line.
6. 7.6 Explain what the likely future of the social problem of poverty is and why.
At age 17, Julie Treadman was facing more than her share of problems. Her boyfriend had deserted her when she told him that she was pregnant. Exhausted and depressed, Julie dropped out of high school. At five months pregnant, she wondered about her child’s future.
When Julie had severe stomach pains, a neighbor called an ambulance, and she was rushed to Lutheran Hospital. When hospital administrators discovered that neither Julie nor her mother had insurance, money, or credit, they refused to admit her. Before they could transfer her to a public hospital, however, Julie gave birth to a stillborn baby.
This situation perplexed hospital administrators who didn’t want to serve those who wouldn’t pay. They ordered the ambulance driver to take Julie—dead baby, umbilical cord, and all—to the public hospital.
—Based on an event in St. Louis, Missouri
Julie gave birth to a stillborn baby.
The Problem in Sociological Perspective
1. 7.1Summarize the major economic problems facing the United States, the three types of poverty, and the problems with the poverty line.
The United States is world famous for the “American Dream,” individual freedoms and the opportunity to climb the social class ladder and obtain education and economic success. The American Dream is so appealing that millions of people immigrate to the United States, both legally and illegally, seeking the chance to climb the social class ladder. For many people, however, such as Julie Treadman in our opening vignette, social inequality —the unequal distribution of wealth, income, power, and opportunities—has severe consequences. Although the law now prohibits it, because Julie (in our opening vignette) couldn’t pay, she was denied both medical treatment and human dignity. Opportunity and success are much more pleasant than things like what happened to Julie Treadman, but because this book is about social problems, our focus in this chapter is on the negative consequences of social inequality. Let’s begin.
The United States is made up of many social classes. The term social class refers to a large group of people who have similar income, education, and job prestige. Picture the various social classes like a ladder, going from the bottom rung, the very poor, to the top rung, the very wealthy. On each rung of the ladder are clustered people who have similar income and education, and whose jobs bring similar prestige. As you saw with Julie Treadman, where you are located on the social class ladder makes a vital difference for what your life is like. So it is with all of us.
Economic Problems Facing the United States
How well will you do after college? You know that your welfare is tied up with the U.S. economy, and perhaps this chapter will help you better understand your future. Let’s begin by looking at three economic problems facing the United States.
Booms and Busts
The economy is the social institution that produces and distributes goods and services. At any given time, the U.S. economy—and increasingly, the global economy as well—is moving through a “boom–bust” cycle. During a “boom,” there are plenty of jobs, making the future look bright and rosy. During a “bust,” the jobs dry up, and the future seems dark and gloomy. If you are lucky enough to graduate from college during a “boom,” you will have your choice of jobs. But if you graduate during a “bust,” even though you have worked just as hard as the earlier students and earned the same degree, you will end up struggling to find work—if there is any work to find.
Stagnant Incomes
Another problem is that people’s real income (income adjusted for inflation) is now stagnant. From the end of World War II in 1945 until 1970, the real income of U.S. workers rose steadily. Even after inflation, workers still had more money to spend. Since then, workers’ paychecks have grown, but the dollars they contain buy less. Because there are more dollars in their paychecks, workers feel as though they are earning more than they used to, but in constant dollars they make little more than workers did in 1970. Look at Figure 7.1 . You will see that it took more than 40 years for workers to get a real raise of about 82 cents an hour.
Figure 7.1
Average Hourly Earnings, in Current and Constant Dollars
Note: Current dollars are the number of dollars a worker earns. Constant dollars means those dollars have been adjusted for inflation, with 1982–1984 as the base.
Source: By the author. Based on Statistical Abstract of the United States 1992 :Table 650; 1999 :Table 698; 2016 :Table 662.
Figure 7.1 Full Alternative Text
What has softened the blow for the average family is that more women have paid jobs. In 1970, 41 percent of women worked for wages, either full- or part-time. Today, 58 percent of women do (Statistical Abstract 2016:Table 615). Families in which both partners have paid jobs earn an average of 82 percent more than families in which only one partner (usually the husband) works for a paycheck (Statistical Abstract 2016:Table 721).
A Debtor Nation
The United States used to have a huge trade surplus, selling more goods to other nations than it bought from them. The change is so extreme that now we are the largest debtor nation in the world. We buy goods from other nations at such a frenzied pace that when you calculate what we pay for these items, minus our income from the products we sell, we end up over $700 billion short at the end of each year (Statistical Abstract 2016:Table 1310). We also spend vastly more on government services than we collect in taxes. Year after year, these deficits pile up, increasing our national debt (the total amount the U.S. government owes). To finance the national debt, which totals about $19 trillion, we pay about $430 billion a year in interest (Statistical Abstract 2016:Tables 493, 496). When interest rates rise, so will this national bill. Money paid for interest is money that we cannot use to build schools and colleges, hire teachers, pay for medical services or job programs for the poor, operate Head Start, or pay for any other services to help improve our quality of life.
Before closing this section, let’s get an overview of one more economic problem—poverty—perhaps the most visible and bothersome of all.
What Is Poverty?
You might think that poverty would be easy to define, but its definition is neither simple nor obvious. There isn’t just one kind of poverty. There are at least three types. Let’s contrast the three and then consider something called the poverty line.
Types of Poverty
The extreme form is biological poverty —poverty so severe that it deforms or kills people through malnutrition or starvation. Biological poverty also refers to housing and clothing so inadequate that people suffer from exposure. Our homeless endure biological poverty. So does the young woman on the right in the photo shown here.
More common is relative poverty . This term refers to comparing people’s standards of living and seeing that some people are worse or better off than others. A lot of relative poverty is not serious. Some people “feel poor” because they don’t have a car as nice as the cars their neighbors have. You’ve probably experienced relative poverty yourself. Maybe you “felt poorer” when you noticed that some classmates wear nicer clothing or have more up-to-date, powerful laptops than you do. Or maybe some are able to go on spring break to Mexico or Bermuda, and you can’t. Relative poverty also exists on a global level: What is poverty in the United States would mean very comfortable living in India, where most families have little clothing, little food, and live in just a room or two.
What a world of difference for the rich and the poor around the globe: current life circumstances, hopes for the future, and life orientations. The one is hoping for a new diamond, the other for food. The debutante on the left lives in the United States. The ragpicker on the right lives in India.
There is also official poverty . This is a specified income level that separates the “poor” from the “not poor.” People below this arbitrary poverty line are defined as “poor”; those above this line, even by a dollar, are “not poor.” As I said, the poverty line is arbitrary. It was established in 1962 by the Social Security Administration ( Fisher 1988 ). At that time, the poor spent about one-third of their income on food, and the poverty line was set by multiplying a low-level food budget by three. U.S. agencies adjust this rough figure annually to match the Consumer Price Index, the official gauge of inflation.
Problems with the Poverty Line
Critics say that the poverty line is stuck in a time warp that makes this measure grossly inadequate. Today’s poor people actually spend only about one-fifth of their income on food, so to determine a poverty line, we could multiply their food budget by five instead of three (Chandy and Smith 2014). There also are many other problems with the poverty line. For example, parents who work outside the home and have to pay for child care are treated the same as parents who don’t have this expense. The poverty line is also the same for everyone across the nation, even though the cost of living is much higher in New York than in Alabama. One saving grace is that much of the income of the poor is not counted, including food stamps, rent assistance, subsidized child care, and the earned income tax credit ( Short 2012 ). In the face of these criticisms, the Census Bureau has developed alternative ways to measure poverty. These show higher poverty, but the official measure has not changed.
Using this rock-bottom definition, let’s look at “official poverty” in the United States.
The Scope of the Problem
1. 7.2 Explain how subjective concerns have changed the social problem of poverty over time, structural inequality, the basic distribution of income and wealth in the United States, and the impact of poverty.
I want to stress again a significant point that runs through this text: By themselves, objective conditions are not enough to make a social problem. Subjective concerns are also essential. When it comes to poverty, subjective concerns can be more important.
Subjective Concerns and Objective Conditions
How can subjective concerns be more important than objective conditions? Consider the extremes: Poverty (the objective condition) can be extensive, but if few people are bothered by it (the subjective concern), then poverty is not a social problem. By contrast, if poverty is rare, but people are concerned about the few cases and they want something done about it, then poverty is a social problem. Let’s look at how these extremes have occurred in the United States.
Changes in Concerns and Conditions
During the early years of the United States, most people were poor. Yet as extensive as poverty was at this time, poverty was not considered a social problem. Life had always been a struggle for almost everyone in the world, so poverty was assumed to be a natural part of life. Then in the 19th century, industrialization progressed, producing an abundance of jobs and wealth and reducing poverty. But at this time, masses of poor people were streaming from the farms and other countries into U.S. cities. Even though the standard of living had increased, this migration made poverty more visible. Leaders began to declare that poverty was a social problem. Then, as immigrants were absorbed into the expanding workforce, poverty once again receded from sight.
Suddenly, poverty became a pressing public concern. The Great Depression of the 1930s had arrived, throwing millions of people out of work. People who had been in the middle class just a short time before found themselves begging for food at what became known as “soup kitchens.” Protests erupted across the nation, and labor organizers led strikes. Concerned and fearful, politicians declared poverty to be the greatest problem facing the nation. They rushed through legislation that established emergency programs and created millions of jobs. Then came World War II. Workers were needed to run the factories that produced armaments and other war goods. Millions of others were sent overseas to fight. After the war, prosperity continued to increase, and poverty receded from sight. Even though the objective condition—millions of people in poverty— remained, subjective concerns eased. The poor, tucked in out-of-the-way rural areas and in urban slums, once again dropped from sight.
Launching the War on Poverty
This administration today, here and now, declares unconditional war on poverty in America. Our chief weapons in a more pinpointed attack will be better schools, and better health, and better homes, and better training, and better job opportunities to help more Americans, especially young Americans escape from squalor and misery and unemployment rolls.
—President Lyndon Johnson State of the Union Address 1964
President John F. Kennedy had made poverty a campaign issue in his 1960 bid for the presidency. He received only a lukewarm response. Two years later came a blockbuster book, Michael Harrington’s The Other America. Harrington argued passionately that in the midst of “the affluent society,” one-quarter of the nation lived in squalor. Rarely has a single volume of social science transformed people’s consciousness as this one. The media publicized his book, policy makers read it, and sociologists assigned it to their students. This book also set the stage for President Johnson to declare a “war on poverty.”
Prodded and even bullied by Johnson, Congress funded a raft of programs for the poor: child care, Head Start, legal services, medical services, job training, subsidized housing, and community health centers. The result was dramatic. As you can see from Figure 7.2 , in just 10 years the number of Americans below the official poverty line dropped from 22 percent to 13 percent. This quick, sharp reduction made it clear that poverty can be solved. We simply need effective social policies.
Figure 7.2
Americans below the Poverty Line
Note: Projections by the author.
Source: By the author. Based on U.S. Census Bureau 2011 ; Statistical Abstract of the United States 2016 :Table 729.
