problem solution essay about poverty

Poverty Essay for Students and Children

500+ words essay on poverty essay.

“Poverty is the worst form of violence”. – Mahatma Gandhi.

How Poverty is Measured?

For measuring poverty United nations have devised two measures of poverty – Absolute & relative poverty.  Absolute poverty is used to measure poverty in developing countries like India. Relative poverty is used to measure poverty in developed countries like the USA. In absolute poverty, a line based on the minimum level of income has been created & is called a poverty line.  If per day income of a family is below this level, then it is poor or below the poverty line. If per day income of a family is above this level, then it is non-poor or above the poverty line. In India, the new poverty line is  Rs 32 in rural areas and Rs 47 in urban areas.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

Causes of Poverty

According to the Noble prize winner South African leader, Nelson Mandela – “Poverty is not natural, it is manmade”. The above statement is true as the causes of poverty are generally man-made. There are various causes of poverty but the most important is population. Rising population is putting the burden on the resources & budget of countries. Governments are finding difficult to provide food, shelter & employment to the rising population.

The other causes are- lack of education, war, natural disaster, lack of employment, lack of infrastructure, political instability, etc. For instance- lack of employment opportunities makes a person jobless & he is not able to earn enough to fulfill the basic necessities of his family & becomes poor. Lack of education compels a person for less paying jobs & it makes him poorer. Lack of infrastructure means there are no industries, banks, etc. in a country resulting in lack of employment opportunities. Natural disasters like flood, earthquake also contribute to poverty.

In some countries, especially African countries like Somalia, a long period of civil war has made poverty widespread. This is because all the resources & money is being spent in war instead of public welfare. Countries like India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, etc. are prone to natural disasters like cyclone, etc. These disasters occur every year causing poverty to rise.

Ill Effects of Poverty

Poverty affects the life of a poor family. A poor person is not able to take proper food & nutrition &his capacity to work reduces. Reduced capacity to work further reduces his income, making him poorer. Children from poor family never get proper schooling & proper nutrition. They have to work to support their family & this destroys their childhood. Some of them may also involve in crimes like theft, murder, robbery, etc. A poor person remains uneducated & is forced to live under unhygienic conditions in slums. There are no proper sanitation & drinking water facility in slums & he falls ill often &  his health deteriorates. A poor person generally dies an early death. So, all social evils are related to poverty.

Government Schemes to Remove Poverty

The government of India also took several measures to eradicate poverty from India. Some of them are – creating employment opportunities , controlling population, etc. In India, about 60% of the population is still dependent on agriculture for its livelihood. Government has taken certain measures to promote agriculture in India. The government constructed certain dams & canals in our country to provide easy availability of water for irrigation. Government has also taken steps for the cheap availability of seeds & farming equipment to promote agriculture. Government is also promoting farming of cash crops like cotton, instead of food crops. In cities, the government is promoting industrialization to create more jobs. Government has also opened  ‘Ration shops’. Other measures include providing free & compulsory education for children up to 14 years of age, scholarship to deserving students from a poor background, providing subsidized houses to poor people, etc.

Poverty is a social evil, we can also contribute to control it. For example- we can simply donate old clothes to poor people, we can also sponsor the education of a poor child or we can utilize our free time by teaching poor students. Remember before wasting food, somebody is still sleeping hungry.

Customize your course in 30 seconds

Which class are you in.

• Travelling Essay
• Picnic Essay
• Our Country Essay
• My Parents Essay
• Essay on Favourite Personality
• Essay on Memorable Day of My Life
• Essay on Knowledge is Power
• Essay on Gurpurab
• Essay on My Favourite Season
• Essay on Types of Sports

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Download the App

390 Poverty Essay Topic Ideas & Examples

• 📑 Aspects to Cover in a Poverty Essay

Students who learn economics, politics, and social sciences are often required to write a poverty essay as part of their course. While everyone understands the importance of this topic, it can be hard to decide what to write about. Read this post to find out the aspects that you should cover in your essay on poverty.

🏆 Best Poverty Topics & Free Essay Examples

👍 powerful topics on poverty and inequality, 🎓 simple & easy topics related to poverty, 📌 interesting poverty essay examples, ⭐ strong poverty-related topics, 🥇 unique poverty topics for argumentative essay, ❓ research questions about poverty.

Topics related to poverty and inequality might seem too broad. There are so many facts, factors, and aspects you should take into consideration. However, we all know that narrowing down a topic is one of the crucial steps when working on an outline and thesis statement. You should be specific enough to select the right arguments for your argumentative essay or dissertation. Below, you will find some aspects to include in your poverty essay.

Poverty Statistics

First of all, it would be beneficial to include some background information on the issue. Statistics on poverty in your country or state can help you to paint a picture of the problem. Look for official reports on poverty and socioeconomic welfare, which can be found on government websites. While you are writing this section, consider the following:

• What is the overall level of poverty in your country or state?
• Has the prevalence of poverty changed over time? If yes, how and why?
• Are there any groups or communities where poverty is more prevalent than in the general population? What are they?

Causes of Poverty

If you look at poverty essay titles, the causes of poverty are a popular theme among students. While some people may think that poverty occurs because people are lazy and don’t want to work hard, the problem is much more important than that. Research books and scholarly journal articles on the subject with these questions in mind:

• Why do some groups of people experience poverty more often than others?
• What are the historical causes of poverty in your country?
• How is poverty related to other social issues, such as discrimination, immigration, and crime?
• How do businesses promote or reduce poverty in the community?

Consequences of Poverty

Many poverty essay examples also consider the consequences of poverty for individuals and communities. This theme is particularly important if you study social sciences or politics. Here are some questions that may give you ideas for this section:

• How is the psychological well-being of individuals affected by poverty?
• How is poverty connected to crime and substance abuse?
• How does poverty affect individuals’ access to high-quality medical care and education?
• What is the relationship between poverty and world hunger?

Government Policies

Governments of most countries have policies in place to reduce poverty and help those in need. In your essay, you may address the policies used in your state or country or compare several different governments in terms of their approaches to poverty. Here is what you should think about:

• What are some examples of legislation aimed at reducing poverty?
• Do laws on minimum wage help to prevent and decrease poverty? Why or why not?
• How do governments help people who are poor to achieve higher levels of social welfare?
• Should governments provide financial assistance to those in need? Why or why not?

Solutions to Poverty

Solutions to poverty are among the most popular poverty essay topics, and you will surely find many sample papers and articles on this subject. This is because poverty is a global issue that must be solved to facilitate social development. Considering these questions in your poverty essay conclusion or main body will help you in getting an A:

• What programs or policies proved to be effective in reducing poverty locally?
• Is there a global solution to poverty that would be equally effective in all countries?
• How can society facilitate the reduction of poverty?
• What solutions would you recommend to decrease and prevent poverty?

Covering a few of these aspects in your essay will help you demonstrate the in-depth understanding and analysis required to earn a high mark. Before you start writing, have a look around our website for more essay titles, tips, and interesting topics!

