Today we will examine the effects of poverty in more detail. Below are three different videos for you to choose from. Read the description and choose the one that is most interesting to you. Watch the video and answer the questions on the Google Form.
Different types of poverty (suburban, urban, rural/climate-caused):
The Line, MediaEd documentary (2015) 43 minutes
Documentary about the varied types of people living at the poverty line. The first two are from Chicagoland. One is a white suburban Dad who lives in the western suburbs. The next is a black woman living in the city who moves to Oak Park.
Children in poverty:
Poor Kids, Frontline documentary (2017). 54 minutes online at PBS (with commercials).
Twenty percent of the children in the US are growing up in poverty! That's 1 out of every 5 kids in the United States living at the poverty level! Yes, you read that correctly - 1 out of every 5 children in the United States is living in poverty right now!
Here is an update from 2019 about how the families are doing 2 years after the end of the movie. Here is the documentary website with statistics.
The Effects of Covid on Poverty:
Growing Up Poor in America (2020)The experience of child poverty against the backdrop of the pandemic and increasing racial tensions. Set in Ohio, follow children and their families navigating issues of poverty, homelessness, race and new challenges due to COVID-19.
Deindustrialization in Small Towns:
Frontline: Left Behind America: Ohio Citizens Fight for Economic Revitalization (2018)
Intimate stories of one Rust Belt city’s struggle to recover in the post-recession economy. FRONTLINE reports on the economic and social forces shaping Dayton, Ohio, a once-booming city where nearly 35 percent of people now live in poverty.
America's Poorest Kids
In the United States, child poverty has reached record levels, with over 16 million children now affected. Food banks are facing unprecedented demand, and homeless shelters now have long waiting lists, as families who have known a much better life have to leave their homes, sometimes with just a few days notice. America’s Poor Kids meets three children whose families are struggling to get by, and asks them to tell us what life in modern America really looks like through their eyes. Told from the point of view of the children themselves, this one-hour documentary offers a unique perspective on the nation's flagging economy and the impact of unemployment, homelessness and poverty as seen through the eyes of the children affected.
Rural poverty:
Children of the Mountain (2009), 49 minutes.
Children of the Mountain (2009), 49 minutes.
Diane Sawyer did a special report on Appalachia that highlighted the children affected by poverty. I think there is a tendency for us to blame the adults for their impoverished situation, but we forget that these adults were once children born into a world of difficulties and obstacles that led to an adulthood of poverty. You can hear Diane Sawyer talk about it here. Can you use your sociological imagination to see all of the social forces that limit those who are in poverty in America? Watch the excerpt below from 20/20 to see the complicated life of the rural impoverished American:
What Can Be Done?
Some students have asked about what can be done to mitigate poverty in the US. Here are a few resources to consider:
Matthew Desmond's Poverty, By America
First of all, Desmond, a sociologist from Princeton, explains in his book Poverty, By America, that there is not a collective will to end poverty in America. There are too many vested interests that profit off having an impoverished class.
Additionally, as we saw in our examination of the "middle class," there is such a struggle in those who are just above the low income level that many resent the focus on low-income and poverty which is another barrier to eliminating poverty.
Tax Policy and Government "Entitlements"
One of the areas that Desmond's book talks about that has also been widely studied by other sociologists like Brooke Harrington from Princeton who studied how the extremely wealthy are able to avoid taxes by using international laws to create tax havens, and sustain wealth and power. Even for those who do not hide money in these havens, the official tax policy in the USA is that capital gains are taxed at far less than income tax. In other words, those of us that make money by working with our time and labor pay higher rates in taxes than people who have so much money that they can invest their money and let the investments make money for them. This is why the famously wealthy billionaire Warren Buffett explains that he pays less taxes than his secretary. Taxes from the extremely wealthy can help fund jobs and programs to lift the lowest income Americans up out of poverty, but policy in the USA has been the opposite.
Harlem Children's Zone
Poverty affects those it inhabits from even before they are born. That creates obstacles that start long before people develop agency to make choices that might help them overcome impoverished beginnings. One model for addressing the habitus of poverty that affects children from before they are born is the Harlem Children's Zone. The The Harlem Children's Zone (HCZ) is a non-profit organization in New York City that focuses on breaking the cycle of intergenerational poverty by providing comprehensive, free services to low-income children and families in Harlem, including early childhood development, education, and community support programs. They offer a range of programs, including:
- Early Childhood Development: Programs like "The Baby College" and "Harlem Gems".
- Education: HCZ Promise Academy Charter Schools, which have longer school days and years than traditional public schools, focusing on core academics, arts, and physical fitness.
- Community Support: Parenting workshops, child-oriented health programs, and wraparound services to address various needs.
- Youth Programs: Programs designed to empower youth to discover their interests, pursue passions, and achieve goals.
- College and Career: Support to help students get to and through college, and build successful careers.
Analysis of the HCZ from the Center for the Study of Social Policy.
Moving to Opportunity and Dismantling Social Class Segregation
Dorothy Gautreaux, a Chicagoan, was assigned a CHA apartment but after the civil rights laws of the 1960s, she sued the CHA claiming that their assignment of housing was 99% black and therefore segregationist and illegal. She won the right to move to an area outside of this segregated ghetto of highly concentrated poverty. Her move became a test case eventually called moving to opportunity which showed that black residents who were allowed to move to middle-class areas benefitted greatly from the move. They were surrounded by people who went to college and had connections and good jobs. This showed the enormous impact of housing segregation. Gautreaux won her case after a record decades-long lawsuit and it became an important model for housing reform.As the government moved residents out of the extremely segregated and impoverished housing, it created an opportunity to study how moving residents to racially and socioeconomically integrated housing would affect those people. This study became known as the Moving to Opportunity study. Early data seemed to show little change for those people, but longitudinal data showed that there were substantial effects for the children of those who moved. In other words, the MTO disrupted generational poverty. Updated results in 2015 showed these benefits in:
Opportunity Insights
Eviction Policy from Matthew Desmond
Before his other book mentioned above, Matthew Desmond won a MacArthur Genius Award for his 2016 Book, Evicted. Desmond follows the lives of low income people in Milwaukee who are evicted from their homes. His ethnography tells the story of these families to illustrate the devastating effects of eviction and how laws around eviction protect those with more power and money instead of those who are most vulnerable. Reforming eviction laws and policy would help some of the most vulnerable low income Americans who are struggling even harder to survive because of these policies.
SOCL 222 is a course that is entirely devoted to poverty and welfare.
If you found our lessons about poverty interesting, consider SOCL 222!
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