Figure 7.2 Full Alternative Text
The Situation Today
Currently, when people manage to break through their enamored following of hot celebrities and sizzling fashions, or the latest gossip about celebrities and politicians, what captures their attention is crime—and, for fewer people, global economic threats. It is as though people are walking in a dream-like state—brought about, I would add, by the mesmerizing effects of television and the Internet, designed to numb consciousness about social issues. Certainly, subjective concerns about poverty are not today’s issue. The homeless have not disappeared, but they seem to have become another urban fixture, although an unwelcome one. The media occasionally highlight the plight of workers in some industry, but for the most part poverty has been relegated to a back burner. Tales of woe, though, if well told and accompanied by photos of despair, especially of suffering children, still sell newspapers during Thanksgiving and Christmas. When the ongoing economic crisis arouses sporadic interest in poverty, the concerns are focused primarily on some specific job layoffs.
Reaching a Plateau
Look at Figure 7.2 again. You can see that we have made no progress in reducing the poverty rate since the 1960s and 1970s. During the past 40 to 50 years, the percentage of Americans below the poverty line has hovered between 12 and 15 percent. Today it is slightly higher than the upper range, and threatening to burst higher. Although today’s percentage of poor is less than it was in the 1950s, our population is much larger, and more Americans are poor today than before the “war on poverty” began.
Arbitrary and Controversial Numbers
I said that the poverty line is arbitrary. Someone, or a group of someones, has determined the magic number that delineates poverty and non-poverty. With the poverty line a definition chosen by a government agency, we can argue endlessly about whether we have more or less poor people than the government measures. Some argue that it is higher because a lot of people who are on the edge of survival aren’t counted. Others say that it is lower because the government does not count as income many benefits that people receive from antipoverty programs: Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, and HUD vouchers (government rent subsidies given to poor families). This issue of “more or less” plagues the social problem of poverty. What should we count as income? Where should the cutoff for poverty be? Change these and we change the number of people counted as poor.
In the cartoon shown here you can see how Johnny Hart has picked up this arbitrary nature of the poverty line—that we can reduce or increase the number of “poor” people simply by changing the official definition of poverty.
This cartoon pinpoints the arbitrary nature of the poverty line. This makes me almost think that the creators of the Wizard of Id have been studying sociology.
The Significance of the Poverty Line and of Poverty
Academics and officials can argue about the number of people in poverty (and those who do so are never in poverty themselves), but regardless of the exact numbers, poverty is a fact of life for millions of Americans. The significance of where you draw the poverty line is that it determines who will receive aid and who will not. The significance of poverty lies in the hardships people face. Poverty stunts people’s intellectual abilities, ruins their health, and shortens their lives. Poverty also lies at the root of many other social problems. In earlier chapters, you caught a glimpse of how poverty is connected to prostitution, rape, murder, and drug abuse. In coming chapters, you will see how poverty is related to racism, physical and mental illness, and abuse in the family.
Poverty is much more than having little money. Poverty means the reduction in life chances.
Social Inequality
Let’s look at some common assumptions about equality and why social inequality is inevitable.
Ideals versus Reality
“I lead a very ordinary life.”
—Ann Getty, heir to the Getty oil fortune
This is what Ann Getty told a New York Times reporter. Ordinary? Her “ordinary life” included living in a San Francisco mansion and flying to Paris to attend fashion shows and shop for clothing by top designers. On her international shopping excursions, she took her personal chef with her. She also bought $600,000 worth of clothing for her new daughter-in-law ( Friedman 2010 ).
Let’s assume that Ann Getty was serious when she made this statement, as I think she was. She was used to her way of life. This is what she experienced daily, so it was “ordinary” to her.
All of us take for granted what is usual in our environment. We also deny or explain away “inconvenient truths,” things that threaten our worldview or that contradict our ideas.
As we grow up, we learn ideals about equality, opportunity, and success. Poverty is an “inconvenient truth” that contradicts these ideals. Denial is a common way of coping with this contradiction. For example, when researchers ask people what social class they belong to, most Americans—whether rich or poor—say they are middle class. With people like Ann Getty seeing themselves as living an “ordinary life,” this tendency fascinates social researchers.
We know that all Americans are not equal, of course, and that the life chances of a daughter of a single waitress differ immensely from those of a son born to wealthy parents. We all know that the rich and politically connected pass advantages on to their children while the poor and powerless pass disadvantages on to theirs. Because of this, we have social programs intended to help level the playing field, such as affirmative action, college scholarships, Pell grants, and community colleges.
Structural Inequality
Such programs run up against structural inequality , the inequality that is built into our social institutions. For example, some jobs in our economy pay higher wages and others lower wages, so automatically some people will receive more, others less. Or consider unemployment, another form of structural inequality. If a society has 100 million workers but only 90 million jobs, then 10 million workers will be unemployed, regardless of how hard they look for work. Job training programs cannot solve this structural problem. The solution requires changes in structure—that is, the creation of more jobs. No workable social system has been devised that eliminates structural inequality.
Distribution of Income and Wealth
After considering the inequality of income and wealth, we’ll look at the relationship of wealth and power.
Inequality of Income
Structural inequality, as you can expect, brings inequality of income , the money people receive from their work and investments. You might be surprised at how vast income inequality is in the United States. Look at Figure 7.3 . You can see that the top fifth of the U.S. population receives 51 percent of the nation’s entire income. The other “half” is divided among the remaining 80 percent of Americans. The poorest fifth of the population receives just 3 percent of the nation’s income. Despite our numerous antipoverty programs, income inequality today is greater than it was in the 1940s.
Figure 7.3
Who Gets What? The Inverted Income Pyramid
How is the income of the United States distributed?
Source: By the author. Based on Statistical Abstract of the United States 2016 :Table 716.
Figure 7.3 Full Alternative Text
Inequality of Wealth
Another way to picture financial inequality is to look at the distribution of wealth , the economic assets that people own, their savings, bank accounts, stocks, bonds, mutual funds, and real estate. The total of American wealth is high, about $60 trillion (Statistical Abstract 2016:Table 743).
You saw how the nation’s income is distributed. How about the nation’s wealth? Look at Figure 7.4 . Forty-two percent of the nation’s wealth is in the hands of just 1 percent of U.S. families. And among the one-percenters, wealth is far from divided evenly. The top tenth of 1 percent of U.S. families owns 22 percent of the nation’s wealth. The top 10 percent of this small group, one hundredth of one percent of America’s families, own 11 percent of the entire country’s wealth (Saez and Fry 2014). Yes, just 16,000 families own 11 percent of the nation’s wealth. Some suggest that this 1 percent controls corporate America. Conflict theorists come straight out and say they just buy politicians (nicely, of course) and control the entire country.
Figure 7.4
Who Owns What? How the Wealth of the United States Is Distributed
Source: By the author. Based on Saez and Zucman 2014.
Figure 7.4 Full Alternative Text
There is also a racial–ethnic gap. Look at Figure 7.5 . You can see that the median income of Asian American families surpasses the income of all other racial–ethnic groups. Their income is 13 percent higher than that of white families and 80 percent higher than the income of Latino and African American families.
Figure 7.5
Income and Wealth (Net Worth) of Families by Race–Ethnicity
For wealth (net worth), the data are more limited. The researchers provide information only for white families and a general catch-all category of “non-white families.” The total of $141,000 shown for the average white family can be misleading. The average white family does not have $141,000. This is an average, and needs to be seen in light of Figure 7.4 , which shows how concentrated wealth is among a small group. There are millions of poor white people. It comes as a surprise to many that there are more poor whites than there are poor African Americans and poor Latinos combined. We will return to this later.
A Note on Gates and Buffet
The richest of the 160,000 families that own 22 percent of the entire nation’s wealth are those of Bill Gates and Warren Buffet. Warren Buffet is one of the world’s most successful stock market investors. Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard to co-found Microsoft Corp., the world’s largest software company. Gates and his employees developed MS-DOS, Windows, and Vista, popular computer operating systems. Microsoft gets a licensing fee each time a computer that uses these systems is sold. The billions of dollars that Gates and Buffet have given to the Gates Foundation for global agricultural, educational, and health projects apparently make these two the most generous men in human history.
Billions of dollars amassed by Gates and Buffet. This number trips easily off the tongue, but it is difficult to wrap your head around it. The following illustration may help you grasp the enormity of a billion dollars—one thousand million dollars:
Suppose you were born on the day Christ was born, that you are still alive today, and that you have been able to save money at the fantastic rate of one cent for every second that you lived—that is, 60 cents for every minute, $36 for every hour, or $864 for every day of your life during these past 2,000 years. At this rate, it would take you another thousand years to save $1 billion ( Shaffer 1986 ).
Wealth and Power
“Wealth is a good thing. Everyone ought to have some.” —
James Smith, research scientist
If wealth is good, then what is the problem? Part of the problem is that the 1 percent of Americans who own 42 percent of the nation’s wealth wield immense power over the U.S. economy. As this elite pursues even more wealth, they move production to Mexico, India, or China, where labor is cheaper. They throw hundreds of thousands of people out of work when they close factories, but this is not their concern. To them, this is merely a side effect of seizing economic opportunities. It is the wealthy who make these decisions, but it is the U.S. workers who must live with the consequences of this global game of Monopoly.
The wealthy live in a cocoon of privilege. They enjoy beautiful homes in safe neighborhoods. They are protected from unemployment, injustice in the courts, and an unresponsive political system. To perpetuate their advantages, they send their children to private schools and hire top financial advisors, attorneys, and lobbyists. At the other end of the money spectrum are those who cope with deprivation as part of everyday life. Let’s turn our focus on them.
How we define reality depends to a large extent on where we are located in the social class structure. Poor Americans are not likely to have the view illustrated in this cartoon.
The Impact of Poverty: From Houses and Mortgages to Education and Criminal Justice
What difference does poverty make? On the most obvious level, the poor can’t afford new cars and fine restaurants. But beneath this obvious level lies a world of deprivation that enshrouds the lives of the poor. Just as your economic circumstances profoundly affect every aspect of your life, so it is for those who live in poverty. Let’s look at some of these consequences of poverty.
Housing and Mortgages
During the economic crisis when millions of home buyers fell behind on their mortgages, some tried to negotiate lower payments. Here is how one person described his negotiation: “I told her that I probably spend $10 a day on groceries, and she said ‘Maybe you can eat less’” ( Morgenson 2008 ).
The substandard housing of the poor is well known—the plumbing that does not work, the heating system that breaks down in winter, and the roaches and rats that party all night.
But here’s some good news. Let’s suppose a family in poverty manages to save enough money for a down payment on their own house. Now here’s the bad news: This frugal family has just become the unsuspecting victims of predatory bankers. Bankers hit the poor—even those with good credit—with higher interest rates (Guo 2014). Over the lifetime of a mortgage, these higher interest payments can add up to $100,000 ( Powell and Roberts 2009 ). The worst part is that when times get tough, these higher payments make it more likely that the poor will lose their homes.
Would “fine, reputable” banks and loan companies really prey on the poor? This sounds so crass that it couldn’t be true. The U.S. Justice Department investigated this wild charge. For charging Latino and African Americans higher interest rates, Countrywide Financial, a major lender, was fined $335 million ( Savage 2011a ; Guo 2014).
Education
As you know, the ideal is that public schools give all children an equal opportunity to succeed. The reality is that the deck is stacked against the poor. Property taxes are the main culprit. Because our schools are supported by property taxes, and property in poorer areas produces less tax revenue, the schools that the poor attend have less money to work with. This translates into outdated textbooks, inexperienced teachers (who can be paid less), and lower test scores. Lower test scores, as you know, affect students’ chances of going to college, which in turn affects their earnings. I think you see the vicious cycle here.