• Poverty Research Proposal To justify this, the recent and most current statistics from the Census Bureau shows that the level and rate of poverty in USA is increasing, with minority ethnic groups being the most disadvantaged.
• What Causes Poverty in the World One of the major factors that have contributed to poverty in given areas of the world is overpopulation. Environmental degradation in many parts of the world has led to the increase of poverty in the […]
• Poverty: A Sociological Imagination Perspective I was raised in a nuclear family, where my mum was a housewife, and my father worked in a local hog farm as the overall manager.
• Wordsworth’s Vision of Childhood in His Poems “We Are Seven” and “Alice Fell or Poverty” Specifically, the joint publication he released in 1798 known as “Lyrical Ballads” are considered the most important publications in the rise of the Romantic literature in the UK and Europe.
• “The Singer Solution to World Poverty” by Peter Singer The article “The Singer Solution to World Poverty” by author Peter Singer attempts to provide a workable solution to the world poverty problem.
• Analysis of Theodore Dalrymple’s “What Is Poverty?” With ethical arguments from Burnor, it can be argued that Dalrymple’s statements are shallow and based on his values and not the experience of those he is judging.
• Poverty in the World In this paper, we will be looking at the situation of poverty in the world, its causes and the efforts of the international organizations to manage the same.
• Max Weber’s Thoughts on Poverty Weber has contributed to the exploration of the origins of poverty and the impact of religions on the attitude to it.
• Poverty Effects on Child Development and Schooling To help children from low-income families cope with poverty, interventions touching in the child’s development and educational outcomes are essential. Those programs campaign against the effects of poverty among children by providing basic nutritional, academic, […]
• Consumerism: Affecting Families Living in Poverty in the United States Hence, leading to the arising of consumerism protection acts and policies designed to protect consumers from dishonest sellers and producers, which indicates the high degree of consumer’s ignorance, and hence failure to make decisions of […]
• The End of Poverty Philippe Diaz’s documentary, The End of Poverty, is a piece that attempts to dissect the causes of the huge economic inequalities that exist between countries in the Northern Hemisphere and the Southern Hemisphere.
• Poverty Areas and Effects on Juvenile Delinquency The desire to live a better life contributes to the youths engaging in crimes, thus the increase in cases of juvenile delinquencies amid low-income families. The studies indicate that the fear of poverty is the […]
• Poverty and the Environment The human population affects the environment negatively due to poverty resulting to environmental degradation and a cycle of poverty. Poverty and the environment are interlinked as poverty leads to degradation of the environment.
• Relationship Between Crime Rates and Poverty This shows that the strength of the relationship between the crime index and people living below the line of poverty is.427.
• The Philippines’ Unemployment, Inequality, Poverty However, despite the strong emphasis of the government on income equality and poverty reduction along with the growth of GDP, both poverty and economic and social inequality remain persistent in the Philippines.
• Poverty in India and China India’s slow rate of poverty reduction compared to China is due to the differences in their approach to the economy. Improving the living conditions and general well being of the people is not only the […]
• The Problem of Poverty in Bob Marley’s “No Woman, No Cry” To see the situation from the perspective of its social significance, it is necessary to refer to Mills’ concept of sociological imagination and to the division of problems and issues into personal and social ones.
• Poverty and Its Effects on Childhood Education The foremost strength of Guo’s study is that in it, author succeeded with substantiating the full soundness of an idea that children’s exposure to poverty cannot possibly be thought of as only the factor that […]
• Community Work: Helping People in Poverty The first project would be water project since you find that in most villages water is a problem, hence $100 would go to establishing this project and it’s out of these water then the women […]
• Poverty in Africa These pictures have been published online to show the world the gravity of the poverty situation in the African continent. The pictures represent the suffering of majority of the African people as a result of […]
• Children Living in Poverty and Education The presence of real subjects like children is a benefit for the future of the nation and a free education option for poor families to learn something new and even use it if their children […]
• The Singer Solution to World Poverty: Arguments Against The article compares the lives of people in the developed world represented by America and that of developing world represented by Brazil; It is about a school teacher who sells a young boy for adoption […]
• Social Issues of Families in Poverty With the tightened budget, parents of the families living in poverty struggle to make ends meet, and in the course of their struggles, they experience many stresses and depressions.
• Cause and Effect of Poverty For example, the disparities in income and wealth are considered as a sign of poverty since the state is related to issues of scarcity and allocation of resources and influence.
• Analysis of a Social Problem: Poverty Furthermore, the World Bank predicts that both the number of people and the percentage of the population living in extreme poverty will increase in 2020 and 2021 due to the coronavirus outbreak.
• Poverty Through a Sociological Lens Poverty-stricken areas, such as slums, rural villages, and places hit by disasters, lack the required economic activities to improve the employment and wealth status of the people.
• Poverty and Global Food Crisis: Food and Agriculture Model Her innovative approach to the issue was to measure food shortages in calories as opposed to the traditional method of measuring in pounds and stones.
• The Myth of the Culture of Poverty Unfortunately, rather all of the stereotypes regarding poor people are widespread in many societies and this has served to further increase the problem of generational poverty. Poor people are regarded to be in the state […]
• Poverty as a Great Social Problem and Its Causes The human capital model assumes that the inadequate incomes of the working poor are the result of characteristics of the labor market rather than the inadequacy of the poor.
• “The Hidden Reason for Poverty…” by Haugen It is also noteworthy that some groups of people are specifically vulnerable and join the arrays of those living in poverty.
• Poverty Policy Recommendations Different leaders have considered several policies and initiatives in the past to tackle the problem of poverty and empower more people to lead better lives.
• Third World Countries and the Barriers Stopping Them to Escape Poverty The phrase Third World was initially used in the Cold War period to represent those countries that were neither on the West NATO nations referred to as the first world countries, nor on the East-Communist […]
• The Connection Between Poverty and Mental Health Problems The daily struggle to earn a daily bread takes a toll on an individual mental health and contributes to mental health problem.
• Environmental Degradation and Poverty It is however important to understand the causes of the environmental degradation and the ways to reduce them, which will promote the improvement of the environmental quality.
• Global Poverty: Famine, Affluence, and Morality In the article Famine, Affluence, and Morality, Michael Slote contends that rich people have a moral obligation to contribute more to charities.
• Poverty Simulation Reflection and Its Influence on Life Something that stood out to me during the process is probably the tremendous emotional and psychological impact of poverty on a person’s wellbeing.
• Political Economy: Relationship Between Poverty, Inequality, and Nationalism The prevalence of nationalism leads to changes in the education system, as the government tries to justify the superiority of the country by altering the curriculum.
• Reflective Analysis of Poverty It can be further classified into absolute poverty where the affected do not have the capability to make ends meet, and relative poverty which refer to the circumstances under which the afflicted do not have […]
• Poverty Alleviation and Sustainable Development The research focuses on the causes of poverty and the benefits of poverty alleviation in achieving sustainable development. One of the causes of poverty is discrimination and social inequality.
• Child Poverty and Academic Achievement Association It is expected to pay attention to the challenges and problems poor children and their families may face in their lives.
• War on Poverty in US The term war on poverty officially came into being in 1964 and referred to concerted government efforts to eradicate assiduous poverty in the United States of America.
• Is Poverty a Choice or a Generational Curse? The assumption that poverty is a choice persists in public attitudes and allows policy-makers to absolve themselves of any responsibility for ensuring the well-being of the lower socioeconomic stratum of society.
• Concept of Poverty The main difference between this definition and other definitions of poverty highlighted in this paper is the broad understanding of the concept.
• Children in Poverty in Kampong Ayer, Brunei Part of the reason is likely malnutrition that results from the eating or consumption patterns of the families and also dependency on the children to help out with the family or house chores.
• Poverty and Diseases A usual line of reasoning would be that low income is the main cause of health-related problems among vulnerable individuals. Such results that the relationship between mental health and poverty is, in fact, straightforward.
• “The End of Poverty” by Phillipe Diaz In the film End of Poverty, the filmmaker tries to unravel the mystery behind poverty in the world. The film is arranged in such a way that the author has persuasively argued his case that […]
• Poverty, Government and Unequal Distribution of Wealth in Philippines The author of the book Poverty And The Critical Security Agenda, Eadie, added: Quantitative analyses of poverty have become more sophisticated over the years to be sure, yet remain problematic and in certain ways rooted […]
• Poverty in Bambara’s The Lesson and Danticat’s A Wall of Fire Rising It is important to note the fact that culture-based poverty due to discrimination of the past or political ineffectiveness of the nation can have a profound ramification in the lives of its victims.
• Poverty, Inequality and Social Policy Understanding The roots of inequality can relate to both welfare and some other factors, for example, the judiciary. Therefore, the principle of equality is violated, and social norms cannot be considered to be respected.
• Inequality and Poverty Relationship To begin with, it is necessary to define the concepts of poverty and inequality. As of inequality, it is the difference in access to income, power, education, and whatever.
• The Rise of Poverty in the US The main issue that is portrayed in the article is the presence of the invisible poor and the homeless poor in the US.
• Poverty and Development Into the 21st Century The choices of citizens in the west influence the consumer, as well as political behaviors of the consumers and voters in the developing regions.
• Social Issues; Crime and Poverty in Camden This has threatened the social security and peaceful coexistence of the people in the community. The larger the differences between the poor and the rich, the high are the chances of crime.
• We Can Stop Poverty in Ghana Today One of the main disadvantages of the document is that the problem of poverty is not considered separately, but only as a part of other economic and social problems.
• Poverty in the Bronx: Negative Effects of Poverty South Bronx is strictly the southwestern part of the borough of Bronx and Bronx is the only borough in New York city in the mainland.
• Health, Poverty, and Social Equity: The Global Response to the Ebola Outbreak Canada and Australia, as well as several countries in the Middle East and Africa, were the most active proponents of this ban, halting the movements for both people and goods from states affected by the […]
• Social Business Scope in Alleviating Poverty Instead of charity work, social business aims at creating a mechanism in which the poor may be helped in a sustainable manner in that the social business makes profits just like conventional businesses, but the […]
• Global Poverty: The Ethical Dilemma Unfortunately, a significant obstacle to such global reforms is that many economic systems are based on the concept of inequality and exploitation.
• Is Globalization Reducing Poverty and Inequality? & How to Judge Globalism The article Is Globalization Reducing Poverty and Inequality by Robert Hunter Wade explores the phenomenon of globalization and its influence on the poverty and inequality ratios all over the world.
• Poverty in Orwell’s “Down and Out in Paris and London” The fact that the structure of society is discussed is especially interesting, and it is suggested that opinions of people that live in poverty are not acknowledged most of the time.
• Poverty in Urban Areas The main reason for escalation of the problem of poverty is urban areas is because the intricate problems of urban poverty are considered too small to attract big policies.
• How Poverty Contributes to Poor Heath The results show that poverty is the main cause of poor health. The study was purposed to assess the effect of poverty in determining the health status of households.
• Global Poverty Project: A Beacon of Hope in the Fight Against Extreme Poverty The organization works with partners worldwide to increase awareness and understanding of global poverty and inspire people to take action to end it.
• The Causes of an Increase in Poverty in Atlanta, Georgia The key causes of the high poverty rise in the city include housing policies and instabilities, the lack of transit services and public transportation infrastructure in suburban areas, and childhood poverty.
• Thistle Farms: Help for Women Who Are Affected by Poverty As I said in the beginning, millions of women need help and assistance from the community to overcome poverty and heal emotional wounds caused by abuse. You can purchase a variety of its home and […]
• Median Household Incomes and Poverty Levels The patterns of poverty in the Denver urban area show that rates are higher in the inner suburb and the core city and lower in the outer suburb.
• Poverty: The American Challenge One of the main problems in the world is the problem of poverty, which means the inability to provide the simplest and most affordable living conditions for most people in a given country.
• The Poverty Issue From a Sociological Perspective The core of the perspective is the idea that poverty is a system in which multiple elements are intertwined and create outcomes linked to financial deficits.
• Saving the Planet by Solving Poverty The data is there to make the necessary links, which are needed when it comes to the economic variations and inadequate environmental impacts of climate change can be distinguished on a worldwide scale.
• Anti-Poverty Programs From the Federal Government The programs provide financial assistance to low-income individuals and families to cover basic needs like housing and food. The anti-poverty programs that have been most effective in reducing poverty rates in the United States are […]
• Rural Development, Economic Inequality and Poverty The percentage of the rural population is lower for developed countries, including the United States and the United Kingdom. Thus, the objective of the proposal is to determine how the inhabitants of the country in […]
• Global Poverty: Ways of Combating For example, one of such initiatives is social assistance and social protection programs, which ensure the safety and creation of various labor programs that will help increase the number of the working population.
• Poverty and Homelessness as a Global Social Problem What makes the task of defining poverty particularly difficult is the discrepancy in the distribution of social capital and, therefore, the resulting differences in the understanding of what constitutes poverty, particularly, where the line should […]
• Poverty: Aspects of Needs Assessment The target neighborhood and population for the following analysis are women of reproductive age, defined as 15 to 49 years, in Elmhurst and Corona, Queens. 2, and the percentage of births to women aged over […]
• What Is Poverty in the United States? Estimates of the amount of income required to meet necessities serve as the foundation for both the official and supplemental poverty measurements.
• The Caribbean Culture: Energy Security and Poverty Issues Globally, Latin American and the Caribbean also has the most expensive energy products and services because of fuel deprivation in the Caribbean and the Pacific regions.
• Poverty: The Main Causes and Factors Because of the constant process of societal development, the concept of poverty changes rapidly, adapting to the new standards of modern human life.
• How to Overcome Poverty and Discrimination As such, to give a chance to the “defeated” children and save their lives, as Alexie puts it, society itself must change the rules so that everyone can have access to this ticket to success. […]
• Poverty and Homelessness in American Society It is connected with social segregation, stigmatization, and the inability of the person to improve their conditions of life. The problem of affordable housing and poverty among older adults is another problem that leads to […]
• Private Sector’s Role in Poverty Alleviation in Asia The ambition of Asia to become the fastest-growing economic region worldwide has led to a rapid rise of enterprises in the private sector.
• Connection of Poverty and Education The economy of the United States has been improving due to the efforts that have been made to ensure that poverty will not prevent individuals and families from having access to decent education.
• The Opportunity for All Program: Poverty Reduction The limiting factors of the program may be the actions of the population itself, which will not participate in the employment program because of the realized benefits.
• Early Childhood Financial Support and Poverty The mentioned problem is a direct example of such a correlation: the general poverty level and the well-being of adults are connected with the early children’s material support.
• Discussion: Poverty and Healthcare One of the research questions necessary to evaluate this issue is “How do ethical theories apply to the issue?” Another critical research question worth exploring is “Which cultural values and norms influence the problem?” These […]
• Explosive Growth of Poverty in America The three richest Americans now own 250 billion USD, approximately the same amount of combined wealth as the bottom 50 percent of the country. Wealth inequality is a disturbing issue that needs to be at […]
• The Problems of Poverty and Hunger Subsequently, the cause in this case serves as a path to a solution – more social programs are needed, and wealthy citizens should be encouraged to become beneficiaries for the hungry.
• “Life on a Shoestring – American Kids Living in Poverty” by Claycomb Life on a Shoestring – American Kids Living in Poverty highlights the widening disparity between the poor and the wealthy in America and how the economic systems are set up to benefit the rich and […]
• Decreasing Poverty With College Enrollment Program In order to achieve that, it is necessary, first and foremost, to increase the high school students’ awareness of the financial aid programs, possibilities of dual enrollment, and the overall reality of higher education.
• Poverty in Rural and Urban Areas My main focus is on articles explaining the sources of poverty in rural and urban areas and the key difference between the two.
• Reducing Poverty in the North Miami Beach Community The proposed intervention program will focus on the students in the last semester of the 9th and 10th grades and the first semester of the 11th and 12th grades attending the client schools.
• Food Banks Board Members and Cycle of Poverty What this suggests is that a large portion of the leadership within these collectives aim to provide assistance and food but not to challenge the current system that fosters the related issues of poverty, unemployment, […]
• Poverty as a Social Problem in Burundi The rationale for studying poverty as a social problem in Burundi is that it will help to combat poverty through the advocacy plan at the end of this paper.
• Poverty: Subsidizing Programs Subsidizing programs are considered welfare and net initiatives that the government takes to aid low-income families and individuals affected by poverty.
• The Problem of Poverty in Chad Thus, the study of the causes of poverty in the Republic of Chad will help to form a complete understanding of the problem under study and find the most effective ways to solve it.
• “Poverty, Toxic Stress, and Education…” Study by Kelly & Li Kelly and Li are concerned with the lack of research about poverty and toxic stress affecting the neurodevelopment of preterm children.
• Poverty in “A Modest Proposal” by Swift The high number of children born to poor families presents significant problems for a country.”A Modest Proposal” is a satirical essay by Jonathan Swift that proposes a solution to the challenge facing the kingdom.
• Life Below the Poverty Line in the US The major problem with poverty in the US is that the number of people living below the poverty threshold is gradually increasing despite the economic growth of the country. SNAP is not considered to be […]
• The Relationship Between Single-Parent Households and Poverty The given literature review will primarily focus on the theoretical and empirical aspects of the relationship between single-parent households and poverty, as well as the implications of the latter on mental health issues, such as […]
• Poverty and Its Effect on Adult Health Poverty in the UK is currently above the world average, as more than 18% of the population lives in poverty. In 2020, 7% of the UK population lived in extreme poverty and 11% lived in […]
• Child Poverty in the United States The causes of child poverty in the United States cannot be separated from the grounds of adult poverty. Thus, it is essential to take care of the well-being of children living in poverty.
• Poverty in New York City, and Its Reasons The poverty rate for seniors in New York is twice the poverty rate in the United States. New York City’s blacks and Hispanics have a much higher poverty rate than whites and Asians in the […]
• Juvenile Violent Crime and Children Below Poverty The effect of this trend is that the number of children below poverty will continue to be subjected to the juvenile and criminal justice systems.
• Poverty and Homelessness as Social Problem The qualifications will include a recommendation from the community to ensure that the person is open to help and willing to be involved in the neighborhood of Non-Return.
• Poverty Effects and How They Are Handled Quality jobs will provide income to the younger people and women in the community. The focus on developing and facilitating small and medium-sized enterprises is a great strategy but more needs to be done in […]
• Feminization of Poverty and Governments’ Role in Solving the Problem However, women form the greatest percentage of the poor, and the problem continues to spread. Furthermore, the public supports available are inaccessible and inadequate to cater for women’s needs.
• Free-Trade Policies and Poverty Level in Bangladesh The purpose of this paper is to examine the way in which the end of the quota system and introduction of a free-trade system for the garment industry in Bangladesh has impacted on poverty in […]