I’m sure that it doesn’t come as a surprise to you that the higher a family’s income, the greater the likelihood that their children will attend and complete college. If you rank families from the poorest to the richest, at each level of family income the likelihood increases that their children will go to college. This is true regardless of the child’s test scores. Whether they score high or low on tests, children from homes with more money are more likely to go to college. Similarly, the more money a family has, the more years of schooling their children complete (Cahalan and Perna 2015; Madland 2015).
We also have an educational system to match family income. If children from poverty go to college, most attend community colleges, where many take vocational programs. In contrast, most children from middle-class homes attend state universities. And the children of the wealthy? They go to elite private colleges. Before college, many attend private high schools, where classes are small and teachers are well-paid (Persell et al. 1992; Cahalan and Perna 2015). At these elite high schools, the children’s college advisors have close ties with admissions officers at elite colleges. Some networks are so efficient that half of a private high school’s graduating class is admitted to Harvard, Yale, and Princeton ( Cookson and Persell 1985/2005 ; “Top U.S. Schools . . .” 2015 ).
Jobs and Careers
Jobs and careers follow this educational path. Beckoning children of the middle and upper classes are high-paying professions and other secure positions. To children from homes of poverty, the term “career” is strange. What they find are low-paying, insecure jobs. With dead-end and often sporadic work, their low incomes are erratic. Many don’t even know from one week to the next how much they will earn—or even if there will be a paycheck at all. This makes planning uncertain and life hectic. To the stresses already knitted into their daily lives, job insecurity and unemployment add huge tensions. Not only do the poor not know if there will be enough money to buy food and pay the rent, but they also need to cope with the bureaucracies of unemployment insurance, welfare, and other social programs.
Criminal Justice
The poor are more likely to be victims of violent crimes and to commit robberies and assaults, crimes for which offenders are punished severely. White-collar crime may be more pervasive and costly to society, but it is less visible and carries milder punishments. As mentioned in the previous chapter, when the poor are arrested, they lack the resources to hire good lawyers to defend themselves. Often, they cannot even post bail, and they remain in jail for months while they await trial. Most prisoners in our jails and prisons are people who were reared in poverty.
In Sum: Quality of Life
Social inequality makes a fundamental difference in people’s quality of life. The low-paying jobs of the poor, when they have them, bring no security, no pensions, and no medical benefits. The poor live insecurely from paycheck to paycheck, trying to keep one step ahead of having the lights cut off or being evicted. If they get sick, their job may not be there when they return to work. Among the stark consequences: Those living in poverty don’t eat as well, their children are more likely to die in infancy, they have more accidents, and they die younger. Like Julie Treadman in our opening vignette, they also have limited access to good medical care, which further jeopardizes their well-being. In short, wealth and poverty represent privilege—given or denied.
Looking at the Problem Theoretically
1. 7.3Summarize the different pictures that emerge when you apply symbolic interactionism, functionalism, and conflict theory to the social problem of poverty.
As you learned in earlier chapters, each theoretical perspective gives a different view of a social problem. Let’s look at poverty through three lenses.
Symbolic Interactionism
As you can expect, when we apply symbolic interactionism to poverty, we will be focusing on meanings. Let’s begin by looking at why poverty is relative.
The Relativity of Poverty
Andy, Sharon, and their two children live in a small house in a rural area, where they farm 65 acres. Andy works part-time at a local grocery store, and Sharon works part-time as a cook at the Dew Drop Inn. Between their jobs and the farm, they make about $18,000 a year. They grow their own vegetables, raise a few chickens for eggs and meat, and fish in a nearby pond. Andy brings home a deer each hunting season. Integrated into the community and with their basic needs satisfied, they don’t think of themselves as poor. Neither do their friends and neighbors.
Leslie attends a private college. Her parents pay her tuition, fees, books, rent, utilities, medical insurance, transportation, and entertainment. They also give her about $500 a month for “extras.” Unlike many of her friends, Leslie has no car, and she complains about how hard it is to get by. Her more affluent friends feel sorry for her.
Between auditions, Keith, a struggling young actor, works as a waiter. He earns about $1,400 a month, which has to cover his rent, food, and all other expenses. To make ends meet, he rooms with three other aspiring actors. “It’s difficult to make it,” he says, “but one day you’ll see my name in lights.” Keith sees himself as “struggling”—not poor. Nor do his actor friends think of him or themselves as poor.
Maria and her two children live in a housing project. Her rent is subsidized and cheap—$97 a month. Her welfare, Medicaid, and food stamps total $16,287 a year, all tax-free. Her two children attend school during the day, and she takes classes in English at a neighborhood church. Maria considers herself poor, and so do the government and her neighbors.
We have an irony here. Leslie is, by far, much better off financially than the other three, yet she feels poor. Why? This takes us back to relative poverty.
Symbolic interactionists stress that to understand poverty we must focus on what poverty means to people. When people evaluate where they are in life, they compare themselves with others. In some rural areas, simple marginal living is the norm, and people living in these circumstances don’t feel poor. But in Leslie’s cosmopolitan circle, people can feel deprived if they can’t afford the latest upscale designer clothing from their favorite boutique. The meaning of poverty, then, is relative: What poverty is differs from group to group within the same society. Its meaning also changes from culture to culture and from one era to the next.
How people above the poverty line view poverty is also significant. If they see “the poor” as good people who are down on their luck, they are likely to offer “a helping hand” by supporting programs that provide job training and monthly support. If they view the poor as “lazy no-goods” who refuse to work—a parasitic drain on society—they are not likely to favor such social policies. As you can see, perception and meaning—main elements of symbolic interactionism—are essential for understanding poverty.
Changing Meanings of Poverty
Symbolic interactionists stress that the meaning of poverty changes as social conditions change. Let’s take a quick glance at how this happened in the United States.
The way people viewed poverty in the early 1700s was remarkably different than how we view it today. At that time, poverty was seen as God’s will. The clergy preached that God put the poor on Earth to provide an opportunity for the rest of us to show Christian charity ( Rothman and Rothman 1972 ). Poverty was not a social problem, but a personal problem.
At that time, few Americans lived in cities, and the poor were scattered among hundreds of villages along country roads. As cities grew, so did the concentration of the poor in those cities. By the time of the American Revolution (1775–1783), cities such as Boston, Philadelphia, and New York had set up welfare committees to distinguish between the “deserving” and the “undeserving” poor. The deserving poor were the blind, people with disabilities, and mothers of small children whose husbands had deserted them. The undeserving poor were beggars, peddlers, idlers, drifters, and prostitutes. At this point, the meaning of poverty was changing. Increasingly, poverty was viewed not just as God’s will, but also as the result of flawed character.
This change meant that the development of a social problem was now in process. As the United States industrialized and its cities grew, the urban squalor bothered people of good intentions. Reformers launched campaigns to help the poor. The meaning of poverty continued to change, coming to be seen as the product of corrupt cities. People who had given in to urban temptations—alcohol, crime, and debauchery—were held in the chains of poverty ( Rothman and Rothman 1972 ).
The idea that poverty is God’s will is no longer common, but the idea that poverty ought not to exist—and the suspicion that it is the result of character flaws or to the behavior of the poor—remains part of our symbolic heritage. We have vacillated between viewing the poor as worthy people who deserve our help and as undeserving people who have brought the ills of poverty down on their own heads.
Functionalism
Can poverty be functional for society? Or is poverty only dysfunctional? Let’s find out what sociologists have to say about this.
How Income Inequality Helps Society
In a classic essay, sociologists Kingsley Davis and Wilbert Moore ( 1945 ) developed the functionalist perspective on social inequality. Their argument was simple: Some positions in society are more important than others for society’s welfare. To attract highly talented people, these positions must offer high income and prestige. Oil, for example, is vital for the economy, but to learn the technology necessary to find oil takes years of training in geology. To motivate people to postpone gratification and continue studying for years, petroleum geologists, especially geophysicists, must be offered a substantial salary and high respect from others. In contrast, anyone can wash dishes, so these unskilled workers with little training can be given low pay. Differences in income and prestige, then, sort people by their abilities and drive to succeed. This helps society function.
How Poverty Is Functional for Society
Functionalists—who tend to see functions in everything—point out that poverty is functional for society. For a summary of how poor people contribute to society’s well-being, see Thinking Critically about Social Problems: Why We Need the Poor: How Poverty Helps Society. Functionalists also analyze the dysfunctions of poverty, including alienation and despair, drug abuse, street crime, suicide, and mental illness.
Thinking Critically about Social Problems
Why We Need the Poor: How Poverty Helps Society
Most of us think of poverty in negative terms: Poverty is undesirable, and we should get rid of it. Functionalists, in contrast, identify the functions of poverty—that is, the positive consequences that poverty has for society. Consider these 12 functions, most pointed out by sociologist Herbert Gans ( 1971/2014 ):
1. The poor ensure that society’s dirty work gets done at low cost. Many factories, restaurants, farms, and hospitals could not survive in their present state without a poorly paid workforce. If there weren’t poor people, who would do society’s dirty jobs at low wages?
2. The poor create jobs for others. Think of the welfare agencies that serve the poor and—not incidentally—shield the rest of us from them. Most police officers would be without jobs if it weren’t for the poor. And what would social workers do for a living?
3. The poor serve as guinea pigs in medical experiments. The rest of us benefit from these advances in medicine. How else would we test risky new medicines and surgical techniques?
4. The poor make the economy more efficient. They spend their low wages and welfare money on leftover goods such as day-old bread and the many “seconds” that our factories produce. They also buy the clothing, furniture, and cars that the rest of us discard. Where else would these items go if it weren’t for the poor?
5. The poor provide an income for others, even making some wealthy. Many slum landlords, for example, would have to get jobs if it weren’t for the poor. And what would the owners of the many liquor stores in the inner city do without the poor? Or those who offer bail bonds and paycheck loans? And what about the owners of the trailer parks?
6. The poor provide the frontline soldiers for war. The youth from poverty can be sacrificed during battle. (German generals used to call them “cannon fodder.”) Where else would we get the many people that we need to fill the “grunt” jobs in the armed services—or to test the roads for bombs in such places as Iraq and Afghanistan?
7. The poor help stabilize our political system. Most poor people vote for Democrats, so to the degree that this party helps the U.S. political system, the poor contribute to that effort.
8. The poor provide entertainment. The lives of the poor are lives of despair—which become the story lines of novels, movies, and television. News programs also attract audiences and advertising revenue by featuring the robberies, rapes, and murders committed by the poor.
9. The poor enrich our music. They have given us the blues, Negro spirituals, country music (from the Southern poor), rock (the Beatles came from the slums of Liverpool), and hip-hop/rap. Without the devastating experiences of the poor, the rest of us would have fewer tunes to hum.
10. The poor help motivate us. Our awareness of “the projects,” skid row, homeless shelters, and soup lines keep us on our toes. We know that if we don’t get an education and work hard—doing whatever our teachers and bosses tell us—we could end up there. The poor have replaced the “bogeyman” of years past.
11. The poor help our self-concept. They make us all feel superior. We are not like them.
12. The poor provide hope. The heartwarming accounts of the poor who have “made it,” overcoming huge obstacles to achievement, offer motivation for others. If those people can do it, we can, too.