• Poverty and Risks Associated With Poverty Adolescents that are at risk of being malnourished can be consulted about the existing programs that provide free food and meals to families in poverty.
• Poverty and Inequality Reduction Strategies Thus, comprehending the causes of poverty and inequalities, understanding the role of globalization, and learning various theoretical arguments can lead to the establishment of appropriate policy recommendations.
• International Aid – Poverty Inc This film, the research on the impact of aid on the states receiving it, and the economic outcomes of such actions suggest that aid is a part of the problem and not a solution to […]
• Poverty Effects on American Children and Adolescents The extent to which poor financial status influences the wellbeing of the young children and adolescents is alarming and needs immediate response from the community.
• Progress and Poverty Book by Henry George George wrote the book following his recognition that poverty is the central puzzle of the 20th century. Thus, George’s allegation is inconsistent with nature because the number of living organisms can increase to the extent […]
• Vicious Circle of Poverty in Brazil The vicious circle of poverty is “a circular constellation of forces that tend to act and react on each other in such a way that the country in poverty maintains its poor state”.
• Global Education as the Key Tool for Addressing the Third World Poverty Issue Global education leads to improvements in the state economy and finances. Global education helps resolve the unemployment problem.
• Poverty, Partner Abuse, and Women’s Mental Health In general, the study aimed at investigating the interaction between poverty and the severity of abuse in women. The research question being studied in this article is how income intersects with partner violence and impacts […]
• America’s Shame: How Can Education Eradicate Poverty The primary focus of the article was global poverty, the flaws in the educational system, as well as the U.S.government’s role in resolving the problem.
• Global Poverty and Ways to Overcome It These are some of the strategies, the subsequent application of which would significantly reduce the level of poverty around the world.
• Social Work at Acacia Network: Poverty and Inequality Around the 1980s, the number of older adults was significantly increasing in society; the local government of New York established a home for the aged and was named Acacia Network. The supporting staff may bond […]
• Poverty and Sex Trafficking: Qualitative Systematic Review The proposed research question is to learn how the phenomenon of poverty is connected to sex trafficking. To investigate the relationship between the phenomenon of poverty and sex trafficking.
• End of Extreme Poverty Importantly, the ability to remain the owners of a substantial amount of accumulated wealth is the primary motivation for such individuals.
• The Problem of Poverty in the United States The problem of increasing poverty is one of the major political issues in the United States, which became especially agile after the appearance of the COVID-19 pandemic due to the difficult economic situation all over […]
• Poverty and Unemployment Due to Increased Taxation The government on its side defended the move while trying to justify the new measures’ benefits, a move that would still not benefit the country.
• Poverty as a Global Social Problem For example, the research shows that Kibera is the largest slum in the country, and this is where many people move to settle after losing hope of getting employed in towns.
• Researching the Problem of Poverty However, the rich people and the rich countries reduce poverty to some extent by providing jobs and markets to the poor, but the help is too little compared to the benefits they get thus accelerating […]
• Poverty, Social Class, and Intersectionality I prefer the structural approach to the issue as I believe the created structures are responsible for the existence of diverse types of oppression.
• Wealth and Poverty: The Christian Teaching on Wealth and Poverty To illustrate the gap between the world’s richest and the world’s poorest, a recent UN publication reported that the wealth of the three richest persons in the world is greater than the combined wealth of […]
• Guns Do Not Kill, Poverty Does It is widely accepted that stricter gun control policies are instrumental in alleviating the problem, as they are supposed to reduce the rate of firearm-related deaths, limiting gun access to individuals at-risk of participating in […]
• Poverty’s Effects on Delinquency The economic status of people determines their social class and the manner in which they get their basic needs. Seeing these things and the kind of life rich people lead motivates the poor to commit […]
• The Criminalization of Poverty in Canada In this regard, with a special focus on Canada, the objective of this essay is to investigate how public policy has transformed alongside the public perception of social welfare reform.
• The Issue of Vicious Circle of Poverty in Brazil The persistence of poverty, regardless of the many shocks that every state receives in the normal course of its survival, raises the feeling that underdevelopment is a condition of equilibrium and that there are pressures […]
• Community Health Needs: Poverty Generally, the higher the level of poverty, the worse the diet, and hence the higher the chances of developing diabetes. Consequently, a considerable disparity in the prevalence of diabetes occurs between communities with high levels […]
• “Poverty, Race, and the Contexts of Achievement” by Maryah Stella Fram et al. The article “Poverty, race, and the contexts of achievement: examining the educational experience of children in the U.S. Multilevel models were then applied in the analyses of how children varied in their reading scores depending […]
• Microeconomic Perspective on Poverty Evolution in Pakistan The periodic spike in poverty levels, notwithstanding economic growth, implies incongruous policy functionality in relation to drivers of poverty and the subsequent failure to improve the indicators.
• The Impact of Poverty on Children Under the Age of 11 The strengths of the Marxist views on poverty are in the structural approach to the problem. Overall, the Marxist theory offers a radical solution to the problem of child poverty.
• Dependency Theory and “The End of Poverty?” It is also reflected in the film “The End of Poverty?” narrating the circumstances of poor countries and their precondition. It started at the end of the fifteenth century and marked the beginning of the […]
• Poverty Reduction and Natural Assets Therefore, the most efficient way to increase the efficiency of agriculture and reduce its environmental impacts is ensuring the overall economic growth in the relevant region.
• Corporate Social Responsibility & Poverty Alleviation Researchers state that “preventing and managing the negative impacts of the core business on the poor” are essential indicators of the social responsibility of the company.
• Health, Poverty, and Social Equity: Indigenous Peoples of Canada Another problem that much of northern Canada’s Indigenous Peoples face is the availability of healthcare services and people’s inability to access medical help.
• The Problem of Childhood Poverty Unequal income distribution, adult poverty, government policies that exclude children and premature pregnancy are some of the items from the long list of childhood poverty causes. Before discussing the causes and effects of childhood poverty, […]
• Individualistic Concepts and Structural Views on Poverty in American Society The concepts presented in the book Poverty and power help to better understand the content of the article and the reasons for such a different attitude of people to the same problem.
• Poor Kids: The Impact of Poverty on Youth Nevertheless, the environment of constant limitations shapes the minds of children, their dreams and the paths they pursue in life, and, most importantly, what they make of themselves.
• Poverty: Causes and Effects on the Population and Country Thesis: There are a great number of factors and issues that lead a certain part of the population to live in poverty and the input that such great numbers of people could provide, would be […]
• The Internet and Poverty in Society The information that can be found on the web is a very useful resource but at the same time it is important to consider several things with the treatment and examination of the presented information.
• Poverty in Africa: Impact of the Economy Growth Rate Thus, a conclusion can be made that economic growth in Africa will result in the social stability of the local population.
• Poverty and Disrespect in “Coming of Age in Mississippi” by Anne Moody Life was not fair to a little Anne the chapters about her childhood are alike to a chain of unfortunate events that happened to her and her relatives.
• Vietnam’s Economic Growth and Poverty & Inequality A significant part of the population was active in employment, and this means that the numerous income-generating activities improved the economy of this country.
• Poverty and Disasters in the United States Focusing on the precaution measures and the drilling techniques that will help survive in case of a natural disaster is one of the most common tools for securing the population.
• Intro to Sociology: Poverty It is challenging to pinpoint the actual and not mythological reasons for the presence of poverty in America. The former can be summed up as a “culture of poverty”, which suggests that the poor see […]
• The Notion of “Poverty” Is a Key Word of a Modern Society As far as the countries of the Third World are deprived of these possibilities, their development is hampered and the problem of poverty has become a chronic disease of the society.
• The Problem of Poverty in Africa The major aim of the study is to identify the causes of poverty and propose best strategies that can help Africans come out of poverty.
• Poverty Sustainability in Sub-Saharan Countries: The Role of NGOs The position of research and statistics in undertaking social-counting work is not queried. It is after the research method is used in other tribulations of the charity that gaps emerge between management and research.
• The Effects of Poverty Within Criminal Justice The approach used in this study is deductive since the reasoning in the study proceeds from the general principle regarding the fact that poverty has a role to play in the administering of fairness in […]
• The Poverty Rates in the USA Poverty in the U. Officially the rate of poverty was at14.3%.
• Poverty in America: A Paradox Many people especially the young people living in other countries and more so in developed countries wish to immigrate to America instead of working hard to achieve the dream of better opportunities.
• Values and Ethics: Poverty in Canada The case study1 has indicated for instance, that the number of people living in poverty in 2003 is at 4. A group of individuals would therefore be granted the mandate to lead the others in […]
• War and Poverty Connection in Developing Countries The scholars claim that conflict and war in most nations have been found to exacerbate the rate of poverty in the affected nations.
• Poverty in United States. Facts and Causes Schwartz carried out a research which showed that in the United States, about 13-17|% of the individuals live below the federal poverty line at any one single time and poverty is one of the main […]
• Cultures and Prejudice: Poverty Factors For instance, if the two cultures had in the past interacted in a negative way, the poor culture directs all the blame to the well up culture.
• Poverty and Criminal Behavoiur Relation The level of accuracy that the data collected holds cannot be 100%; there is a level of error that affects the reliability of the data collected.
• Urban Relationship Between Poverty and Crime The areas with high poverty level in the US urban areas have the highest cases of crime but this is inadequate to justify that poverty is the cause of crime.
• The End of Poverty Possibility He presents the difficulty as in inability of each poor country to get to the base rung of the ranking of economic progress if the rank is achieved; a country can drag itself up towards […]
• Poverty, Suburban Public School Violence and Solution
• Social and Economic Policy Program: Globalization, Growth, and Poverty
• Is Poverty From Developing Countries Imagined?
• How Gender and Race Structure Poverty and Inequality Connected?
• Poverty by Anarchism and Marxism Approaches
• Colonial Economy of America: Poverty, Slavery and Rich Plantations
• Environmental Deterioration and Poverty in Kenya
• Management Issues: The Poverty Business
• Marginalization and Poverty of Rural Women
• Pockets of Poverty Mar the Great Promise of Canada
• Poverty. “How the Other Half Lives” by Jacob Riis
• The Underclass Poverty and Associated Social Problems
• Child Poverty in Toronto, Ontario
• Children’s Brain Function Affected by Poverty
• Poverty Issue in America Review
• Microeconomics. Poverty in America
• Poverty and Inequality in Modern World
• Poverty and Its Effects on Females
• Poverty and Its Effects on Women
• Poverty of America: Economic Assumptions
• Poverty as a General Problem
• Feminization of Poverty – A Grave Social Concern
• Global Poverty Dimensions and Alleviating Approaches
• Poverty Level in any Country
• Theories of Fertility. Economics Aspect and Poverty.
• The Cultural Construction of Poverty
• Poverty in the US: Causes and Measures
• Poverty Rates Issue in Alberta Analysis
• “Old Age Poverty” Study by Kwan & Walsh
• Phenomena of Poverty Review
• Development Economics: Poverty Traps in Africa
• Healthcare Development. Poverty in the 1800s
• Social Problem of Poverty in the United States
• Poverty and Hip-Hop: Notorious B.I.G.’s “Juicy”
• Globalization Issues and Impact on Poverty and Free Trade
• Anthropology: Culture of Poverty
• Poverty, Stratification and Gender Discrimination
• Teen Pregnancy Can Lead to Suicide and Poverty
• Poverty Around the World
• Poverty in Los Angeles
• “Rethinking the Sociological Measurement of Poverty” by Brady
• Poverty in the US: Essentials of Sociology
• Econometrics: Poverty, Unemployment, Household Income
• Religious Quotes on Poverty and Their Interpretations
• Poverty and Inequality in “Rich and Poor” by Peter Singer
• The Relation Between Poverty and Justice
• Canada and the Imposition of Poverty
• Poverty and Politics in “The Bottom Billion” by Collier
• The Impact of Poverty in African American Communities
• “Poverty and Joy: The Franciscan Tradition” by Short
• International Financial Institutions’ Poverty Reduction Strategy
• Social Study: Mamelodi Residents Living in Poverty
• Video Volunteers’ Interventions Against Poverty
• Poverty in American Single-Parent Families
• Single-Mother Poverty and Policies in the United States
• Poverty and Its Aspects in Historical Documents
• Economic Growth vs. Development: Dreze and Sen’s Analysis
• Poverty and Its Relative Definitions
• Poverty in America: An Ethical Dilemma
• Poverty as a Factor of Terrorist Recruitment
• Poverty Solution as a Political Issue in Australia
• Poverty: An Echo of Capitalism
• Breastfeeding Impact on Canadian Poverty Gaps
• Urban and Suburban Poverty in the United States
• Poverty and Child Health in the US and the UK
• Poverty Impact on Life Perception
• Energy Poverty Elimination in Developing Countries
• Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty
• Vietnamese Poverty and Productivity Increase
• Global Health Governance and Poverty
• Poverty Rates Among Whites and Blacks Americans
• Culture of Poverty in the “Park Avenue” Documentary
• Poverty in the US
• Poor Economics and Global Poverty
• Poverty as a Cause of the Sudanese Civil War
• “Halving Global Poverty” by Besley and Burges
• Do Poverty Traps Exist? Assessing the Evidence
• Poverty Reasons in Ancient Times and Nowadays
• American War on Poverty Throughout US History
• Poverty and Challenges in Finding Solutions
• Children and Poverty in “Born into Brothels” Documentary
• Poverty and Social Welfare in the United States
• Poverty in “A Theology of Liberation” by Gutierrez
• Poverty Reduction Among American Single Mothers
• The Relationship Between Poverty and Education
• Divorce Outcomes: Poverty and Instability
• African Poverty at the Millennium: Causes and Challenges
• Poverty Effect on Children
• Poverty and Education: School Funding Reinforces Inequality
• Global Poverty and the Endeavors of Addressing It
• Global Poverty Reduction: Economic Policy Recommendation
• Global Conflict and Poverty Crisis
• Poverty in the Novel “Snow” by Orhan Pamuk
• Profit From Organizing Tours to Poverty Areas
• Poverty: $2.00 a Day in America
• Detroit Poverty and “Focus Hope” Organization
• Poverty Controversy in the USA
• Poverty as the Deprivation of Capabilities
• Suburbanisation of Poverty in the USA
• The Solution to World Poverty by Peter Singer
• The Poverty Across the US Culture
• How Racial Segregation Contributes to Minority’s Poverty?
• Catholic Dealing With Poverty and Homelessness
• Human Capital and Poverty in Scottsdale
• Global Poverty Studies and Their Importance
• The World Bank and the Poverty of Reform
• Challenges of Social Integration: Poverty
• Globalization and the Issue of Poverty: Making the World a Better Place
• The Economic Effect of Issuing Food Stamps to Those in Poverty
• Business and Pollution Inequality in Poor States
• “Facing Poverty With a Rich Girl’s Habits” by Suki Kim
• What Should You Do? Poverty Issue
• Causes of Poverty Traps in an Economy, Its Results and Ways of Avoiding Them
• Tourism Contribution to Poverty Reduction
• Millennium Development Goals – Energy and Poverty Solutions
• Sociological Indicators of Energy Poverty
• Energy and Poverty Solutions – Non-Traditional Cookstoves
• Energy and Poverty Solutions – World Bank
• How do Migration and Urbanization Bring About Urban Poverty in Developing Countries?
• Poverty and Domestic Violence
• The Rise of Extremist Groups, Disparity and Poverty
• Measuring Poverty and Social Exclusion in Australia
• Does Poverty Lead to Terrorism?
• “Urban and Rural Estimates of Poverty: Recent Advances in Spatial Microsimulation in Australia” by Tanton, R, Harding, A, and McNamara, J
• Importance of Foreign Aid in Poverty Reducing
• Hispanic Childhood Poverty in the United States
• How Poverty Affects Children Development?
• Why Is Poverty Important in Contemporary Security Studies?
• Millennium Development Goals in Kenya, Ivory Coast, Haiti, and Chad
• Development Is No Longer the Solution to Poverty
• Issues Underlying Global Poverty and Provision of Aid
• Films Comparison: “The Fields” by Roland Joffe and “Hotel Rwanda” by Terry George
• Poverty Prevalence in the United States
• Terrorism, Poverty and Financial Instability
• Global Poverty and Education
• Critical Analyses of the Climate of Fear Report From Southern Poverty Law Center
• How World Vision International Contributes to Poverty Reduction
• Global Poverty, Social Poverty and Education
• Global Poverty, Social Policy, and Education
• Poverty Reduction in Africa, Central America and Asia
• Does Parental Involvement and Poverty Affect Children’s Education and Their Overall Performance?
• African Poverty: To Aid, or Not to Aid
• Poverty Fighting in Saudi Arabia and in USA
• Technological Development in Trade and Its Impacts on Poverty
• Social Dynamics: The Southern Poverty Law Centre
• Property, Urban Poverty and Spatial Marginalization
• Rural Poverty in Indonesia
• Is Poverty of Poor Countries in Anyway Due to Wealth of the Rich?
• Poverty and Gender Violence in Congo
• Correlation Between Poverty and Obesity
• Fight Poverty, Fight Illiteracy in Mississippi Initiative
• Civil War and Poverty: “The Bottom Billion” by Paul Collier
• Analytical Research: Poverty in Thailand: Peculiarities and Perspectives
• Poverty Indicators in Developing Countries
• Poverty, Homelessness and Discrimination in Australia: The Case of the Aboriginal
• Africa’s Poverty: The Influence of Western States
• Susceptibility of Women and Aboriginal People to Poverty in Canada
• MDG Poverty Goals May Be Achieved, but Child Mortality Is Not Improving
• Microcredit: A Tool for Poverty Alleviation
• Impacts of Global Poverty Resistance
• Reducing Poverty: Unilever and Oxfam
• Poverty in the United States
• The Mothers Who Are Not Single: Striving to Avoid Poverty in Single-Parent Families
• Effect of Poverty on Children Cognitive and Learning Ability
• Sweatshops and Third World Poverty
• War on Poverty: Poverty Problem in US
• Freedom from Poverty as a Human Right and the UN Declaration of Human Rights
• The Causes of Poverty Concentration in the Modern World
• Poverty in Saudi Arabia
• Poverty as Capability Deprivation
• Poverty as a Peculiarity of the Economical Development
• Capitalism and Poverty
• The Problems of Poverty in the Modern World
• Poverty Among Women and Aboriginals
• On (Not) Getting by in America: Economic Order and Poverty in the U.S.
• The Singer Solution to World Poverty
• Poverty and Inequality in Jacksonian America
• Poverty in America Rural and Urban Difference (Education)
• What Is the Relationship Between Race, Poverty and Prison?
• Poverty in Russia During the Late Nineteenth Century
• Banker to the Poor: Micro-Lending and the Battle Against World Poverty: Advantages of Microcredit
• Social Welfare Policy That Facilitates Reduction of Poverty and Inequality in the US
• Immigrant Status and Poverty: How Are They Linked?
• Effects of Poverty on Immigrant Children
• Poverty in Brazil
• Why Poverty Rates are Higher Among Single Black Mothers
• Poverty and Its Impact on Global Health: Research Methodologies
• Poverty Concerns in Today’s Society
• Literature Study on the Modern Poverty Concerns
• Poverty and Wealth in “The Lesson” by Toni Cade Bambara
• Peter Singer on Resolving the World Poverty
• Aspects of Global Poverty
• Concepts of Prenatal Drug Exposure vs. Poverty on Infants
• UN Summit in New York: Ending Global Poverty
• Why Has Poverty Increased in Zimbabwe?
• Should Private Donations Help Eliminate Child Poverty?
• Why Was Poverty Re-Discovered in Britain in the Late 1950s and Early 1960?
• Why Does Child Labour Persist With Declining Poverty?
• Why Are Child Poverty Rates Higher in Britain Than in Germany?
• What Are the Principles and Practices for Measuring Child Poverty in Rich Countries?
• Why Did Poverty Drop for the Elderly?
• What Is the Relationship Between Income Distribution and Poverty Reduction in the UK?
• What Are the Pros and Cons of Poverty in Latin America?
• Should Poverty Researchers Worry About Inequality?
• What Helps Households With Children in Leaving Poverty?
• What Is the Connection Between Poverty and Crime?
• Why Have Some Indian States Done Better Than Others at Reducing Rural Poverty?
• What Is the Relationship Between Lack of Education and Poverty?
• Why Are Child Poverty Rates So Persistently High in Spain?
• Trade Liberalisation and Poverty: What Are the Links?
• What Are Academic Programs Available for Youth in Poverty?
• What Are the Main Factors Contributing to the Rise in Poverty in Canada?
• Single-Mother Poverty: How Much Do Educational Differences in Single Motherhood Matter?
• What Are the Causes and Effects of Poverty in the United?
• Why Are Some Countries Poor?
• What Is the Link Between Globalization and Poverty?
• What Are the Factors That Influence Poverty Sociology?
• What Causes Poverty Within the United States Economy?
• What Is the Relationship Between Poverty and Obesity?
• Why Were Poverty Rates So High in the 1980s?
• With Exhaustible Resources, Can a Developing Country Escape From the Poverty Trap?
• Why Does Poverty Persist in Rural Ethiopia?
• Who Became Poor, Who Escaped Poverty, and Why?
• Social Norms Essay Ideas
• Drug Abuse Research Topics
• Juvenile Delinquency Essay Titles
• Segregation Research Topics
• Alcohol Abuse Paper Topics
• Challenges Essay Topics
• Community Service Questions
• Discrimination Essay Titles
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2024, March 2). 390 Poverty Essay Topic Ideas & Examples. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/poverty-essay-examples/

"390 Poverty Essay Topic Ideas & Examples." IvyPanda , 2 Mar. 2024, ivypanda.com/essays/topic/poverty-essay-examples/.

IvyPanda . (2024) '390 Poverty Essay Topic Ideas & Examples'. 2 March.

IvyPanda . 2024. "390 Poverty Essay Topic Ideas & Examples." March 2, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/poverty-essay-examples/.

1. IvyPanda . "390 Poverty Essay Topic Ideas & Examples." March 2, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/poverty-essay-examples/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "390 Poverty Essay Topic Ideas & Examples." March 2, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/poverty-essay-examples/.

Solutions to Poverty

Subscribe to the center for economic security and opportunity newsletter, isabel v. sawhill isabel v. sawhill senior fellow emeritus - economic studies , center for economic security and opportunity @isawhill.

April 26, 2007

Thank you for inviting me to testify on what might be done to reduce poverty in America. As a Senior Fellow and Co-Director of the Center on Children and Families at Brookings, I have done extensive work on these issues; although I should note that the views I will express are my own and should not be attributed to other staff, trustees, or funders of the Brookings Institution. Let me first summarize my testimony.

First, I strongly believe that reducing poverty requires a focus both on what government needs to do and on what individuals need to do. We need a combination of responsible policies and responsible behavior.

Second, although there are many things that might be done to reduce poverty in the U.S., I want to argue for a focus on three priorities: getting a good education, not having children before you marry, and working full-time. Government should expect people to make real efforts to comply with each of these norms. When they do, then government should reward such behavior by making sure that those who play by the rules will not be poor. The analysis we have done at Brookings shows that individuals who play by these rules are much less likely to be poor than those who don’t.

Third, one of the most effective policies we could put in place to ensure that everyone gets a good education would be to provide very high-quality early education to all children from low-income families. Many people believe that education in the preschool years only affects young children. In fact, the evidence from both neuroscience and from carefully done program evaluations shows that preschool experiences have long-lasting effects and may be the most cost-effective way to insure that more children are successful in the K-12 years, graduate from high school, go on to college, and earn more as adults. The federal government could further this goal by providing matching funding to states that are willing to invest in high-quality early education for those living in low-income neighborhoods, starting in the first year of life.

Fourth, too many of our teens and young adults are having children before they are married and before they are ready to be good parents. In my view, the solution to this problem resides as much in the larger culture-in what parents, the media, faith communities and key adults say and do-as it does in any shift in government policy per se. However, government can help by providing resources to those fighting this battle in the nongovernmental sector, by insuring that its own policies do not inadvertently encourage childbearing outside of marriage, and by supporting programs that have had some success in reducing early, out-of-wedlock childbearing.

Finally, encouraging and rewarding work is also very important. I support the idea of work requirements in welfare, and perhaps in other programs as well, but I fear that the kind of increased employment we’ve seen among welfare mothers will be a Pyrrhic victory if we don’t find ways to provide more assistance in the form of a higher minimum wage, a more generous EITC, and additional child care and health care assistance. In my testimony today-at the suggestion of your staff-I will focus especially on preschool education and on the need to decrease childbearing outside of marriage and increase the share of children growing up in two-parent, married families. But I have written elsewhere about the importance of providing additional work supports for low-income working families.

Economic Studies

Center for Economic Security and Opportunity

Tara Watson, Gabriela Goodman

June 4, 2024

Simon Hodson

May 8, 2024

Richard V. Reeves, Ember Smith

April 26, 2024

Why Poverty Persists in America

A Pulitzer Prize-winning sociologist offers a new explanation for an intractable problem.

A mother and son living in a Walmart parking lot in North Dakota in 2012. Credit... Eugene Richards

Supported by

• Share full article

By Matthew Desmond

• Published March 9, 2023 Updated April 3, 2023

In the past 50 years, scientists have mapped the entire human genome and eradicated smallpox. Here in the United States, infant-mortality rates and deaths from heart disease have fallen by roughly 70 percent, and the average American has gained almost a decade of life. Climate change was recognized as an existential threat. The internet was invented.

On the problem of poverty, though, there has been no real improvement — just a long stasis. As estimated by the federal government’s poverty line, 12.6 percent of the U.S. population was poor in 1970; two decades later, it was 13.5 percent; in 2010, it was 15.1 percent; and in 2019, it was 10.5 percent. To graph the share of Americans living in poverty over the past half-century amounts to drawing a line that resembles gently rolling hills. The line curves slightly up, then slightly down, then back up again over the years, staying steady through Democratic and Republican administrations, rising in recessions and falling in boom years.

What accounts for this lack of progress? It cannot be chalked up to how the poor are counted: Different measures spit out the same embarrassing result. When the government began reporting the Supplemental Poverty Measure in 2011, designed to overcome many of the flaws of the Official Poverty Measure, including not accounting for regional differences in costs of living and government benefits, the United States officially gained three million more poor people. Possible reductions in poverty from counting aid like food stamps and tax benefits were more than offset by recognizing how low-income people were burdened by rising housing and health care costs.

The American poor have access to cheap, mass-produced goods, as every American does. But that doesn’t mean they can access what matters most.

Any fair assessment of poverty must confront the breathtaking march of material progress. But the fact that standards of living have risen across the board doesn’t mean that poverty itself has fallen. Forty years ago, only the rich could afford cellphones. But cellphones have become more affordable over the past few decades, and now most Americans have one, including many poor people. This has led observers like Ron Haskins and Isabel Sawhill, senior fellows at the Brookings Institution, to assert that “access to certain consumer goods,” like TVs, microwave ovens and cellphones, shows that “the poor are not quite so poor after all.”

No, it doesn’t. You can’t eat a cellphone. A cellphone doesn’t grant you stable housing, affordable medical and dental care or adequate child care. In fact, as things like cellphones have become cheaper, the cost of the most necessary of life’s necessities, like health care and rent, has increased. From 2000 to 2022 in the average American city, the cost of fuel and utilities increased by 115 percent. The American poor, living as they do in the center of global capitalism, have access to cheap, mass-produced goods, as every American does. But that doesn’t mean they can access what matters most. As Michael Harrington put it 60 years ago: “It is much easier in the United States to be decently dressed than it is to be decently housed, fed or doctored.”

Why, then, when it comes to poverty reduction, have we had 50 years of nothing? When I first started looking into this depressing state of affairs, I assumed America’s efforts to reduce poverty had stalled because we stopped trying to solve the problem. I bought into the idea, popular among progressives, that the election of President Ronald Reagan (as well as that of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in the United Kingdom) marked the ascendancy of market fundamentalism, or “neoliberalism,” a time when governments cut aid to the poor, lowered taxes and slashed regulations. If American poverty persisted, I thought, it was because we had reduced our spending on the poor. But I was wrong.

Reagan expanded corporate power, deeply cut taxes on the rich and rolled back spending on some antipoverty initiatives, especially in housing. But he was unable to make large-scale, long-term cuts to many of the programs that make up the American welfare state. Throughout Reagan’s eight years as president, antipoverty spending grew, and it continued to grow after he left office. Spending on the nation’s 13 largest means-tested programs — aid reserved for Americans who fall below a certain income level — went from $1,015 a person the year Reagan was elected president to $3,419 a person one year into Donald Trump’s administration, a 237 percent increase.

Most of this increase was due to health care spending, and Medicaid in particular. But even if we exclude Medicaid from the calculation, we find that federal investments in means-tested programs increased by 130 percent from 1980 to 2018, from $630 to $1,448 per person.

“Neoliberalism” is now part of the left’s lexicon, but I looked in vain to find it in the plain print of federal budgets, at least as far as aid to the poor was concerned. There is no evidence that the United States has become stingier over time. The opposite is true.

This makes the country’s stalled progress on poverty even more baffling. Decade after decade, the poverty rate has remained flat even as federal relief has surged.

If we have more than doubled government spending on poverty and achieved so little, one reason is that the American welfare state is a leaky bucket. Take welfare, for example: When it was administered through the Aid to Families With Dependent Children program, almost all of its funds were used to provide single-parent families with cash assistance. But when President Bill Clinton reformed welfare in 1996, replacing the old model with Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), he transformed the program into a block grant that gives states considerable leeway in deciding how to distribute the money. As a result, states have come up with rather creative ways to spend TANF dollars. Arizona has used welfare money to pay for abstinence-only sex education. Pennsylvania diverted TANF funds to anti-abortion crisis-pregnancy centers. Maine used the money to support a Christian summer camp. Nationwide, for every dollar budgeted for TANF in 2020, poor families directly received just 22 cents.

We’ve approached the poverty question by pointing to poor people themselves, when we should have been focusing on exploitation.

A fair amount of government aid earmarked for the poor never reaches them. But this does not fully solve the puzzle of why poverty has been so stubbornly persistent, because many of the country’s largest social-welfare programs distribute funds directly to people. Roughly 85 percent of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program budget is dedicated to funding food stamps themselves, and almost 93 percent of Medicaid dollars flow directly to beneficiaries.