By the time functionalists get through with their analysis, one wonders if society could even exist without the poor.
In tough economic times, a lot of people lose their jobs—and their homes. If this happens, how can you survive? Maybe with a smile and a sense of humor to tap the kindness of strangers. I took this photo outside Boston’s Fenway Park.
For Your Consideration
1. Do you think that we need some people to be poor?
2. What functions of poverty can you think of that are not included here?
3. How can the benefits that the poor provide society be replaced so we will no longer “need” people to be poor?
Conflict Theory
Why do we have social inequality? Here is the answer given by conflict theorists, who go to the heart of the matter, as they see it.
The Cause of Social Inequality
Central to conflict theory is the idea that resources are limited and that groups compete for these resources. In each society, some group has gained control of that society’s resources. This group uses those resources to make a better life for itself, to keep itself in power, and to exploit weaker groups. The result is a social class system in which the wealthy pass advantages to their children, while the poor pass disadvantages to theirs.
A General Theory of Social Class
Karl Marx (1818–1883) was the first person to develop a general theory of social class. He argued that social class revolves around a single factor, the means of production—the tools, factories, land, and capital used to produce wealth ( Marx, 1867/1967 ; Marx and Engels, 1848/1964 ). People are either capitalists (bourgeoisie), who own the means of production, or they are workers (proletariat) who serve the capitalists. The history of a society is the history of conflict between owners and workers, the wealthy and the poor. Because the owners hold the power, they manipulate society’s social institutions—economic, legal, political, educational, and religious—to promote their own interests and to control workers.
Marx wrote that the owners’ position of power and privilege will not continue forever. The day of reckoning will come when workers shrug off their false class consciousness , the delusion that they will start their own business and become wealthy. In its place will arise class consciousness, the realization that whether they are garbage collectors or college professors, they all are workers. With their eyes finally opened and realizing that they all are exploited, they will join together and overthrow the capitalists. Seizing the means of production, the workers will use them for the good of all. Poverty will become a distant memory.
Modifications of Conflict Theory
Most sociologists acknowledge that Marx provided valuable insight into relationships between the powerful and the poor, but they find inadequate his class division of only two groups, owners and workers. In Marx’s analysis, the managers of corporations are workers who serve the capitalists. This may be, but what do the top managers of corporations, whose decisions affect tens of thousands of workers, have in common with office and factory workers, whose decisions center around such things as what kind of breakfast cereal to buy? To lump corporate CEOs with factory workers is to join together people who belong on either side of a chasm. Why should people with such huge differences in power and lifestyle be included in the same group?
Feminist theorists highlight another fault with Marx’s analysis. They point out that Marx analyzed the exploitation of workers in the paid sector, but he overlooked the unpaid sector, where women perform reproductive and household labor. This is another example, they stress, of men overlooking the contributions of women to the welfare of society. Feminist theorists also criticize Marx for ignoring key issues of gender, race– ethnicity, and age as areas of exploitation. They emphasize that these are just as important as the exploitation of production and workers.
In Sum
Conflict theorists stress the relationship between those who have power and those who do not. The problems of the poor are due to their deprived position in a system of stratification, to their relative powerlessness and oppression.
Summary of Theoretical Approaches
Each theoretical lens provides a unique understanding of wealth, poverty, and social inequality. Symbolic interactionists focus on the individual level, making us more sensitive to how social class works in our everyday lives. They explain, for example, why the amount of income that people have (the objective condition) is not the same as how people feel about that amount (subjective views that underlie relative poverty). Functionalists and conflict theorists look at a bigger picture. They examine social structure—in this case, the relationships between the poor and the wealthy, the powerful and the powerless. Where functionalists see inequality as originating from society’s need to reward its important positions, conflict theorists stress how the means of production produce inequality.
Research Findings
1. 7.4 Summarize research findings on who the poor are, a culture of poverty, who rules the United States, and explanations of global poverty.
Sociologists have looked at poverty in depth. Let’s examine the major patterns they have uncovered.
Who are the Poor?
Sociologists have uncovered the patterns of poverty. Let’s see what they are.
Permanence of Poverty
It may surprise you that most people who fall below the poverty line do not stay there. Most people are poor only for short periods—when they are injured, sick, or during layoffs or slow seasons at work. The total number of poor in the United States remains fairly constant from year to year, but there is much change within this total. Each year millions of people rise above the poverty line, but at the same time millions of others fall below it.
State and Region
Where people live makes a huge difference in their chances of being poor. One of the most striking examples is the inner city, where poverty is concentrated. To be born or reared there obviously increases your chances of living in poverty. The rural areas of the country also have higher than average poverty, although certainly not as concentrated as it is in the inner city. Poverty is also higher in some states and even entire regions, as you can see from the Social Map. The higher rate of poverty in the South that you see on this map has continued for about two centuries.
Figure 7.6
The Geography of U.S. Poverty
What percentage of the population is in poverty?
Source: By the author. Based on Statistical Abstract of the United States 2015 :Table 729.
Figure 7.6 Full Alternative Text
Race–Ethnicity
As you can see from Figure 7.7 , poverty is also related to race–ethnicity: African Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans are two to three times as likely as whites to be poor. If their rates could be reduced to the rate of whites or of Asian Americans, millions of people would no longer live in poverty. They would be spared its many deprivations, so hazardous to the individual and corrosive to society. We should note, however, that progress has been made. As high as these rates are, they are lower than they were in the 1970s and earlier years. Unfortunately, with our economic crisis, they have been increasing.
Figure 7.7
Minorities Are More Likely to Be Poor
What percentage of these groups are poor?
Source: By the author. Based on Statistical Abstract of the United States 2016 :Tables 7, 34.
Figure 7.7 Full Alternative Text
Children and the Elderly
Poverty is also related to age. The poverty rate of the elderly is lower than the national average, but the poverty rate of children is higher. As you can see from Figure 7.8 , the children’s rate of poverty is twice as high as that of the seniors. Note how poverty among the elderly has declined while poverty among children has fluctuated and is now at the upper end of its range.
Figure 7.8
Comparing Poverty of Children and the Elderly
Source: By the author. Based on U.S. Census Bureau 2009; Statistical Abstract of the United States 1994 :Tables 728, 731; 2016 :Table 733.
Figure 7.8 Full Alternative Text
To get a different view of child poverty, look at Figure 7.9 , which shows poverty among children by race–ethnicity. As you can see, poverty is lowest among Asian American children and considerably higher among Latino and African American children. Such extensive poverty in childhood has severe implications for the next generation.
Figure 7.9
Child Poverty and Race–Ethnicity
What percentage of children in these groups live in poverty?
Note: Native Americans are not listed in the source. With their overall poverty rate of 30 percent, I estimate their child poverty rate to be about 37 percent.
Source: By the author. Based on Statistical Abstract of the United States 2016 :Table 733.
Figure 7.9 Full Alternative Text
The Feminization of Poverty
Poverty in the United States is concentrated among women and children. Sociologists call this pattern the feminization of poverty . Children who live with both parents are seldom poor, which is a major reason that childhood poverty is the lowest among Asian Americans. In contrast, children who live with just one parent are often poor. The reason for this is fairly simple: Two working parents earn more. In addition, as you know, it is usually the mother who heads single-parent families. Mother-alone families average less than half of what families with two working parents earn (Statistical Abstract 2016:Table 714).
Poverty in the United States is concentrated among women and children. Sociologists call this pattern the feminization of poverty. Poverty is especially high among teenage mothers. This teen mother in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, attends high school while working to support her son and save money for college. If she succeeds, she will break the cycle of poverty.
Single mothers who bear children at a young age are especially disadvantaged. With their limited skills and ongoing child-care responsibilities, how can they compete in the labor market? Women who divorce after being homemakers for years also face distinct disadvantages. Their income usually nosedives after divorce, and with their work skills rusty and no recent employer recommendations, good jobs are rare.
What about child support? As you can see from Figure 7.10 , only two of five single mothers receive all the child support that the courts order the absent fathers to pay. A fourth of the fathers skip out and pay nothing. Add all these factors together, and you can see why women and children are much more likely to be poor.
Note: Median income and median net worth of families 2013. The median family income of Latinos is slightly above $42,000, that of African Americans slightly below $42,000, but they average the same. The source for median net worth does not break race-ethnicity down further.
Source: By the author. Based on Kocchar and Fry 2014; Statistical Abstract of the United States 2016 :Table 712.
Figure 7.5 Full Alternative Text
Note: These totals are based on the 49 percent of divorced mothers who had custody of their children and who were supposed to receive payments.
Source: By the author. Based on Statistical Abstract of the United States 2016 :Table 588.
Figure 7.10 Full Alternative Text
Do you want to avoid poverty? I’m sure you do. And I’m sure, too, that you would like to have a financially secure life. Thinking Critically about Social Problems: How to Avoid Poverty can help you realize this desire.
Thinking Critically about Social Problems
How to Avoid Poverty
If you want to avoid poverty, follow these three rules:
1. Finish high school.
2. Get married before you have your first child.
3. Don’t have a child until after you reach the age of 20.
African American leaders have stressed this message in the black community ( Herbert 1998 ). Hugh Price, former president of the National Urban League, and retired General Colin Powell say that 80 percent of African Americans who ignore these principles end up poor, but only 8 percent of those who follow them are poor. Although their statistics may not be exact, the rules are sound—and they apply to all racial– ethnic groups.
Following these three “rules” will certainly help people avoid poverty, but let’s look beyond them. Here are four more “rules” that can help you not only avoid poverty but also develop a more financially secure life:
1. Go to college.
2. Stay married.
3. Avoid the misuse of drugs, including alcohol.
4. Avoid debt, especially on credit cards.
Poverty among people who follow these seven rules is practically nonexistent.
For Your Consideration
1. What other “rules” would you add to this list?
2. If you or someone else has already broken one or more of these “rules,” how can you overcome the consequences and avoid poverty?
Minimum Wage Workers
Here is the final pattern of poverty, an obvious one: Most people who work at minimum wage jobs are poor. I am not referring to college students who take such jobs while they are preparing for careers that pay well. Rather, the United States has a large underclass made up of people who are locked into minimum wage jobs. They clean motel rooms, wash dishes in restaurants, do the “stoop labor” on farms, and fill the sweatshops of our cities. Some work in small factories or even at home, where they earn a specified amount for each piece of work they complete. For most, poverty will remain their lot in life.
Blatant Poverty in the Midst of Plenty
How things have changed! Americans used to associate bread lines and soup kitchens with the Great Depression, or perhaps with Charles Dickens’s description of 19th-century London. Now the homeless are part of every large city across this rich land. Most are tucked out of sight, but the presence of others on our streets and sidewalks reveals the contrast between the American Dream and its stark reality. Who are these homeless people, ravaged by hunger and dressed in mismatched layers of out-of-date clothing? How did they get that way? These questions intrigued me, so Iset out on a search for answers. I spent nights with the homeless in their shelters, ate with them there, and interviewed them on the streets and in back alleys. Thinking Critically about Social Problems: Being Homeless in the Land of the American Dream summarizes some of what I discovered on this sociological adventure.