There are, it would seem, deeper structural forces at play, ones that have to do with the way the American poor are routinely taken advantage of. The primary reason for our stalled progress on poverty reduction has to do with the fact that we have not confronted the unrelenting exploitation of the poor in the labor, housing and financial markets.

As a theory of poverty, “exploitation” elicits a muddled response, causing us to think of course and but, no in the same instant. The word carries a moral charge, but social scientists have a fairly coolheaded way to measure exploitation: When we are underpaid relative to the value of what we produce, we experience labor exploitation; when we are overcharged relative to the value of something we purchase, we experience consumer exploitation. For example, if a family paid $1,000 a month to rent an apartment with a market value of $20,000, that family would experience a higher level of renter exploitation than a family who paid the same amount for an apartment with a market valuation of $100,000. When we don’t own property or can’t access credit, we become dependent on people who do and can, which in turn invites exploitation, because a bad deal for you is a good deal for me.

Our vulnerability to exploitation grows as our liberty shrinks. Because labor laws often fail to protect undocumented workers in practice, more than a third are paid below minimum wage, and nearly 85 percent are not paid overtime. Many of us who are U.S. citizens, or who crossed borders through official checkpoints, would not work for these wages. We don’t have to. If they migrate here as adults, those undocumented workers choose the terms of their arrangement. But just because desperate people accept and even seek out exploitative conditions doesn’t make those conditions any less exploitative. Sometimes exploitation is simply the best bad option.

Consider how many employers now get one over on American workers. The United States offers some of the lowest wages in the industrialized world. A larger share of workers in the United States make “low pay” — earning less than two-thirds of median wages — than in any other country belonging to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. According to the group, nearly 23 percent of American workers labor in low-paying jobs, compared with roughly 17 percent in Britain, 11 percent in Japan and 5 percent in Italy. Poverty wages have swollen the ranks of the American working poor, most of whom are 35 or older.

One popular theory for the loss of good jobs is deindustrialization, which caused the shuttering of factories and the hollowing out of communities that had sprung up around them. Such a passive word, “deindustrialization” — leaving the impression that it just happened somehow, as if the country got deindustrialization the way a forest gets infested by bark beetles. But economic forces framed as inexorable, like deindustrialization and the acceleration of global trade, are often helped along by policy decisions like the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement, which made it easier for companies to move their factories to Mexico and contributed to the loss of hundreds of thousands of American jobs. The world has changed, but it has changed for other economies as well. Yet Belgium and Canada and many other countries haven’t experienced the kind of wage stagnation and surge in income inequality that the United States has.

Those countries managed to keep their unions. We didn’t. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, nearly a third of all U.S. workers carried union cards. These were the days of the United Automobile Workers, led by Walter Reuther, once savagely beaten by Ford’s brass-knuckle boys, and of the mighty American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations that together represented around 15 million workers, more than the population of California at the time.

In their heyday, unions put up a fight. In 1970 alone, 2.4 million union members participated in work stoppages, wildcat strikes and tense standoffs with company heads. The labor movement fought for better pay and safer working conditions and supported antipoverty policies. Their efforts paid off for both unionized and nonunionized workers, as companies like Eastman Kodak were compelled to provide generous compensation and benefits to their workers to prevent them from organizing. By one estimate, the wages of nonunionized men without a college degree would be 8 percent higher today if union strength remained what it was in the late 1970s, a time when worker pay climbed, chief-executive compensation was reined in and the country experienced the most economically equitable period in modern history.

It is important to note that Old Labor was often a white man’s refuge. In the 1930s, many unions outwardly discriminated against Black workers or segregated them into Jim Crow local chapters. In the 1960s, unions like the Brotherhood of Railway and Steamship Clerks and the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America enforced segregation within their ranks. Unions harmed themselves through their self-defeating racism and were further weakened by a changing economy. But organized labor was also attacked by political adversaries. As unions flagged, business interests sensed an opportunity. Corporate lobbyists made deep inroads in both political parties, beginning a public-relations campaign that pressured policymakers to roll back worker protections.

A national litmus test arrived in 1981, when 13,000 unionized air traffic controllers left their posts after contract negotiations with the Federal Aviation Administration broke down. When the workers refused to return, Reagan fired all of them. The public’s response was muted, and corporate America learned that it could crush unions with minimal blowback. And so it went, in one industry after another.

Today almost all private-sector employees (94 percent) are without a union, though roughly half of nonunion workers say they would organize if given the chance. They rarely are. Employers have at their disposal an arsenal of tactics designed to prevent collective bargaining, from hiring union-busting firms to telling employees that they could lose their jobs if they vote yes. Those strategies are legal, but companies also make illegal moves to block unions, like disciplining workers for trying to organize or threatening to close facilities. In 2016 and 2017, the National Labor Relations Board charged 42 percent of employers with violating federal law during union campaigns. In nearly a third of cases, this involved illegally firing workers for organizing.

Corporate lobbyists told us that organized labor was a drag on the economy — that once the companies had cleared out all these fusty, lumbering unions, the economy would rev up, raising everyone’s fortunes. But that didn’t come to pass. The negative effects of unions have been wildly overstated, and there is now evidence that unions play a role in increasing company productivity, for example by reducing turnover. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics measures productivity as how efficiently companies turn inputs (like materials and labor) into outputs (like goods and services). Historically, productivity, wages and profits rise and fall in lock step. But the American economy is less productive today than it was in the post-World War II period, when unions were at peak strength. The economies of other rich countries have slowed as well, including those with more highly unionized work forces, but it is clear that diluting labor power in America did not unleash economic growth or deliver prosperity to more people. “We were promised economic dynamism in exchange for inequality,” Eric Posner and Glen Weyl write in their book “Radical Markets.” “We got the inequality, but dynamism is actually declining.”

As workers lost power, their jobs got worse. For several decades after World War II, ordinary workers’ inflation-adjusted wages (known as “real wages”) increased by 2 percent each year. But since 1979, real wages have grown by only 0.3 percent a year. Astonishingly, workers with a high school diploma made 2.7 percent less in 2017 than they would have in 1979, adjusting for inflation. Workers without a diploma made nearly 10 percent less.

Lousy, underpaid work is not an indispensable, if regrettable, byproduct of capitalism, as some business defenders claim today. (This notion would have scandalized capitalism’s earliest defenders. John Stuart Mill, arch advocate of free people and free markets, once said that if widespread scarcity was a hallmark of capitalism, he would become a communist.) But capitalism is inherently about owners trying to give as little, and workers trying to get as much, as possible. With unions largely out of the picture, corporations have chipped away at the conventional midcentury work arrangement, which involved steady employment, opportunities for advancement and raises and decent pay with some benefits.

As the sociologist Gerald Davis has put it: Our grandparents had careers. Our parents had jobs. We complete tasks. Or at least that has been the story of the American working class and working poor.

Poor Americans aren’t just exploited in the labor market. They face consumer exploitation in the housing and financial markets as well.

There is a long history of slum exploitation in America. Money made slums because slums made money. Rent has more than doubled over the past two decades, rising much faster than renters’ incomes. Median rent rose from $483 in 2000 to $1,216 in 2021. Why have rents shot up so fast? Experts tend to offer the same rote answers to this question. There’s not enough housing supply, they say, and too much demand. Landlords must charge more just to earn a decent rate of return. Must they? How do we know?

We need more housing; no one can deny that. But rents have jumped even in cities with plenty of apartments to go around. At the end of 2021, almost 19 percent of rental units in Birmingham, Ala., sat vacant, as did 12 percent of those in Syracuse, N.Y. Yet rent in those areas increased by roughly 14 percent and 8 percent, respectively, over the previous two years. National data also show that rental revenues have far outpaced property owners’ expenses in recent years, especially for multifamily properties in poor neighborhoods. Rising rents are not simply a reflection of rising operating costs. There’s another dynamic at work, one that has to do with the fact that poor people — and particularly poor Black families — don’t have much choice when it comes to where they can live. Because of that, landlords can overcharge them, and they do.

A study I published with Nathan Wilmers found that after accounting for all costs, landlords operating in poor neighborhoods typically take in profits that are double those of landlords operating in affluent communities. If down-market landlords make more, it’s because their regular expenses (especially their mortgages and property-tax bills) are considerably lower than those in upscale neighborhoods. But in many cities with average or below-average housing costs — think Buffalo, not Boston — rents in the poorest neighborhoods are not drastically lower than rents in the middle-class sections of town. From 2015 to 2019, median monthly rent for a two-bedroom apartment in the Indianapolis metropolitan area was $991; it was $816 in neighborhoods with poverty rates above 40 percent, just around 17 percent less. Rents are lower in extremely poor neighborhoods, but not by as much as you would think.

Yet where else can poor families live? They are shut out of homeownership because banks are disinclined to issue small-dollar mortgages, and they are also shut out of public housing, which now has waiting lists that stretch on for years and even decades. Struggling families looking for a safe, affordable place to live in America usually have but one choice: to rent from private landlords and fork over at least half their income to rent and utilities. If millions of poor renters accept this state of affairs, it’s not because they can’t afford better alternatives; it’s because they often aren’t offered any.

You can read injunctions against usury in the Vedic texts of ancient India, in the sutras of Buddhism and in the Torah. Aristotle and Aquinas both rebuked it. Dante sent moneylenders to the seventh circle of hell. None of these efforts did much to stem the practice, but they do reveal that the unprincipled act of trapping the poor in a cycle of debt has existed at least as long as the written word. It might be the oldest form of exploitation after slavery. Many writers have depicted America’s poor as unseen, shadowed and forgotten people: as “other” or “invisible.” But markets have never failed to notice the poor, and this has been particularly true of the market for money itself.

The deregulation of the banking system in the 1980s heightened competition among banks. Many responded by raising fees and requiring customers to carry minimum balances. In 1977, over a third of banks offered accounts with no service charge. By the early 1990s, only 5 percent did. Big banks grew bigger as community banks shuttered, and in 2021, the largest banks in America charged customers almost $11 billion in overdraft fees. Previous research showed that just 9 percent of account holders paid 84 percent of these fees. Who were the unlucky 9 percent? Customers who carried an average balance of less than $350. The poor were made to pay for their poverty.

In 2021, the average fee for overdrawing your account was $33.58. Because banks often issue multiple charges a day, it’s not uncommon to overdraw your account by $20 and end up paying $200 for it. Banks could (and do) deny accounts to people who have a history of overextending their money, but those customers also provide a steady revenue stream for some of the most powerful financial institutions in the world.

Every year: almost $11 billion in overdraft fees, $1.6 billion in check-cashing fees and up to $8.2 billion in payday-loan fees.

According to the F.D.I.C., one in 19 U.S. households had no bank account in 2019, amounting to more than seven million families. Compared with white families, Black and Hispanic families were nearly five times as likely to lack a bank account. Where there is exclusion, there is exploitation. Unbanked Americans have created a market, and thousands of check-cashing outlets now serve that market. Check-cashing stores generally charge from 1 to 10 percent of the total, depending on the type of check. That means that a worker who is paid $10 an hour and takes a $1,000 check to a check-cashing outlet will pay $10 to $100 just to receive the money he has earned, effectively losing one to 10 hours of work. (For many, this is preferable to the less-predictable exploitation by traditional banks, with their automatic overdraft fees. It’s the devil you know.) In 2020, Americans spent $1.6 billion just to cash checks. If the poor had a costless way to access their own money, over a billion dollars would have remained in their pockets during the pandemic-induced recession.

Poverty can mean missed payments, which can ruin your credit. But just as troublesome as bad credit is having no credit score at all, which is the case for 26 million adults in the United States. Another 19 million possess a credit history too thin or outdated to be scored. Having no credit (or bad credit) can prevent you from securing an apartment, buying insurance and even landing a job, as employers are increasingly relying on credit checks during the hiring process. And when the inevitable happens — when you lose hours at work or when the car refuses to start — the payday-loan industry steps in.

For most of American history, regulators prohibited lending institutions from charging exorbitant interest on loans. Because of these limits, banks kept interest rates between 6 and 12 percent and didn’t do much business with the poor, who in a pinch took their valuables to the pawnbroker or the loan shark. But the deregulation of the banking sector in the 1980s ushered the money changers back into the temple by removing strict usury limits. Interest rates soon reached 300 percent, then 500 percent, then 700 percent. Suddenly, some people were very interested in starting businesses that lent to the poor. In recent years, 17 states have brought back strong usury limits, capping interest rates and effectively prohibiting payday lending. But the trade thrives in most places. The annual percentage rate for a two-week $300 loan can reach 460 percent in California, 516 percent in Wisconsin and 664 percent in Texas.

Roughly a third of all payday loans are now issued online, and almost half of borrowers who have taken out online loans have had lenders overdraw their bank accounts. The average borrower stays indebted for five months, paying $520 in fees to borrow $375. Keeping people indebted is, of course, the ideal outcome for the payday lender. It’s how they turn a $15 profit into a $150 one. Payday lenders do not charge high fees because lending to the poor is risky — even after multiple extensions, most borrowers pay up. Lenders extort because they can.

Every year: almost $11 billion in overdraft fees, $1.6 billion in check-cashing fees and up to $8.2 billion in payday-loan fees. That’s more than $55 million in fees collected predominantly from low-income Americans each day — not even counting the annual revenue collected by pawnshops and title loan services and rent-to-own schemes. When James Baldwin remarked in 1961 how “extremely expensive it is to be poor,” he couldn’t have imagined these receipts.

“Predatory inclusion” is what the historian Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor calls it in her book “Race for Profit,” describing the longstanding American tradition of incorporating marginalized people into housing and financial schemes through bad deals when they are denied good ones. The exclusion of poor people from traditional banking and credit systems has forced them to find alternative ways to cash checks and secure loans, which has led to a normalization of their exploitation. This is all perfectly legal, after all, and subsidized by the nation’s richest commercial banks. The fringe banking sector would not exist without lines of credit extended by the conventional one. Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase bankroll payday lenders like Advance America and Cash America. Everybody gets a cut.