Thinking Critically about Social Problems
Being Homeless in the Land of the American Dream
When I met Larry Rice, who runs a shelter for the homeless in St. Louis, Missouri, he said that as a sociologist I should learn firsthand what is happening on our city streets. I was reluctant to leave my comfortable home and office, but Larry baited a hook and lured me onto the streets. He offered to take me to Washington, D.C., where he promised that I would see people sleeping on sidewalk grates within view of the White House. Intrigued at the sight of such a contrast, I agreed to go with him, not knowing that it would change my life.
When we arrived in Washington, it was bitter cold. It was December, and I saw what Larry had promised: sorrowful people huddled over the exhaust grates of federal buildings. Not all of the homeless survived the first night I was there. Freddy, who walked on crutches and had become a fixture in Georgetown, froze to death as he sought refuge from the cold in a telephone booth. I vividly recall looking at the telephone booth where Freddy’s frozen body was found, still upright, futilely wrapped in a tattered piece of canvas. I went to Freddy’s funeral and talked with his friends. To me, Freddy became a person, an individual, not just a faceless, nameless figure shrouded by city shadows.
This experience ignited my sociological curiosity. I felt driven to learn more. I ended up visiting a dozen skid rows in the United States and Canada, sleeping in filthy shelters across North America. I interviewed the homeless in these shelters—and in alleys, on street corners, in parks, and even in dumpsters. I became so troubled by what I experienced that for three months after I returned home, I couldn’t get through an entire night without waking up startled by disturbing dreams.
In this research, I discovered that there are many routes to homelessness. Here are the types of homeless people I met:
1. “Push-outs:” These people have been pushed out of their homes. Two common types of “push-outs” are teenagers kicked out by their parents and adults evicted by landlords.
2. Victims of environmental disaster: This type really surprised me, but they, too, live on our streets. The disasters I came across ranged from fires to dioxin contamination.
3. The mentally ill: These people have been discharged from mental hospitals. Although unable to care for themselves, they receive little or no treatment for their problems. Like the teenagers, they are easy victims of the predators who prowl our city streets.
4. The new poor: This group consists of unemployed workers whose work skills have become outdated because of technological change.
5. The technologically unqualified: Unlike the new poor, these unemployed workers never possessed technological qualifications.
6. The elderly: These people have neither savings nor family support; they are old, unemployable, and discarded.
7. Runaways: After fleeing intolerable situations, these boys and girls wander our streets.
8. The demoralized: After suffering some personal tragedy, these people have given up and retreated into despair. The most common catalyst to their demoralization is divorce.
9. Alcoholics: The old-fashioned skid-row wino is still out there.
10. Ease addicts: These people actually choose to be homeless. For them, homelessness is a form of “early retirement.” They reject responsibilities to others, and they come and go as they please. Some, in their 20s, spend their days playing chess in the parks of San Francisco.
11. Travel addicts: These people also choose to be homeless. Addicted to wanderlust, they travel continuously. They call themselves “road dogs.”
12. Excitement addicts: Among the younger of the homeless, these people enjoy the thrill of danger. They like the excitement that comes from “living on the edge.” Being on the streets offers many “edge” opportunities.
As you can see, the homeless are not a single group. Rather, they arrive on our city streets by many “routes.” Note how different the “routes” are for the last three types (those who choose homelessness, a minority of the homeless) than for the first nine types, who do not want to be homeless. Because there are many “causes” of homelessness, it should be obvious that there can be no single solution to this social problem. We need multifaceted programs, perhaps based on the various “routes” by which people travel to this dead-end destination.
In my research, I stayed at homeless shelters like this one in Florida. They are not welcoming or appealing places. Some are so dangerous that many homeless people prefer to sleep in parks and alleys.
For Your Consideration
1. Based on the types of homeless people that I found on our streets, what solutions would you suggest to homelessness? Be practical.
In Sum: Social Structure
The patterns of poverty we have reviewed do not point to laziness, stupidity, or any other personal characteristics as their cause. Instead, they point to structural features of society. As you have seen, poverty follows lines of geography, age, education, gender, race–ethnicity, and marital status. To understand poverty, sociologists examine features of the social system: discrimination, education, welfare programs, changes in the economy, and the availability of work. In later chapters, we shall discuss some of these patterns, but for now let’s consider culture of poverty, an analysis that has generated considerable controversy in sociology.
Is There a Culture of Poverty?
We boast of vast achievement and of power,
Of human progress knowing no defeat,
Of strange new marvels every day and hour—
And here’s the bread line in the wintry street!
—Berton Braley, “The Bread Line”
A Culture of Poverty?
Why do some people remain poor in the midst of plenty? After years of doing participant observation with poor people, anthropologist Oscar Lewis ( 1959 , 1966 ) concluded that people who remain poor year after year have developed a way of life that traps them in poverty. He called this the culture of poverty . Perceiving a gulf between themselves and the mainstream, these people feel inferior and insecure. Convinced that they are never going to get out of poverty, they become fatalistic and passive. They develop low aspirations and think about the present, not the future. Some become self-destructive, as illustrated by their high rates of alcoholism, physical violence, and family abuse. Their lives become marked by broken marriages, desertion, single-parent households, and self-defeating despair. Their way of life, this culture of poverty, as Lewis called it, makes it almost impossible for them to break out of poverty.
Sociologists do not like the concept of a culture of poverty because it appears to blame poor people for their poverty. As I just stressed, sociologists look instead at structural causes of poverty. Herbert Gans, introduced in the earlier section on the functions of poverty, has also written extensively on this topic. In Spotlight on Social Research: Demonizing the Poor, Gans explains why he loathes this concept.
Spotlight on Social Research
HERBERT GANS
, professor of sociology at Columbia University, is a past president of the American Sociological Association. He has written extensively on urban poverty and antipoverty policy. Here is what he wrote for you.
Ever since the 1950s, sociologists have led poverty researchers in studying America’s victimized and demonized poor—although they have not done nearly enough research on their victimizers and demonizers.
Perhaps because I am a refugee from Nazi Germany and came to the United States dirt-poor, a significant part of my teaching and research has been about poverty and antipoverty policy. I have been concerned with the victimized and demonized, as well as the agencies and institutions that victimize and demonize the poor. In the early 1960s, I wrote The Urban Villagers, a book about a low-income neighborhood in Boston that was demonized as a slum, and about its residents, who were victimized when their neighborhood was torn down.
Later in the 1960s, I wrote a good deal about poverty and antipoverty policy—what is today called public sociology. Along with other sociologists, I analyzed and criticized the “culture of poverty” arguments, which suggested that the poor practice a culture that helps to keep them poor and prevents their escaping from poverty. We argued that blaming the victims for their victimization diverted attention away from what really keeps them poor: the shortage of secure and decent-paying jobs, the failures of the welfare program, and racism. Although their victimization resulted in depression and pathology, it was not a culture of poverty.
I returned to antipoverty research in the late 1980s, when a new version of, and a new term for, the culture of poverty argument appeared. This time, the poor were demonized as an “underclass,” an alleged stratum that existed under respectable society. This underclass was accused of such moral shortcomings as not wanting to work, turning to welfare or street crime instead, being promiscuous, and avoiding marriage.
My interest in victimizers and demonizers made me wonder who invented and spread the new blaming term. In 1995, I wrote The War Against the Poor, which identified its inventors. The book also described how journalists, social scientists, and political conservatives combined to use and popularize the term.
Since the late 1990s, when welfare reform and a boom in low-wage jobs enabled more poor people to work, their demonization has declined—at least for the moment. However, if enough working poor lose their jobs to a weak economy, they surely will be demonized again—with the same old arguments, but perhaps with another new term. Then sociologists must show once more that blaming the victims only makes it harder for the poor to escape from poverty.
Testing the Concept
The culture of poverty is an interesting concept, but is it true? Sociologist Karl Alexander and his team ( 2014 ) followed 790 children in Baltimore from age 6 to age 29. Most of the children who started life in financially comfortable situations did well financially as adults. Most of the children who started life poor moved out of poverty, but almost half were poor as adults. The most important structural factors that led to a secure financial future were the parents being married (or living together in a stable arrangement), stable neighborhoods, and good schools. What spelled trouble for the children’s future were one-parent families, chaotic neighborhoods, and bad schools. Alexander concludes that these structural characteristics, not a culture of poverty, held the children down—or set them on paths that led to brighter futures.
Economist Patricia Ruggles found much more upward mobility than Alexander did in his single-city study. She examined national statistics of poverty and found that most children of the poor do not grow up to be poor. Only one of five people who are poor as children are still poor as adults ( Corcoran et al. 1985 ; Sawhill 1988; Ruggles 1989, 1990 ). Contrary to Lewis’s culture of poverty, then, few poor adults pass poverty on to the next generation. But Ruggles did find some support for the culture of poverty, that 1 percent of the U.S. population remains poor year in and year out. They were poor 20 years ago, they are poor today, and they will be poor tomorrow. This group shares three primary characteristics: Most are African American, are unemployed, and live in female-headed families.
From Alexander’s and Ruggles’s research, it seems fair to conclude that structural conditions are overwhelmingly the factors that keep people poor. The most important are single-parent, female-headed families (which have much lower incomes), unstable neighborhoods with crime and violence, and poor schools. A few people, however, do learn behaviors that keep them poor, passing this way of life on to their children. Because most people who are poor today will not be poor in just a few years, however, we can conclude that only a few people adopt a culture of poverty. Almost all do not.
We have been focusing on the poor and powerless. Now let’s turn to the other extreme.
Who Rules the United States?
Conflict theorists stress that to understand social life we must understand who controls society’s scarce resources. Like wealth, power is a scarce resource: Some people have much of it, while others have little or none. Max Weber, an early sociologist, defined power as the ability to get your way despite resistance ( Weber 1921/1964 ). The possession of power is especially significant because it determines who gets the lion’s share of the other resources in society. Let’s ask, then, who makes the major decisions in the United States?
The Power Elite
Sociologist C. Wright Mills ( 1959a ) argued that a power elite rules the United States. He said that a small group made up of the top military, political, and business leaders makes decisions that direct the country—and shake the world. Figure 7.11 illustrates Mills’s view of the power elite.
Mills stressed that the power elite is not a formal group. It meets neither in secret nor in public. In fact, some members may not even think they belong to it. But, structurally, it exists. The power elite consists of top leaders whose interests have merged. As people move from one top position to another, the power elite gains cohesion. White House aides join powerful law firms. A law partner joins the president’s cabinet or is appointed secretary of the treasury. The head of the treasury becomes the CEO of a leading bank or corporation. An air force colonel retires and then takes over the sales division of Boeing or General Dynamics.
Because these people share interests and experiences in business and politics, they think alike on major issues. In addition, they come from similar backgrounds, and they share similar values. Most are WASPs, White Anglo-Saxon Protestants, who attended exclusive prep schools and Ivy League colleges. Many belong to the same private clubs and vacation at the same exclusive resorts. These people, then, are united by shared backgrounds, contacts, ideologies, values, and interests (Domhoff 1974, 2014 ).
Mills said that the three groups that make up the power elite—the top political, military, and corporate leaders—are not equal in power. To identify who was dominant, Mills did not point to the president, however, or even to the generals and admirals, but rather to the heads of corporations. Because all three segments of the power elite view capitalism as essential to the welfare of the country, national policy centers on business interests. Making decisions that promote U.S. business works to the mutual benefit of all three groups.
Sociologist William Domhoff ( 2014 ) prefers to use the term “ruling class” instead of power elite. He studied the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans, those whom you saw in Figure 7.4 , who own 42 percent of the nation’s wealth. This 1 percent controls the nation’s top corporations and foundations, even the boards that oversee our major universities. They also own the nation’s major newspapers, magazines, and television stations. Members of this powerful group attempt, quite successfully, to shape the consciousness of the nation. It is no accident, says Domhoff, that from this group come most of the president’s cabinet and top ambassadors.
Conflict theorists stress that we should not think of the power elite or ruling class as a group that meets and makes specific decisions. Rather, with their interlocking economic and political interests, their behavior stems not from a grand conspiracy to control the country but from social ties and mutual interest in solving the problems that face big business (Useem 1984; Burris 2005 ). Able to ensure that the country adopts the social policies that it deems desirable—from interest rates to sending troops abroad—this powerful group sets the economic and political agenda under which the rest of the country lives (Domhoff 2009, 2014 ).
Because the Power Elite does not meet as a group, it cannot be photographed. The Forbes are part of this group. Shown here are Malcolm Forbes and his three brothers at the Forbes Building. Their collection of nine Fabergé Imperial Easter eggs and other Fabergé objects that used to belong to the czars of Russia sold for $90 million.
The Pluralist View
Not all sociologists agree that a power elite is pulling the strings behind the scenes. The pluralists present a contrasting view. Pluralists argue that many interest groups —people united by their mutual interests in some matter—are competing for social, economic, and political power. No single group is in control. As unions, industries, professional associations, and the like compete with one another, consensus is reached, or at least tradeoffs are agreed on, that allow decisions to be made and society to function.
Sociologist David Riesman ( 1951 ) and his colleagues, who developed this pluralist view of power, put it this way: Power is dispersed because the country’s many groups are divided by essential differences. This makes united policy or action impossible (Kornhauser 1961; Marger 1987; Muniz-Fraticelli 2014 ). Mills replied that members of the power elite settle important differences among themselves.
Continuing Research on the Controversy
The controversy between the pluralists and the sociologists who support the view of the power elite is long-standing. In 1961, sociologist Robert Dahl published a study on power in New Haven, Connecticut, the home of Yale University. He found little overlap between the social elites of the university and the town and little influence by either of them on the city’s policies. Dahl’s research became classic in support of the pluralistic view of power in the United States.
Conflict theorists remained unconvinced. Reanalyzing Dahl’s data, William Domhoff ( 1978b ) found that Yale University, New Haven’s businesses, and its other social institutions were interlocked extensively. He concluded that a power elite of corporate heads, bankers, social leaders, and politicians shapes New Haven’s economy. He also found that this local power elite is connected to national elites. Domhoff suggests that each major city in the United States has such a power center and that lines run from these cities to the national power structure.
After years of rancorous arguments by proponents of each view, researchers seem to have come up with the answer. Political scientists Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page ( 2014 ) reviewed 1,800 policy decisions made by the U.S. government. The evidence overwhelmingly indicates that a power elite consisting of wealthy and business groups is the major influence in U.S. policy.
Because this is such significant research, it is certain that other researchers will retest the Gilens-Page data to see if there are flaws in their data or conclusions.
The Culture of Wealth
Does the culture of the elite—its institutions, customs, values, worldviews, family ties, and connections—allow the rich and powerful to perpetuate their privileges? In other words, is there a culture of wealth that keeps people from falling down the social class ladder, just as some claim that a culture of poverty makes it difficult for poor people to climb even a single rung of that ladder? Of course there is. The elite of any city, region, or nation—indeed, of any group—tend to develop common sentiments and share similar values and goals. The sociological problem is not to determine whether this occurs but to discover how it operates.
It is precisely here that many sociologists see danger—that the concentration of wealth and power violates the democratic processes on which our country is premised. Interlocking interests by wealthy people in powerful positions can result in a few non-elected individuals wielding immense control over the country.
Those who support the power elite view say that this is the way the country is run. I am certain that this debate will continue.
Inequality and Global Poverty
Just as the United States is stratified into different social classes, so the globe is stratified into rich and poor nations. The most industrialized nations, which are wealthy, have residual poverty , or pockets of poverty. Most of the least industrialized nations, in contrast, have mass poverty : In some, most citizens live on less than $1,000 a year. These people are malnourished, chronically ill, and die young. A Global Glimpse: Killing Kids for Fun and Profitreports on the abysmal conditions faced by some children in nations that experience mass poverty.
A Global Glimpse Killing Kids for Fun and Profit
What is childhood like in the least industrialized nations? As in the United States, the answer depends on who your parents are. If your parents are rich, childhood can be pleasant. If you are born into poverty but live where there is plenty to eat, life can still be good—although you will lack books, television, and education. But you probably won’t miss them. If you live in a slum, however, life can be horrible, worse than in the slums of the most industrialized nations. Let’s take a glimpse of the slums (favelas) of Brazil.
Alcoholism, drug abuse, child abuse, wife beating, a lot of crime, and not having enough food—you can take these for granted. Even in the inner cities of the most industrialized nations, you would expect these things.
You might not expect this, though: Poverty is so deep that children and adults swarm over garbage dumps to find enough decaying food to keep them alive. Sociologist Martha Huggins ( Huggins et al. 2002 ) reported that the owners of these dumps hire armed guards to keep the poor out—so they can sell the garbage for pig food. And here’s something else you might not expect: Death squads murder some of these children. Some associations of shop owners even put assassins on retainer and auction victims off to the lowest bidder! The going rate is half a month’s salary—figured at the low Brazilian minimum wage. Some of the hired killers are policemen.
Life is cheap in the least industrialized nations—but death squads for children? To understand how this could possibly be, we need to note that Brazil has a fragile political structure and a long history of violence. With high poverty and a small middle class, the potential of mob violence and revolution always lurks in the background. The “dangerous classes,” as they are known, are ominous, a threat to the status quo. Groups of homeless children, who have no jobs or prospects of getting work, roam the streets. To survive, these children scramble in and out of traffic to wash the windshields of cars that are stopped at red lights. They shine shoes, beg, steal, and sell their bodies.
The street children annoy the “respectable” classes, who see them as trouble. When they get older, what kind of productive adults will they be? Just more criminals. Sometimes the children break into stores. They hurt business, for customers feel intimidated when they see poorly dressed adolescents clustered in front of a store. Some children even sell items in competition with the stores. Without social institutions to care for these children, one solution is to kill them. As Huggins notes, murder sends a clear message to the children, especially if it is accompanied by torture—gouging out the eyes, ripping open the chest, cutting off the genitals, raping the girls, and burning the victim’s body.
One intriguing issue arises in global stratification: Why do some nations remain poor year after year? Let’s try to find the answer.
Economic Colonialism
Some analysts think that exploitation is the answer. In what is called political colonialism, to obtain raw materials, the powerful nations would invade and conquer weaker nations. They would post a military force in these nations, and their “business representatives” would extract the resources they wanted.
Today, instead of invading these weaker nations, the dominant nations exploit them in a process called economic colonialism . Capitalists from the most industrialized nations strike a deal with the elite that controls a nation. They receive access to raw materials at a low price—and are assured that the wages of workers will remain low. If at some point workers protest—or, worse, riot and threaten to take control of the factories and resources—this elite sends soldiers to quiet things down and to keep the profits rolling in. Payments for the resources (in the form of bribes and taxes) go to the elite, with little used to develop schools or industries. These countries are unable to keep up with their expanding populations, and year after year, they remain poor.
Political pressure—accompanied by the veiled and not-so-veiled threat of military intervention—is often the force that maintains economic colonialism. Consider the oil-rich nations of the Middle East. What do you think would happen if one of these nations were to become dominant in this region? Controlling the flow of oil to the West, this nation could set high oil prices—and lead the most industrialized nations by the nose. Do you think that the most industrialized nations would allow this? The answer should be obvious. When Iraq made an attempt to dominate this region, the United States and its allies invaded, supposedly on behalf of Kuwait, but those who look at history through the lens of economic colonialism see it differently. They view the Gulf Wars—both the first and second—as a response to threats to the West’s economic colonialism of the Middle East.
If another country in this region tries to become dominant, we can expect another violent reprisal of some sort.
National Power Elites
The most industrialized nations might dominate the weaker nations, but inevitably this domination comes through the cooperation of a national power elite that uses the nation’s resources as though they were its personal possession. And this is how the national power elite does think of them. The elite’s first goal is to keep itself in power, and it uses these resources for this purpose. The West is happy, for example, when the oil-rich nations exchange their oil wealth for jet fighters and other weapons. It is not the West’s concern how a national power elite uses these weapons. Its members can exploit their citizens to their hearts’ content—as long as the oil or other resources keep flowing.
The national power elites also use the nation’s wealth for their own pleasure, to enjoy a luxurious lifestyle, and to build prestige for themselves both within their country and among their neighbors. These power elites live a sophisticated, upper-class lifestyle in the capital city, with vacation homes at the seashore or in neighboring countries. They send their children to elite universities, to Oxford, the Sorbonne, and Harvard. The national power elites operate businesses that are guaranteed success because they are protected from competition and given lush government contracts. To make investments in these countries, the multinational corporations pay bribes, politely called “offset fees” or “subsidies,” which go to these elites.
A Culture of Poverty
Some suggest a third explanation for why poverty continues in the least industrialized nations—they suffer from a culture of poverty. John Kenneth Galbraith ( 1979 ), former U.S. ambassador to India, said that India has a culture of fatalism reinforced by religion. He pointed out that most of the world’s poor make a living off the land. With barely enough to live on, poor farmers are reluctant to experiment with different crops or ways of farming: Something new might fail, which would lead to hunger or death. Their religion also teaches them to accept their lot in life as God’s will and to look for rewards in the afterlife. Galbraith emphasized that poor countries do not lack resources. Most have many natural resources—most much greater than resource-starved Japan. Their weak position in world markets, however, combined with their fatalistic culture, makes it unlikely that they will rise from poverty.
In Sum
Which explanation is the right one? As you read an explanation, you probably felt inclined to agree with it, only to read another and think that it might be right. Professional analysts, too, find no agreement on these explanations, although they tend to choose one and argue it as the truth. The fairest conclusion seems to be that all three hold some degree of truth, that together they give a fuller explanation than any does separately. Also, each is lacking. None, for example, would explain the current rise of China on the world stage of power.
Social Policy
1. 7.5 Explain how shifting views have influenced social policy, what progressive taxation is, and what social programs to relieve poverty are being implemented or considered.
In previous chapters, you have seen how social policy depends on perspectives. Let’s look at how perspectives apply to social policy and poverty.
Changing Views and Changing Social Policy
How people view the causes of social problems influences the social policies they favor. As you saw, when poverty was thought to be God’s will, the proper response was thought to be a personal religious duty to shelter, feed, and clothe the poor. As people’s views change, so do their ideas regarding which social policies are appropriate.
Early United States
During the time of the American Revolution, poor people were viewed as wayward and lazy. Boston opened a “workhouse” where the poor had to work until they showed that they had acquired self-discipline and an appreciation of hard work. Philadelphia Quakers built almshouses that took in poor women and children. These social policies marked a departure from providing relief on an individual basis. The government was also beginning to provide institutionalized care of the poor ( Nash 1979 ).