Poverty isn’t simply the condition of not having enough money. It’s the condition of not having enough choice and being taken advantage of because of that. When we ignore the role that exploitation plays in trapping people in poverty, we end up designing policy that is weak at best and ineffective at worst. For example, when legislation lifts incomes at the bottom without addressing the housing crisis, those gains are often realized instead by landlords, not wholly by the families the legislation was intended to help. A 2019 study conducted by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia found that when states raised minimum wages, families initially found it easier to pay rent. But landlords quickly responded to the wage bumps by increasing rents, which diluted the effect of the policy. This happened after the pandemic rescue packages, too: When wages began to rise in 2021 after worker shortages, rents rose as well, and soon people found themselves back where they started or worse.

Antipoverty programs work. Each year, millions of families are spared the indignities and hardships of severe deprivation because of these government investments. But our current antipoverty programs cannot abolish poverty by themselves. The Johnson administration started the War on Poverty and the Great Society in 1964. These initiatives constituted a bundle of domestic programs that included the Food Stamp Act, which made food aid permanent; the Economic Opportunity Act, which created Job Corps and Head Start; and the Social Security Amendments of 1965, which founded Medicare and Medicaid and expanded Social Security benefits. Nearly 200 pieces of legislation were signed into law in President Lyndon B. Johnson’s first five years in office, a breathtaking level of activity. And the result? Ten years after the first of these programs were rolled out in 1964, the share of Americans living in poverty was half what it was in 1960.

But the War on Poverty and the Great Society were started during a time when organized labor was strong, incomes were climbing, rents were modest and the fringe banking industry as we know it today didn’t exist. Today multiple forms of exploitation have turned antipoverty programs into something like dialysis, a treatment designed to make poverty less lethal, not to make it disappear.

This means we don’t just need deeper antipoverty investments. We need different ones, policies that refuse to partner with poverty, policies that threaten its very survival. We need to ensure that aid directed at poor people stays in their pockets, instead of being captured by companies whose low wages are subsidized by government benefits, or by landlords who raise the rents as their tenants’ wages rise, or by banks and payday-loan outlets who issue exorbitant fines and fees. Unless we confront the many forms of exploitation that poor families face, we risk increasing government spending only to experience another 50 years of sclerosis in the fight against poverty.

The best way to address labor exploitation is to empower workers. A renewed contract with American workers should make organizing easy. As things currently stand, unionizing a workplace is incredibly difficult. Under current labor law, workers who want to organize must do so one Amazon warehouse or one Starbucks location at a time. We have little chance of empowering the nation’s warehouse workers and baristas this way. This is why many new labor movements are trying to organize entire sectors. The Fight for $15 campaign, led by the Service Employees International Union, doesn’t focus on a single franchise (a specific McDonald’s store) or even a single company (McDonald’s) but brings together workers from several fast-food chains. It’s a new kind of labor power, and one that could be expanded: If enough workers in a specific economic sector — retail, hotel services, nursing — voted for the measure, the secretary of labor could establish a bargaining panel made up of representatives elected by the workers. The panel could negotiate with companies to secure the best terms for workers across the industry. This is a way to organize all Amazon warehouses and all Starbucks locations in a single go.

Sectoral bargaining, as it’s called, would affect tens of millions of Americans who have never benefited from a union of their own, just as it has improved the lives of workers in Europe and Latin America. The idea has been criticized by members of the business community, like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which has raised concerns about the inflexibility and even the constitutionality of sectoral bargaining, as well as by labor advocates, who fear that industrywide policies could nullify gains that existing unions have made or could be achieved only if workers make other sacrifices. Proponents of the idea counter that sectoral bargaining could even the playing field, not only between workers and bosses, but also between companies in the same sector that would no longer be locked into a race to the bottom, with an incentive to shortchange their work force to gain a competitive edge. Instead, the companies would be forced to compete over the quality of the goods and services they offer. Maybe we would finally reap the benefits of all that economic productivity we were promised.

We must also expand the housing options for low-income families. There isn’t a single right way to do this, but there is clearly a wrong way: the way we’re doing it now. One straightforward approach is to strengthen our commitment to the housing programs we already have. Public housing provides affordable homes to millions of Americans, but it’s drastically underfunded relative to the need. When the wealthy township of Cherry Hill, N.J., opened applications for 29 affordable apartments in 2021, 9,309 people applied. The sky-high demand should tell us something, though: that affordable housing is a life changer, and families are desperate for it.

We could also pave the way for more Americans to become homeowners, an initiative that could benefit poor, working-class and middle-class families alike — as well as scores of young people. Banks generally avoid issuing small-dollar mortgages, not because they’re riskier — these mortgages have the same delinquency rates as larger mortgages — but because they’re less profitable. Over the life of a mortgage, interest on $1 million brings in a lot more money than interest on $75,000. This is where the federal government could step in, providing extra financing to build on-ramps to first-time homeownership. In fact, it already does so in rural America through the 502 Direct Loan Program, which has moved more than two million families into their own homes. These loans, fully guaranteed and serviced by the Department of Agriculture, come with low interest rates and, for very poor families, cover the entire cost of the mortgage, nullifying the need for a down payment. Last year, the average 502 Direct Loan was for $222,300 but cost the government only $10,370 per loan, chump change for such a durable intervention. Expanding a program like this into urban communities would provide even more low- and moderate-income families with homes of their own.

We should also ensure fair access to capital. Banks should stop robbing the poor and near-poor of billions of dollars each year, immediately ending exorbitant overdraft fees. As the legal scholar Mehrsa Baradaran has pointed out, when someone overdraws an account, banks could simply freeze the transaction or could clear a check with insufficient funds, providing customers a kind of short-term loan with a low interest rate of, say, 1 percent a day.

States should rein in payday-lending institutions and insist that lenders make it clear to potential borrowers what a loan is ultimately likely to cost them. Just as fast-food restaurants must now publish calorie counts next to their burgers and shakes, payday-loan stores should publish the average overall cost of different loans. When Texas adopted disclosure rules, residents took out considerably fewer bad loans. If Texas can do this, why not California or Wisconsin? Yet to stop financial exploitation, we need to expand, not limit, low-income Americans’ access to credit. Some have suggested that the government get involved by having the U.S. Postal Service or the Federal Reserve issue small-dollar loans. Others have argued that we should revise government regulations to entice commercial banks to pitch in. Whatever our approach, solutions should offer low-income Americans more choice, a way to end their reliance on predatory lending institutions that can get away with robbery because they are the only option available.

In Tommy Orange’s novel, “There There,” a man trying to describe the problem of suicides on Native American reservations says: “Kids are jumping out the windows of burning buildings, falling to their deaths. And we think the problem is that they’re jumping.” The poverty debate has suffered from a similar kind of myopia. For the past half-century, we’ve approached the poverty question by pointing to poor people themselves — posing questions about their work ethic, say, or their welfare benefits — when we should have been focusing on the fire. The question that should serve as a looping incantation, the one we should ask every time we drive past a tent encampment, those tarped American slums smelling of asphalt and bodies, or every time we see someone asleep on the bus, slumped over in work clothes, is simply: Who benefits? Not: Why don’t you find a better job? Or: Why don’t you move? Or: Why don’t you stop taking out payday loans? But: Who is feeding off this?

Those who have amassed the most power and capital bear the most responsibility for America’s vast poverty: political elites who have utterly failed low-income Americans over the past half-century; corporate bosses who have spent and schemed to prioritize profits over families; lobbyists blocking the will of the American people with their self-serving interests; property owners who have exiled the poor from entire cities and fueled the affordable-housing crisis. Acknowledging this is both crucial and deliciously absolving; it directs our attention upward and distracts us from all the ways (many unintentional) that we — we the secure, the insured, the housed, the college-educated, the protected, the lucky — also contribute to the problem.

Corporations benefit from worker exploitation, sure, but so do consumers, who buy the cheap goods and services the working poor produce, and so do those of us directly or indirectly invested in the stock market. Landlords are not the only ones who benefit from housing exploitation; many homeowners do, too, their property values propped up by the collective effort to make housing scarce and expensive. The banking and payday-lending industries profit from the financial exploitation of the poor, but so do those of us with free checking accounts, as those accounts are subsidized by billions of dollars in overdraft fees.

Living our daily lives in ways that express solidarity with the poor could mean we pay more; anti-exploitative investing could dampen our stock portfolios. By acknowledging those costs, we acknowledge our complicity. Unwinding ourselves from our neighbors’ deprivation and refusing to live as enemies of the poor will require us to pay a price. It’s the price of our restored humanity and renewed country.

Matthew Desmond is a professor of sociology at Princeton University and a contributing writer for the magazine. His latest book, “Poverty, by America,” from which this article is adapted, is being published on March 21 by Crown.

An earlier version of this article referred incorrectly to the legal protections for undocumented workers. They are afforded rights under U.S. labor laws, though in practice those laws often fail to protect them.

An earlier version of this article implied an incorrect date for a statistic about overdraft fees. The research was conducted between 2005 and 2012, not in 2021.

How we handle corrections

Advertisement

Poverty as a Social Problem

This free essay on poverty as a social problem looks at a grave problem that exists in America and in the world. It provides reasons why people are experiencing poverty as well as some solutions.

Introduction

Literature review, poverty as a social problem: reflection, solutions to poverty as a social problem, social problems: poverty essay conclusion.

Society often perceives poverty as an individualistic issue, believing it is a consequence of bad decisions. That is, people themselves are responsible for the level of income and financial stability of households. However, the subject is much more complex as poverty also results from inadequate structuring of the country’s economy, distribution of goods, and other sectors, making it a social problem. Failure to build a system that would help citizens become financially stable results in various issues associated with crime levels, education, health care, and others. The government is the one that should work to solve them.

There are numerous studies and publications researching the reasons behind poverty. E. Royce (2019) tries to explain in his book how the existing economic system in the United States prevents citizens from reaching an adequate level of income and financial support. The main idea is that the current structure of how goods are distributed across the population does not benefit a large portion of it. Few rich individuals grow wealthier yearly, while millions struggle to find a stable job with a minimum wage.

The inequality created by the government’s failure to build a fair economic system results in a range of social problems. The idea of a poverty line as a measure of well-being has not changed much since the 1960s despite the obvious changes in consumption patterns (Royce, 2019). It is calculated as the sum required for purchasing essential items for living, which does not include modern commodities such as computers, mobile phones, and others.

As a result, low-income people become socially isolated since they do not possess things essential for the modern lifestyle, like social networks. They may be excluded from a community for not corresponding with the public image of active individuals. These mechanisms, combined with the dominant idea of the necessity to achieve success, push poor people away from social life. This factor comes together with the inability to receive proper health care and education services.

The literature also contains studies on how poverty affects the behavior of individuals. For instance, children exposed to life in a low-income household are more likely to develop adverse reactions in the future due to strain resulting from the inability to receive wished items (McFarland, 2017). When placed in a densely populated neighborhood, they may later cause legal problems, creating delinquent areas.

It is easy to predict the social issues that poor people face daily. They cannot receive proper health care services as they are usually costly. Moreover, many commercial organizations offering low-paid jobs traditionally based on customer service may prevent employees from taking sick leaves. As a result, people suffer from various illnesses without attending a hospital, fearing to lose a work placement.

Another issue is the inability of poor people to send their children to high-performing schools, which are expensive as a rule. This factor causes youth to continue living with the same income level as their parents since the absence of quality education prevents them from receiving a decent job. Moreover, children who cannot acquire goods valued by their peers are likely to adopt criminal behavior to achieve success since community norms and morals do not help this purpose.

Summarizing all the above said, it becomes evident that changing the existing economic structure on the governmental level is the most appropriate solution to the issue of poverty. There should be a strategy covering all the aspects affected by this problem. The goal is to increase the level of financial support for disadvantaged groups and give more opportunities for people to grow their income.

Firstly, the social sector should be transformed to meet the needs of all citizens. The government should increase the financing of schools so that all children will have access to quality education. Also, various programs should engage youth in activities after classes. Another step is to make health care affordable for everyone, and there should be no pressure on workers when they decide to take sick leaves.

Secondly, the structure of budget spending should be redesigned. It is evident that social support programs require much financing from taxes. One of the possible strategies is to make the government spend less on other sectors. Also, solving the issue of delinquent behavior among youth by advancing social support may cut costs on police functioning as there will be a lower need for services such as patrolling.

Poverty is a structural problem resulting from a country’s inadequate economic system. It creates various social issues associated with poor health care services, low-quality education, criminal activity, and others. Poverty is a complex subject that cannot be resolved shortly. However, one of the possible strategies is to provide better financial and social support for the population, which will create more opportunities for people to increase their income level.

McFarland, M. (2017). Poverty and problem behaviors across the early life course: The role of sensitive period exposure. Population Research & Policy Review , 36 (5), 739-760.

Royce, E. (2019). Poverty and power: The problem of structural inequality (3rd ed.). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.

Cite this paper

• Chicago (N-B)
• Chicago (A-D)

StudyCorgi. (2021, June 14). Poverty as a Social Problem. https://studycorgi.com/poverty-as-a-social-problem/

"Poverty as a Social Problem." StudyCorgi , 14 June 2021, studycorgi.com/poverty-as-a-social-problem/.

StudyCorgi . (2021) 'Poverty as a Social Problem'. 14 June.

1. StudyCorgi . "Poverty as a Social Problem." June 14, 2021. https://studycorgi.com/poverty-as-a-social-problem/.

Bibliography

StudyCorgi . "Poverty as a Social Problem." June 14, 2021. https://studycorgi.com/poverty-as-a-social-problem/.

StudyCorgi . 2021. "Poverty as a Social Problem." June 14, 2021. https://studycorgi.com/poverty-as-a-social-problem/.

This paper, “Poverty as a Social Problem”, was written and voluntary submitted to our free essay database by a straight-A student. Please ensure you properly reference the paper if you're using it to write your assignment.

Before publication, the StudyCorgi editorial team proofread and checked the paper to make sure it meets the highest standards in terms of grammar, punctuation, style, fact accuracy, copyright issues, and inclusive language. Last updated: November 8, 2023 .

If you are the author of this paper and no longer wish to have it published on StudyCorgi, request the removal . Please use the “ Donate your paper ” form to submit an essay.

Home — Essay Samples — Social Issues — Poverty in America — Poverty Solution: Strategies to Alleviate

Poverty Solution: Strategies to Alleviate

• Categories: Poverty in America Social Work

About this sample

Words: 356 |

Published: Mar 16, 2024

Words: 356 | Page: 1 | 2 min read

Cite this Essay

Let us write you an essay from scratch

• 450+ experts on 30 subjects ready to help
• Custom essay delivered in as few as 3 hours

Get high-quality help

Dr. Heisenberg

Verified writer

• Expert in: Social Issues Life

+ 120 experts online

By clicking “Check Writers’ Offers”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy . We’ll occasionally send you promo and account related email

No need to pay just yet!

Related Essays

2 pages / 747 words

1 pages / 477 words

2 pages / 1055 words

2 pages / 1080 words

Remember! This is just a sample.

You can get your custom paper by one of our expert writers.

121 writers online

Still can’t find what you need?

Browse our vast selection of original essay samples, each expertly formatted and styled

Related Essays on Poverty in America

Homelessness started to become a dilemma since the 1930s leaving millions of people without homes or jobs during The Great Depression. Homeless people face numerous challenges every day dealing with shelters and food in order to [...]

Imagine walking down the street and seeing a person huddled under a blanket, with a cardboard sign asking for help. What would you do? Would you walk past them, pretending not to see their suffering? Or would you stop and offer [...]

Poverty is a complex and multifaceted issue that has plagued societies for centuries. It has been linked to a myriad of negative effects on individuals, families, and communities. From economic instability to social [...]

Poverty in the United States is a complex and multi-faceted issue that affects millions of Americans every day. Despite being one of the wealthiest countries in the world, the United States has a high poverty rate compared to [...]

A small boy tugs at his mother’s coat and exclaims, “Mom! Mom! There’s the fire truck I wanted!” as he gazes through the glass showcase to the toy store. The mother looks down at the toy and sees the price, she pulls her son [...]

America's Youngest Outcasts: State Report Card on Child Homelessness. (2014). National Center on Family Homelessness.Children’s Defense Fund. (2015). Child poverty in the United States 2014: National and state fact [...]

Related Topics

By clicking “Send”, you agree to our Terms of service and Privacy statement . We will occasionally send you account related emails.

Where do you want us to send this sample?

By clicking “Continue”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy.

Be careful. This essay is not unique

This essay was donated by a student and is likely to have been used and submitted before

Download this Sample

Free samples may contain mistakes and not unique parts

Sorry, we could not paraphrase this essay. Our professional writers can rewrite it and get you a unique paper.

Please check your inbox.

We can write you a custom essay that will follow your exact instructions and meet the deadlines. Let's fix your grades together!

Get Your Personalized Essay in 3 Hours or Less!

We use cookies to personalyze your web-site experience. By continuing we’ll assume you board with our cookie policy .

• Instructions Followed To The Letter
• Deadlines Met At Every Stage
• Unique And Plagiarism Free

Poverty - List of Free Essay Examples And Topic Ideas

Poverty, a state of deprivation of basic human needs and economic opportunities, is a pervasive issue across the globe. Essays could explore the systemic causes of poverty, its impact on individuals and communities, and the various strategies employed to alleviate poverty. Additionally, discussions might delve into the role of international aid, the impact of globalization, and the ethical responsibilities of affluent individuals and nations toward poverty reduction. A substantial compilation of free essay instances related to Poverty you can find at PapersOwl Website. You can use our samples for inspiration to write your own essay, research paper, or just to explore a new topic for yourself.

Poverty and Drug Abuse Addiction

One popular stereotype associated with drug use is that it is rampant among the poor. However, this is not entirely true since insufficient money linked with the poor cannot probably sustain drug use. The link between the two factors is multifaceted, and the connectedness of poverty is complex. Poverty entails unstable family and interpersonal associations, low-skilled jobs and low status, high arrest degrees, illegitimacy, school dropping out, deprived physical health, high mental conditions, and high mortality rates. Such factors resemble […]

Changing the Face of Poverty Summary

In Changing the Face of Poverty the author, Diana George, begins with her annual food drive at St. Vincent de Paul, and every day she receives bills and catalogs with appeals like the Navajo Health Foundation, little Brothers, and many others. In those was Habitat for Humanity. As a member of this club, I know the duties and responsibility towards this organization. George states that Habitat for Humanity is not as helpful as it seems. She says that the organization […]

Racism in Criminal Justice System

Scott Woods once said, The problem is that white people see racism as conscious hate, when racism is bigger than that. Racism is a complex system of social and political levers and pulleys set up generations ago to continue working on the behalf of whites at other people's expense, whether whites know/like it or not. Racism is an insidious cultural disease. It is so insidious that it doesn't care if you are a white person who likes black people; it's […]

We will write an essay sample crafted to your needs.

Impact of Poverty on the Society

This is a very challenging question because nearly every ""pressing problem or social issue"" has underlying factors and historical influences. So I will try to explain my understanding of these topics. There are two important lenses from which to consider this issue; first, from the individual circumstance and second, from specific community conditions. The inability of individuals to earn enough money to afford to meet their basic needs and maintain a healthy lifestyle is, in my opinion, the most pressing […]

Poverty in the United States

Poverty is a major issue in our world today, it is when people are not able to afford a minimum standard of living to survive. Poverty is the removal of financial stability to afford necessities. Bill Fay, veteran journalist defined poverty as a pervasive human condition of being unable to obtain or provide a standard level of food, water, and shelter. In 2015, a study was done and reported that 60% of people will experience at least 1 year of […]

Unemployment a Major Cause of Homelessness

Homelessness or known as extreme poverty can be interpreted as a circumstance when people have no place to stay with the result that they end up live in the street, under the bridge even at the side of the river. There are 3.5 million Americans are homeless each year. Of these, more than 1 million are children and on any given night, more than 300,000 children are homeless. They who do not have an occupation are the one that is […]

Breaking the Poverty Trap

One of the reasons the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer, is because of the lack of not knowing and ignorance hindering half the world, allowing the cycle of poverty to continue. Poverty trap is as a spiraling mechanism, that forces people to remain poor binding many to no hope of escaping. The poverty trap has been an ongoing cycle within generations even those close to me, that has tremendously taken a negative toll on society and my […]

Childhood Poverty

Abstract Poverty is viewed throughout the world as a large social problem that continues to advance with time. Since 1960, poverty has continued to flourish into a problem that has affected a large majority of the population, including our children. Childhood poverty affects the psychological and biological development, as well as three main levels of social systems: micro, mezzo and macro. Even though there has been active research on poverty, generational poverty and childhood poverty, no active changes have been […]

Homelessness in the United States

Homelessness is a social problem that has long plagued the United States and surrounding Countries for centuries. It is an economic and social problem that has affected people from all walks of life, including children, families, veterans, and the elderly. Kilgore (2018). States homelessness is believed to have affected an estimated amount of 2.5-3.5 million people each year in the United States alone. Recent evidence suggests economic conditions have increased the number of people affected by homelessness in the United […]

Poverty in Developing Countries

Introduction A. (Opening Device) How many of you ever had to think or worry about your next meal? Most of us, we don't have to think about that, we don't think about where we having that meal. But in developing countries people have to think about everything they do in daily life, The goal for the day is to have meal with family and have a shelter, or to live in a house to hope for better lifestyle. To make […]

Closing the Education Gap by Attacking Poverty Among Children

Looking around the campus of an Ivy League schools, one wonders how students from such diverse backgrounds ultimately wound up at the same place. From having a mother who works in admissions, I grew up hearing that no matter where you came from, your socioeconomic status, and even sometimes your grades, all kids have the potential to attend a prestigious university. However, I find that hard to believe. With a combination of taking this class on homelessness this semester, growing […]

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act

Introduction The three main objectives of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, signed in October 2010, include the following: reforming the private insurance market, mainly for individuals and small group purchasers; expanding Medicaid to the working poor, whose maximum income is around 33 percent of the federal poverty level; and altering the way medical decisions are made in the country (Silvers, 2013). These three objectives are primarily determined by private choices rather than government regulation, with the expectation that […]

Financial Education and Poverty

The most pressing social issue that has the most impact on the ability of people to be healthy and economically self-sufficient is financial education. For an individual or family unit to become economically viable, they must be educated in the proper uses of their income. An individual can be gainfully employed and still be in danger of becoming homeless. This occurs when this individual or familial unit exceeds their income through purchases that are not needed. As we approach the […]

The Poverty Among Us

In our current society, poverty is an issue that plagues third world nations. All countries are interwoven with one another because of everyone needing each other for certain resources. When one country is in need, it interrupts a process that all countries have with one another. Poverty is an issue that everyone should pay attention to even if it does not occur where we live or does not affect us directly as much as it does other nations. Not only […]

Effect of Rural-Urban Migation on the Poverty Status of Farming Households in Ogbomoso

CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION 1.1 Background of the study Needless to say, poverty is a global problem; however, the menace of poverty is most devastating in the developing countries of the world. Food production has hardly kept pace with population size, and the quantity, as well as quality of health, has also massively deteriorated. According to the World Bank Development Report (2013), about 10.7 percent of the world's population lived below poverty line (US $1.90 a day). Poverty is one of […]

What is Poverty?

Poverty is a pervasive human condition of being unable to obtain or provide a standard level of food, water, and/or shelter (Fay, n.d.). The United States has the highest rate of poverty among wealthy countries. The official poverty line is based on what the federal government considers to be the minimum amount of money required for living at a subsistence level (Kendell, 2018). Sociologists define poverty in two ways: absolute and relative. Absolute poverty is when the household income is […]

Increasing Federal Minimum Wage

The magnitude of the impacts of federal minimum payments has been a typical topic of discussion for years. Economic policymakers and academic researchers base minimum wage discussions in the context of poverty and increasing the wages. However, critics argue that there are many adverse effects on small businesses and the general economy of the country. A rise in the nation payments will have impacts on the economy of the American states in which the increase in minimum wage law is […]

How Poverty Correlates with Non English Speaking American Families

How does poverty affect the people in the United states today? Poverty is currently affecting 16.3 percent of women, 13.8 of men, and 21 percent of all children in America. The highest poverty rate by race is found among Native Americans, which is 27.6 percent. African americans have 26.2 percent poverty and Hispanics having 23.4 percent. How do these families provide for their children and help them succeed if they can barely even pay the bills? Families all over the […]

Poverty and Crime

Poverty isn't the 'mother of crime.' However it is one noteworthy benefactor. Crime exists, since individuals need something they don't have, and are not willing to comply with the law(s) on the books to get it. What poverty does is, it decreases the things needy individuals have accessible to them, along these lines offering undeniably more things for needy individuals to want—and substantially more inspiration to them to carry out a crime to get it. Along these lines, more needy […]

Poverty in America

Poverty has been a ongoing, social issue that throughout the years has changed its meaning. Poverty is defined lacking basic necessities such as water, food, shelter, wealth, etc… About fifty years ago, war was declared on poverty by President Johnson hoping that it would end, but fast forward today, it is one of the biggest social issues America is dealing with. We don’t really know why poverty is still occurring, because the reasons seem to always be changing. The reasons […]

Poverty Life in the Industrial Age

Tenement Housing Tenement housing was cheap, unsanitary, and extremely crowded. They were placed by factories, so the air and water became very polluted and unsafe because of all the fumes and such from the factory. Most didn’t have indoor plumbing or proper ventilation which caused tons of health issues. At night the only light they had was from the streetlights so of course the only level of the housing that had light was the level that was level with the […]

Economic Inequality and Governmental Responsibility

Ever since the emergence of civilization several hundreds of years ago, social inequality has been a prevalent aspect of many societies across the world. This social structure developed as a result of several factors, amongst them political and economic status in the society. During the early stages of civilization, social and political status was closely related whereby the few powerful political leaders tended to be wealthier than the lesser politically influential majority. Although this dynamic is still prevalent in developing […]

Poverty and Homelessness in America

Poverty and Homelessness in America is a daunting subject which everyone recognizes but do not pay attention to. A homeless person is stereotypically thought to be a person who sleeps at the roadside, begging for money and influenced by drug with dirty ragged clothes and a person who is deprived of basic facilities in his or her life such as; education, electricity, proper clothes, shelter, water with a scarcity of balanced diet is termed as person living under the line […]

Poverty in Haiti: is there a Solution?