In the 1830s, when people believed that the squalor of cities caused poverty, a logical solution was to take the poor away from the city’s corruptions. Life in the country would restore poor people’s basic sense of decency and order ( Rothman 1971 ). This attempt failed when institutions in the country filled up and budgets were cut. The institutions then became human warehouses of the worst sort.
It is difficult to remove ourselves from the views that dominate our own historical moment, but let’s try to appreciate the attitudes of the time. Consider this statement from Henry Ward Beecher, who was the most prominent clergyman of his day:
It is said that a dollar a day is not enough for a wife and five or six children. No, not if the man smokes and drinks beer . . . . But is not a dollar a day enough to buy bread with? Water costs nothing, and a man who cannot live on bread and water is not fit to live. A family may live on good bread and water in the morning, water and bread at midday, and good water and bread at night (quoted in Thayer 1997 ).
A dollar went tremendously further in those days, to be sure, and people did pump water freely from backyard wells. But to live on only bread and water—and for that to be considered right?
The Great Depression
In the 1930s, the United States was thrown into the Great Depression. All over the country, businesses closed. As unemployment skyrocketed, so did poverty. Many people who previously worked hard and supported their families did not have enough food to eat. Their economic security jerked from beneath them, people who had once occupied the middle class lined up with the “old poor” in breadlines. At his 1937 inaugural address, President Franklin D. Roosevelt said, “Millions of families are trying to live on incomes so meager that the pall of family disaster hangs over them day by day . . . . I see one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, and ill-nourished” (quoted in Fisher 1988 ).
As masses of people became poor, once again the nation’s perspective changed. No longer was poverty viewed as the result of God’s will, flawed character, or the corruption of the city. Rather, poverty came to be seen as the result of institutional (economic) failure—the lack of jobs. To match this shift in view, the Roosevelt administration created job programs to build parks and public facilities across the nation. It also established basic welfare to help families survive until the husband-father could get a job.
To help those suffering during the Great Depression of the 1930s, the federal government began the Works Progress Administration (WPA). Participants followed the traditional gender roles of the time, with men doing construction and women using homemaking skills.
World War II
During World War II, when the economy picked up, poverty declined sharply. As jobs became available and men went back to work—and, during World War II, women also—poverty didn’t disappear. It was, however, less visible. As I mentioned earlier, new programs came in when poverty was “rediscovered” in the 1960s. Some programs provided education and training so the poor could get jobs. Other programs were based on the assumption that some of the poor, such as single mothers, children, and the elderly, needed to be subsidized.
The Basic Difference—Cause as Inside or Outside of People
As you can see, views have shifted between attributing poverty to forces within the individual (laziness, stupidity, corruption) and to forces outside the individual (God, the evil city, the economy). These contrasting assumptions bring different ideas of which social policies are appropriate. To assume that the causes of poverty lie within people leads to such policies as teaching self-discipline and sterilization. To assume that the causes of poverty lie outsidethe individual leads to such policies as education, social reform, job training, and stimulating the economy. Our cycles of social reform still reflect this duality of internal and external forces.
Although different generations define poverty differently, in each era these two core questions remain: What is the cause of poverty and what should we do about it?
Let’s look at today’s social policies.
Progressive Taxation
To reduce social inequality, the United States has a policy of progressive taxation . This means that tax rates progress (increase) as income progresses (increases). It is important to understand that it is not just the amount of taxes that are paid, but the rate itself that increases: The higher the income, the higher the tax rate. You can see this progression on Table 7.1 . As Americans earn more, they not only pay more in taxes, but they also pay a larger percentage of their income in taxes. Despite the many criticisms leveled against our tax system, as you can see, the richest 388,000 Americans, those who make $1 million or more a year, pay more taxes than the entire 97 million people in the first six categories. But is this enough? This, of course, is another issue, one based on ideas of values and fairness.
Table 7.1
Income Taxes Paid by Americans
|
Adjusted Gross Income |
Number of Returns |
Tax Paid as a Percentage of Adjusted Gross Income |
Approximate Tax Paid by Each Individual |
Total Tax Paid |
|
$1,000–$4,999 |
8,641,000 |
4% |
$114 |
$1,000,000,000 |
|
$5,000–$10,999 |
14,421,000 |
2% |
$194 |
$3,000,000,000 |
|
$11,000–$18,999 |
19,626,000 |
3% |
$500 |
$9,000,000,000 |
|
$19,000–$29,999 |
21,130,000 |
5% |
$1,000 |
$16,000,000,000 |
|
$30,000–$39,999 |
14,458,000 |
7% |
$2,000 |
$24,000,000,000 |
|
$40,000–$49,999 |
10,887,000 |
7% |
$3,000 |
$30,000,000,000 |
|
$50,000–$74,999 |
19,015,000 |
9% |
$5,000 |
$94,000,000,000 |
|
$75,000–$99,999 |
12,199,000 |
10% |
$8,000 |
$99,000,000,000 |
|
$100,000–$199,999 |
15,670,000 |
13% |
$17,000 |
$268,000,000,000 |
|
$200,000–$499,999 |
4,179,000 |
20% |
$56,000 |
$235,000,000,000 |
|
$500,000–$999,999 |
693,000 |
24% |
$165,000 |
$114,000,000,000 |
|
$1,000,000 or more |
388,000 |
25% |
$745,000 |
$289,000,000,000 |
Source: By the author. Based on Statistical Abstract of the United States 2016 :Table 509.
Table 7.1 Full Alternative Text
To help the poor, we have a social policy called the Per Child Tax Credit, commonly called a negative income tax. Parents whose income falls below a specified amount get a tax credit of $1,000 per child. If their income is low enough, they not only pay no tax, but they also get a check from the government when they file their tax form ( Internal Revenue Service 2016 ).
There is no question that progressive taxation raises huge sums. (Try adding the totals shown on Table 7.1 .) The question is: What do politicians do with these immense amounts? Some of the additional money raised by taxing wealthier people at higher rates is redistributed to the poor through welfare, Medicaid, housing subsidies, child care, job training, and food stamps, but some of it is used to build submarines, missiles, and bridges that go nowhere. Perhaps a reasonable social policy would be to develop a system to hold politicians accountable for how they spend our tax money. I don’t want to be too critical, but if they can spend billions of dollars to bail out Wall Street bankers who made investing mistakes, as the federal government did in the Great Recession of 2008, why can’t they do a better job of financing public assistance programs, such as those we will now discuss?
Public Assistance Programs
We can divide public assistance programs into the following four types.
Social Insurance
This type of program, which includes unemployment compensation and Social Security, is designed to help people help themselves. Money is deducted from workers’ paychecks, and workers are able to draw on this pool when they need it. Few oppose helping workers who are laid off when an entire industry, such as steel or automobiles, is hit by recession.
Teaching Job Skills
The second type of program is intended to help the poor become self-supporting so they no longer need social welfare. Most of these programs, such as the Job Corps, center on teaching job skills. Some also teach personal grooming, punctuality, and politeness so that prospective workers can meet employer expectations.
Welfare
A third type of program is welfare—giving money, food, housing, and medical care to people who have a low enough income to qualify for them. The distinction between deserving and undeserving is replaced by a humanitarian notion that people in need should be helped regardless of who is responsible for their problems. Some of these programs, such as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, commonly known as food stamps), and public housing, generate controversy because people think they encourage laziness and single women to bear children. Many also think that people who receive this help could work if they wanted to. This stereotyping of the poor has consequences for their lives, the topic of Thinking Critically about Social Problems: Welfare: How to Ravage the Self-Concept.
Thinking Critically about Social Problems
Welfare: How to Ravage the Self-Concept
This was written by Christine Hoffman as an assignment in my introductory course in sociology. I am grateful for her permission to use it in this form.
My husband left me shortly after I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. At the time, I had five children. My oldest child was 14, and my youngest was 7. My physician, believing I would be seriously disabled, helped get me on Social Security disability. The process took several months, and so it became necessary for me to go on public aid and food stamps.
By the time I needed to depend on my family in the face of a crisis, there weren’t any resources left to draw on. My father had passed away, and my mother was retired, living on a modest income based on Social Security and my father’s pension. Isn’t it funny how there is no social stigma attached to Social Security benefits for the elderly? People look at this money as an entitlement—“We worked for it.” But people who have to depend on public aid for existence are looked at like vermin and accused of being lazy.
I can tell you from my own experience that a great deal of the lethargy that comes from long periods on welfare is due primarily to the attitudes of the people you have to come into contact with in these programs. I’ve been through the gamut: from rude, surly caseworkers at Public Aid, to patronizing nurses at the WIC [Women, Infants, and Children] clinic (“You have how many children?”), to the accusing tone of the food pantry workers when you have to go begging for a handout before the 30-day time span has expired. After a while your dignity is gone, and you start to believe that you really are the disgusting human trash they all make you out to be.
Even if social workers mean well, the system, as set up and implemented, often tears at the recipient’s sense of worth.
For Your Consideration
1. If you think that the self-concept is important, why should the poor have any less right to a good self-concept than people who aren’t poor?
2. Why should poor people have to endure the experiences that Christine describes?
3. Let’s suppose that the president of the United States has appointed you as Head of the Department of Welfare. What would you do to improve the welfare delivery system?
Workfare
A fourth type of program is workfare. Critics claim that welfare reduces people’s incentive to work. They say, “Why will people work if they can get money, housing, and food free?” As U.S. welfare rolls swelled to 14 million people in the early 1990s, criticisms grew louder and shriller. The media ran stories about “welfare queens” who collected welfare checks and drove “welfare Cadillacs.” “Welfare queen” refers to a woman who is thought to be ripping off the welfare system. She could work, but collects welfare instead, perhaps several checks under different names, often while men support her at home. This term is used to demean single mothers, especially African American women who need assistance.
As criticism mounted, the federal government passed the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act. This law requires states to place a lifetime cap on welfare assistance and compels welfare recipients to look for work and take available jobs. It makes 5 years the maximum length of time that someone can collect welfare. In some states, it is less. Unmarried teen parents must attend school and live at home or in some other adult-supervised setting.
It seems reasonable that the goal should not be to just cut people off welfare, but to increase their ability to compete in the job market. This takes us back to teaching job skills, so vital for avoiding welfare in the first place.
Feminized Poverty and Child Support
As we reviewed earlier, poverty is largely feminized; that is, women with children make up most of the poor. As feminist theorists point out, this imbalance exists because women do not receive equal pay. On this broader level, social policies that lead to flexible work schedules and higher pay for women will help. So will improvements in women’s job training for career advancement. At the same time, social policies that promote better child care facilities and child care assistance will also help.
It also seems reasonable that absent fathers, whether or not they were married to their children’s mothers, should support the children they fathered, rather than letting these children become the government’s responsibility. The courts can award child care support that better reflects the father’s earnings. The courts can also do a better job of making sure that fathers pay the child support that they order them to pay. Recall from Figure 7.10 that most mothers do not receive their full awards—and that one-fourth receive nothing from the fathers of their children. Some fathers, of course, are unemployed and can pay little or nothing. In those instances, it seems reasonable for the state to support those children to lift them out of poverty and to prepare them for a productive future.