Abstract Haiti is a Latin American country that is often ignored. People do not hear much about it, except if a natural disaster such as the earthquake in 2010 happens. It was once the richest colony of the Caribbean and nowadays is known as the poorest country of the Western Hemisphere. Haiti has been facing a cycle of poverty since it became independent. Haiti’s location and deforestation have contributed to make the situation worse. More than half of the population […]

Causes of Poverty

Some causes of poverty in the United States are: unemployment, inflation, poor management of resources, government policies, debt, corruption, extreme weather, lack of control in local food, lack of access to education, mental illness ( lack of proper psychiatric care), diseases, automation, and overpopulation. Poverty is a pervasive human condition of being unable to obtain or provide a standard level of food, water and/or shelter. It exists in every country in varying degrees, and it is unlikely to disappear anytime […]

Affordable Housing Takes on Poverty

Without affordable housing there will be a continuous increase in minorities which also leads to a higher poverty rate. Poverty is the state of being extremely poor. Affordable housing helps decrease poverty in many ways than one. Affordable housing fulfills a human’s basic need for shelter as well as provides privacy for families. Those who receive affordable housing assistance and have children, benefit from better nutrition. Affordable housing would reduce poverty and should be available to those who are in […]

The Impacts of Neoliberalism in the Transition to Democracy in Chile

Compared to other developing countries in Latin America, Chile's political and economic development is distinctive. The country is one of the democratic exceptions, owing to its relatively poor and small population at the time of Spanish colonial rule. The indigenous population is also rather small, and the country has a high degree of ethnic and cultural homogeneity (Hillman and D’Agostino 2011, 67-107). However, today's regime wasn't always democratic. Between 1973 and 1990, Chile was under an authoritarian regime led by […]

Living in Poverty and being Rich

  Poverty is such a simple word, but it is so complicated at the same time. The vast majority of individuals will not fully comprehend the real implication of poverty just by reading its literal meaning from the dictionary, but by learning from their surroundings and experiencing hardship itself. Defining poverty can be being poor financially but is also defined as a comfortable way of living as well as spiritually too. What does it mean actually to be poor? Most […]

Poverty and Obesity

It is a known fact that the individual exert influences on the environment and vice versa. However, no man is an Island and as such, these influences reflect through various levels of social and interpersonal relationships. The social environment of the individual include interaction with peers, friend and family members, through such mechanism as role modeling, social support and social norms (Mary, Karen, Ramona, Karen .Annu. Rev. Public Health 2008.Creating Healthy food and Eating Environments, para 2). The physical environment […]

A Problem Child Poverty and Effects on Education

“The impact of poverty on a child’s academic achievement is significant and starts early,” – Jonah Edelman, co-founder and chief executive officer of Stand for Children (Taylor, 2017). According to the U.S. Census Bureau in 2015, around 20 percent of children in the U.S. lived in poverty (Taylor, 2017). Rather than focusing all our time, attention, and resources on rewriting standards and adding higher stakes standardized tests, are we missing a larger looming issue? Studies have shown that student poverty […]

Related topic

Additional example essays.

• Analysis of "The True Cost" Documentary
• War On Drugs and Mass Incarceration
• Solution of Child Labor Problem
• College May Not Be Worth It Anymore By Ellen Ruppel Shell
• Socioautobiography Choices and Experiences Growing up
• A Class Divided
• Gender Inequality in Education
• Racism in A Raisin in the Sun
• Mental Illness and Gun Control
• Dogs Are Better Than Cats Essay
• Personal Philosophy of Leadership
• Personal Narrative: My Family Genogram

Essay About Poverty It has existed for many years and still exists today, growing and intensifying. Today poverty remains one of the biggest. In Singer’s essay “The Solution to World poverty,” he suggests the Americans should donate all their money that is not required for necessities to help feed those that are less fortunate. This claim is not true due to the fact that Singer fails to mention how much people struggle and suffer from poverty in America alone, people worked hard for their money; therefore, they deserve to spend their hard-earned money, and how the economy depends on the Americans expenses, so if people don’t spend money on expenses, the economy will crash. Singer begins by comparing Dora, the woman who sells an orphan for a new television set. Singer then introduces Bob and how he chooses to save his expensive Bugatti from a train instead of saving a child’s life, he compares this story to Americans and their lack of donation and aids and how we “too have opportunities to save the lives of children” (2). In his essay, Singer’s aim is to target all Americans, implying that everyone should donate and help. But what he fails to mention is how even in America people also struggle and suffer from poverty. In the journal “Poverty in America: Trends and Explanations,” Hilary W. Hoynes, Marianne E. Page and Ann Huff Stevens state, “The official poverty rate is 12.3 percent, based on the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2017 estimates. That year, an estimated 39.7 million Americans lived in poverty according to the official measure. 18.5 million People reported deep poverty, which means a household income below 50 percent of their 2017 poverty threshold. These individuals represented an estimated 5.7 percent of all Americans and 46.7 percent of those in poverty.” There are so many people in America who are also in need, people that are also suffering. There are without work and without insurance, people whose homes are lose to fires, storms, and bankruptcy. The idea that individuals must help their own first before helping others is reasonable and rational. Though it could be great to help all those in need, American should aid their own first and end poverty in their own country before helping to others for there are times when it is just not possible. 

1. Tell Us Your Requirements

2. Pick your perfect writer

3. Get Your Paper and Pay

Hi! I'm Amy, your personal assistant!

Don't know where to start? Give me your paper requirements and I connect you to an academic expert.

short deadlines

100% Plagiarism-Free

Certified writers

English that goes straight to the heart

Solutions to Poverty Essay

The situation where one is unable to fulfil the minimum requirements of life such as food, clothing, housing, education, and health facilities is referred to as poverty. 

After reading this post ‘Solution to Poverty Essay’ you will learn everything you need to reduce poverty in your country.

Daily Test - Attempt Now

Solutions to Poverty Essay (650+ Words)

The problem of poverty can be solved by accelerating the pace of economic growth. A higher growth rate creates new employment and income-earning opportunities. Efforts should be made to incorporate new and modern techniques of production so as to improve productivity and production. Similarly, mechanization should be followed in the agriculture sector so as to improve production. An increase in production would lead to higher income and thereby, help eradicate poverty.

In addition to rapid economic growth, it is necessary to ensure that the increased income does not remain concentrated in a few hands. In other words, to remove poverty it is necessary to remove the inequality of income and wealth. This can be achieved by means of legislative and fiscal measures. Legislative measures include such measures as the Minimum Wages Act, Minimum Support Price, Right to Education, etc. Such measures raise the income earning capacity of people and improve their standard of living.

On the other hand, fiscal measures comprise taxation and subsidy measures of the government. A high rate of taxes can be levied on the high-income group while the poor are granted subsidies. In this sense, the purchasing power is transferred from the rich to the poor. Similarly, pensions, scholarships, grants, etc. can be granted to the poor. Both the legislative as well as fiscal measures are aimed at encouraging an egalitarian society and reducing poverty.

A high population growth rate offsets the benefits of a high economic growth rate. Even when the level of national income is high, the per capita income will remain low if the population growth rate is high. Thus, to combat poverty, it becomes necessary to control the population growth rate.

People should be made aware of the benefits of a small family and different family control measures. Another measure of controlling the population is encouraging female education and employment. Stress should also be laid on other similar measures such as education, research in the field of family planning, and population control.

The poor are worse hit by the rising prices. Rising prices reduce purchasing power and make it difficult for the poor to purchase even the basic necessities. To reduce poverty steps must be taken to ensure stability in the prices. A two-fold methodology can be adopted for price stability. First, by increasing the production of goods and services, and second, by distributing the essential goods to the poor through fair price shops and ration shops.

Unemployment is one of the major causes of poverty. Steps must be taken to eradicate unemployment. India is a labour-abundant country, and one of the measures to increase employment can be to adopt labour-intensive techniques of production. Similarly, to absorb the labour in rural areas cottage and small-scale industries must be encouraged.

Self-employment must be encouraged in both rural areas and urban areas. Self-employed persons should be provided with such facilities as credit, marketing, transportation, technical training, etc. Besides, to improve employment in the country, it is necessary to make the education system more job-oriented, so that people have the practical knowledge and skill required for gainful employment. A reduction in unemployment through these measures will help in the reduction of poverty.

You Asked, We Listened – Get Free Access to All Writing Lists 😍😍

YOU MAY READ

Finished reading ‘Solutions to Poverty Essay’? We have more for you…..

Essay on Brain Drain

Short Essay on Life in a Big City

Long Essays

Read More »

Essay on Law and Order

Essay on Ecotourism

Daily reading comprehension test - attempt now, discover more from english luv.

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Type your email…

Continue reading

• I nfographics
• Show AWL words
• Subscribe to newsletter
• What is academic writing?
• Academic Style
• What is the writing process?
• Understanding the title
• Brainstorming
• Researching
• First draft
• Proofreading
• Report writing
• Compare & contrast
• Cause & effect
• Problem-solution
• Classification
• Essay structure
• Introduction
• Literature review
• Book review
• Research proposal
• Thesis/dissertation
• What is cohesion?
• Cohesion vs coherence
• Transition signals
• What are references?
• In-text citations
• Reference sections
• Reporting verbs
• Band descriptors

Show AWL words on this page.

Levels 1-5:     grey  Levels 6-10:   orange 

Show sorted lists of these words.

Any words you don't know? Look them up in the website's built-in dictionary .

Choose a dictionary .  Wordnet  OPTED  both

Problem-solution essays Situation-problem-solution-evaluation

Problem-solution essays are a common essay type, especially for short essays such as subject exams or IELTS . The page gives information on what they are , how to structure this type of essay, and gives an example problem-solution essay on the topic of obesity and fitness levels.

What are problem-solution essays?

Problem-solution essays consider the problems of a particular situation, and give solutions to those problems. They are in some ways similar to cause and effect essays , especially in terms of structure (see below). Problem-solution essays are actually a sub-type of another type of essay, which has the following four components:

The 'situation' may be included in the essay prompt, in which case it will not be needed in the main body. If it is needed, it can often be included in the introduction, especially for short essays, as with the example essay below . The 'evaluation' may be included as part of the conclusion (also as in the example below), or omitted altogether, especially for short essays. For these reasons, problem-solution essays are more common than situation-problem-solution-evaluation essays (or SPSE essays).

There are two main ways to structure a problem-solution essay. These are similar to the ways to structure cause and effect essays , namely using a block or a chain structure. For the block structure, all of the problems are listed first, and all of the solutions are listed afterwards. For the chain structure, each problem is followed immediately by the solution to that problem. Both types of structure have their merits. The former is generally clearer, especially for shorter essays, while the latter ensures that any solutions you present relate directly to the problems you have given.

The two types of structure, block and chain , are shown in the diagram below. This is for a short essay, which includes the 'situation' in the introduction and 'evaluation' in the conclusion. A longer essay, for example one of around 1,000 words, with citations , would probably have these two sections as separate paragraphs in the main body.

Example essay

Below is a problem-solution essay on the topic of obesity and poor fitness . It uses the block structure . Click on the different areas (in the shaded boxes) to highlight the different structural aspects in this essay, i.e. Situation, Problem, Solution, Evaluation. This will highlight not simply the paragraphs, but also (for problems and solutions) the thesis statement and summary , as these repeat the problems and solutions contained in the main body.

Consumption of processed and convenience foods and our dependence on the car have led to an increase in obesity and reduction in the fitness level of the adult population. In some countries, especially industrialized ones, the number of obese people can amount to one third of the population. This is significant as obesity and poor fitness lead to a decrease in life expectancy , and it is therefore important for individuals and governments to work together to tackle this issue and improve their citizens' diet and fitness. Obesity and poor fitness decrease life expectancy. Overweight people are more likely to have serious illnesses such as diabetes and heart disease, which can result in premature death. It is well known that regular exercise can reduce the risk of heart disease and stroke, which means that those with poor fitness levels are at an increased risk of suffering from those problems. Changes by individuals to their diet and their physical activity can increase life expectancy. There is a reliance today on the consumption of processed foods, which have a high fat and sugar content. By preparing their own foods, and consuming more fruit and vegetables, people could ensure that their diets are healthier and more balanced, which could lead to a reduction in obesity levels. In order to improve fitness levels, people could choose to walk or cycle to work or to the shops rather than taking the car. They could also choose to walk up stairs instead of taking the lift. These simple changes could lead to a significant improvement in fitness levels. Governments could also implement initiatives to improve their citizens' eating and exercise habits. This could be done through education, for example by adding classes to the curriculum about healthy diet and lifestyles. Governments could also do more to encourage their citizens to walk or cycle instead of taking the car, for instance by building more cycle lanes or increasing vehicle taxes. While some might argue that increased taxes are a negative way to solve the problem, it is no different from the high taxes imposed on cigarettes to reduce cigarette consumption. In short, obesity and poor fitness are a significant problem in modern life, leading to lower life expectancy . Individuals and governments can work together to tackle this problem and so improve diet and fitness . Of the solutions suggested, those made by individuals themselves are likely to have more impact, though it is clear that a concerted effort with the government is essential for success. With obesity levels in industrialized and industrializing countries continuing to rise, it is essential that we take action now to deal with this problem.

GET FREE EBOOK

Like the website? Try the books. Enter your email to receive a free sample from Academic Writing Genres .

Below is a checklist for the main body of an essay. Use it to check your own writing, or get a peer (another student) to help you.

Next section

Find out about writing definitions and definition essays in the next section.

Previous section

Go back to the previous section about cause & effect essays .

• Cause/effect

Author: Sheldon Smith    ‖    Last modified: 22 January 2022.

Sheldon Smith is the founder and editor of EAPFoundation.com. He has been teaching English for Academic Purposes since 2004. Find out more about him in the about section and connect with him on Twitter , Facebook and LinkedIn .

Compare & contrast essays examine the similarities of two or more objects, and the differences.

Cause & effect essays consider the reasons (or causes) for something, then discuss the results (or effects).

Discussion essays require you to examine both sides of a situation and to conclude by saying which side you favour.

Problem-solution essays are a sub-type of SPSE essays (Situation, Problem, Solution, Evaluation).

Transition signals are useful in achieving good cohesion and coherence in your writing.

Reporting verbs are used to link your in-text citations to the information cited.

Home / Essay Samples / Social Issues / Homelessness / Fighting Poverty in the Philippines: Challenges and Solutions

Fighting Poverty in the Philippines: Challenges and Solutions

• Category: Social Issues , World , Government
• Topic: Homelessness , Philippines , Unemployment

Pages: 3 (1462 words)

Views: 1107

• Downloads: -->

Introduction

Fighting poverty in the philippines, reducing poverty, ambisyon natin 2040.

--> ⚠️ Remember: This essay was written and uploaded by an--> click here.

Found a great essay sample but want a unique one?

are ready to help you with your essay

You won’t be charged yet!

Reign of Terror Essays

Voting Essays

Gentrification Essays

Republic Essays

Constitution Essays

Related Essays

We are glad that you like it, but you cannot copy from our website. Just insert your email and this sample will be sent to you.

By clicking “Send”, you agree to our Terms of service  and  Privacy statement . We will occasionally send you account related emails.

Your essay sample has been sent.

In fact, there is a way to get an original essay! Turn to our writers and order a plagiarism-free paper.

samplius.com uses cookies to offer you the best service possible.By continuing we’ll assume you board with our cookie policy .--> -->