Private Agencies and Faith-Based Programs
When we think of aid for the poor, we generally think of the government. The United States also has thousands of private agencies and volunteer organizations that work to help the poor. Because these groups work mainly with the desperate poor, tucked in out-of-the-way urban centers and rural areas, few Americans see them in action. The Salvation Army, for example, runs soup kitchens, food pantries, and homeless shelters, as do other religious groups. The Salvation Army’s efforts on behalf of the poor include alcohol counseling and job training.
Until about a decade ago, the federal government did not fund religious charities on the basis that doing so would violate the principle of separation of church and state. Religious charities are now allowed to compete for federal funds. Without weighing in on the issue of whether the government should fund religious charities, I will point out that without the efforts of religious groups, the social problem of poverty would be much worse than it is. Their long history of charity hospitals and other programs for the poor is outstanding. The quality of faith-based groups, however, varies widely. When I slept and ate in the homeless shelters, I found that some have a personal, encouraging touch. Others, however, show a disgusting disrespect for the homeless people they are supposedly helping. All programs—private, government, or faith-based—must be monitored carefully.
The Purpose of Helping the Poor
What is the purpose of helping the poor? For faith-based organizations, the purpose is connected with their ideas of what God wants them to do. For private groups, the purpose is simply humanitarian: “It’s good to help people.” Conflict sociologists suggest that when the government offers welfare, the underlying motive is quite different. Let’s look at this view.
Regulating the Poor
Conflict sociologists Frances Piven and Richard Cloward ( 1971 , 1982 , 1989 , 1997 ) argue that because of its “booms” and “busts,” capitalism needs a flexible supply of low-skilled, low-paid temporary workers. These people can be put to work when the economy expands and discarded when the economy slows. Welfare is a tool to maintain this pool of temporary workers. It keeps the temporary labor supply from starving during slowdowns so they are available during the next business expansion. To support this assertion, Piven and Cloward point to the changing rules of welfare: In times of high unemployment, when political disorder looms, welfare rules soften. This quiets the impoverished, keeping them from rioting, so they can receive their weekly check. When temporary workers are needed during “boom” times, the welfare rules are tightened. In short, conclude these conflict theorists, the purpose of welfare is to control the unemployed, to maintain social order, and to provide capitalists a pool of cheap labor.
Following Piven and Cloward’s analysis, it is no coincidence that the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act was passed during the longest “boom” in U.S. history. When more workers were needed, the federal government required states to force the unemployed into the labor market by tightening their rules for welfare eligibility. Some states even fingerprinted applicants for welfare and sent investigators to their homes. During this time, the states began to emphasize job training instead of welfare. New York City even changed the name of its locations from “welfare centers” to “job centers.”
Jobs and Child Care
A direct way to deal with poverty is to provide jobs. The federal government lifted millions out of poverty during the Great Depression by providing jobs building bridges, roads, parks, and public buildings. Programs that create jobs stimulate the economy, for the workers spend the money they earn. This, in turn, produces even more jobs. People who approve of job creation disagree violently, however, about how those jobs should be created. Some argue that it is the government’s responsibility to create jobs, while others insist that this is the role of private business.
This debate may never be resolved. Rather than becoming embroiled in it, let’s highlight two principles. First, regardless of the path we use to get there, what is important is that jobs be available. Second, to be effective in fighting poverty, the jobs should provide a wage that lifts people out of poverty or be a stepping-stone to jobs that do so. Dead-end jobs that keep people in poverty do not meet this goal. Additionally, jobs are often located in the suburbs, where they are inaccessible to inner-city poor. To overcome this limitation, we need to provide transportation for the poor. Finally, because much poverty clusters around women and children, we need quality child care facilities.
Education Accounts
Education is an effective way of reducing poverty. The more education people get, the less likely they are to be poor or unemployed. To spur education, we can offer education accounts. The government can establish a credit of, say, $50,000 or $75,000 for every citizen at age 18 who graduates from high school (Haveman and Scholz 1994–1995; Oliver and Shapiro 1995 ). Students would choose from approved colleges and technical and vocational schools. This money (which would be adjusted annually for inflation) could be spent only for direct educational costs, such as tuition, books, and living expenses. To continue to qualify for the funds, students would have to make specified progress in their program. An attractive aspect of this proposal is that ultimately it would cost little or nothing: Not only would this program reduce welfare, but it would also increase people’s earning power for their entire lives. The additional taxes from these larger earnings would make up for the costs of the education accounts.
Upward social mobility through education removes poverty, but as you can see from Issues in Social Problems: A Foot in Each World: Upward Mobility on the Social Class Ladder, it does create personal conflicts.
Issues in Social Problems A Foot in Each World: Upward Mobility on the Social Class Ladder
I want to begin on a personal note. I was born in poverty. My mother went to the eleventh grade, my father only to the seventh. Education was my way out, opening a new world for me and leading to the writing of this textbook. I was touched when I read sociologist David Croteau’s account of his change in social class. Like me, Croteau was born into a blue-collar family and was the first in his family to attend college. He describes his experience of upward mobility as only someone who has gone through it could. What he says matches what I experienced so well that I want to share his account with you.
After brief periods as a logger and a shipworker, my father worked in a paper mill . . .. My mother, after stints as a domestic and factory worker, toiled at home raising four children . . .
That paper mill played a central role in my life, not only because my father and other family members worked there, but because it served as a source of motivation for me. As long as I can remember, I was determined not to work in the mill . . .
Neither of my parents had attended high school, let alone college, so I was left rudderless in choosing schools. The two part-time guidance counselors at my regional high school of more than 700 students were not helpful. One had suggested to me that perhaps, despite my excellent grades, welding would be more “practical” for someone with my “background.” After applying to an eclectic collection of schools, I made the only logical choice: the one that offered me the most scholarship money. It was an elite private college in the Boston area.
From the very first day, my college education brought with it a new awareness of how different cultures could be. I have a vivid memory of the awkwardness and discomfort on my parents’ faces when they met my assigned roommate and his obviously wealthy parents (both doctors) in the totally alien environment of a college dorm. (I was not feeling any better.) Cultures rarely confront each other so poignantly.
I shared my parents’ discomfort as I learned lessons that would make it increasingly difficult for me to return to my working-class community. In both my formal and informal education, I was immersed in middle-class culture. Employment expectations (“careers,” not jobs), food (“ethnic,” not meat and potatoes), dress (natural fibers, not synthetic), music (folk and progressive/alternative rock, not heavy metal), entertainment and leisure (something other than television and hockey) were all different from what I was accustomed to.
Perhaps the most striking difference I encountered was the sense of entitlement shared by other students. For most of my middle-class peers, college seemed to be little more than a nuisance and an unexceptional part of their lives. Often choreographed by their parents, college was an expected step toward a large world of broad opportunities. But for me school always seemed a luxury, and I had a strange sense that one day I would be told some terrible administrative error had been made and I would be sent packing back home to serve my time in the mill where I really belonged . . .
But as I was learning to better analyze and understand the world in which I lived, I was drifting away from the world from which I had come. My education had equipped me with middle-class skills and had introduced me to middle-class values, attitudes, and ways of thinking . . . but I still had strong attachments to my roots and to my working-class family and friends. I had a foot in each world but was completely comfortable in neither of them. Having been socialized into two different classes, I was constantly aware—sometimes painfully so—of the differences between these cultures . . .
Such a confrontation of cultures is fertile ground for sociological analysis. That is what my training has taught me. My lived experience of this class divide has, for me, made more than an academic question.
and I had a strange sense that one day I would be told some terrible administrative error had been made and I would be sent packing back home to serve my time in the mill where I really belonged . . .
But as I was learning to better analyze and understand the world in which I lived, I was drifting away from the world from which I had come. My education had equipped me with middle-class skills and had introduced me to middle-class values, attitudes, and ways of thinking . . . but I still had strong attachments to my roots and to my working-class family and friends. I had a foot in each world but was completely comfortable in neither of them. Having been socialized into two different classes, I was constantly aware—sometimes painfully so—of the differences between these cultures . . .
Such a confrontation of cultures is fertile ground for sociological analysis. That is what my training has taught me. My lived experience of this class divide has, for me, made more than an academic question.
The Future of the Problem
1. 7.6 Explain what the likely future of the social problem of poverty is and why.
Poverty begs for a solution. The homeless, the rural poor, and those trapped in the inner cities can’t be wished away. But no solution comes without a high price tag.
Some say, “Let’s spend whatever it costs, because it’s right. We can worry about the bill later. Besides,” they add, “if we can afford all those weapons for the military or the billions to bail out bankers, we can afford programs to help the poor.” Others argue that it is not right to saddle future generations with our spending. Their position is, “If we can’t pay for programs now, we can’t afford them.”
Most Americans seem to find themselves somewhere between these arguments—claiming it is not right to have homeless people huddled over heating grates or children’s futures blocked or their lives cut short because of their parents’ poverty, but not knowing what to do about the situation. With the politicians and the public not seeing any clear solutions, with views continuing of the “deserving” and the “undeserving,” and with the poor remaining disorganized and having little political clout, I anticipate that we will continue with our present piecemeal programs. From time to time, there will be the illusion of progress. And quite discouragingly, the structural dimension of this social problem will be mostly lost from sight, and the poor will continue to be blamed for their poverty.
Summary and Review
1. There are several types of poverty. Biological poverty refers to starvation and malnutrition. Relative poverty is the feeling of being poor in comparison with others, although one may be well-off objectively. Official povertyrefers to falling below arbitrary standards set by the government. Poverty follows lines of age, gender, geography, and race–ethnicity.
2. Symbolic interactionists examine how the meaning of income (for example, whether people see themselves as being rich or poor) differs from its objective measures. Functionalists emphasize that social inequality is a way of allocating talented people to society’s more demanding tasks and less talented people to its less demanding tasks. They point out that although poverty may be dysfunctional for individuals, it is functional for society. Conflict theorists stress that those who win the struggle for society’s limited resources oppress those who lose.
Conflict theorists also stress that a power elite of top politicians and corporate and military leaders makes society’s big decisions. Pluralists disagree. They view society as made up of many interest groups that compete with one another in a marketplace of power and ideas.
3. Why do some people remain in poverty year after year? Some suggest that the reason is a culture of poverty, self-defeating behaviors that parents pass on to their children. Most sociologists, in contrast, view the culture of poverty, to the limited extent that it exists, not as the cause of poverty, but rather as the result of poverty. Why do some countries remain in poverty year after year? Some suggest that this is because they have a national culture of poverty. Others look to economic colonialism and exploitation by national elites.
4. Policies for dealing with poverty are as diverse as the beliefs about its causes. In the 1700s, poverty was considered God’s will, and it was a person’s religious duty to help the poor. Personal moral failure has also been considered to be a cause of poverty. During the Great Depression, the poor were considered victims of economic conditions and were helped on a massive scale. Welfare programs cause bitter debate. Rules have been tightened to make fewer people eligible for welfare and to “encourage” the poor to take jobs. Where conservatives think that individuals should take more personal responsibility, liberals view government action as more appropriate.
5. The future is not likely to bring an end to poverty, but rather a continuation of our piecemeal welfare programs. It is likely that Americans will continue to be divided on the matter of the “deserving” and “undeserving” poor and to what extent they should be helped.