POVERTY IN THE UNITED STATES
Poverty
Poverty is a major concern in America. People have been battling the issue of poverty for years, decades, and/or centuries.
The new colonial America started by moderate or poor means. The English practice, as authorized by Parliament and the
transportation laws, of shipping to America thousands of rogues, convicts, political, prisoners, beggars, vagrants, orphans, the
unemployed, and other undesirables hardly helped. American life was severe, filled with hardship or deprivation, many were
forced to live in poverty (Trattner, 1999). In the United States we tend to attribute poverty to individual flaws such as laziness,
intemperance, or inability to defer gratification. This attitude to "blame the victim" is behind many of the nation's attitudes and
interventions (Barusch, 2012). For those of us who have not experienced poverty do not even think about it until we meet
someone who is dealing with it. We feel bad for the person and wondered what could we do for that person. Many people help
less fortunate out during the holidays to ensure that they have enough food on the table and presents for their children. Now with
the current economy, those that were doing fine may now be facing poverty themselves; lost their job(s), home in foreclosure,
living with relatives or out of their cars. As a fellow American, neighbor, family member, what can we do to help prevent poverty
from occurring? How can we help those in need? Do we look to the government to help, our neighborhood churches, nonprofit
organizations, ourselves, who do we turn to for help? These are tough questions to address and are a matter of opinion.
We will commence on a journey discovering how poverty affects the America people, the changes poverty has gone through,
demonstrate policies in place to alleviate poverty, compare the United States to other countries, and predict future trends of
poverty. Hope you enjoy this journey.
The new colonial America started by moderate or poor means. The English practice, as authorized by Parliament and the
transportation laws, of shipping to America thousands of rogues, convicts, political, prisoners, beggars, vagrants, orphans, the
unemployed, and other undesirables hardly helped. American life was severe, filled with hardship or deprivation, many were
forced to live in poverty (Trattner, 1999). In the United States we tend to attribute poverty to individual flaws such as laziness,
intemperance, or inability to defer gratification. This attitude to "blame the victim" is behind many of the nation's attitudes and
interventions (Barusch, 2012). For those of us who have not experienced poverty do not even think about it until we meet
someone who is dealing with it. We feel bad for the person and wondered what could we do for that person. Many people help
less fortunate out during the holidays to ensure that they have enough food on the table and presents for their children. Now with
the current economy, those that were doing fine may now be facing poverty themselves; lost their job(s), home in foreclosure,
living with relatives or out of their cars. As a fellow American, neighbor, family member, what can we do to help prevent poverty
from occurring? How can we help those in need? Do we look to the government to help, our neighborhood churches, nonprofit
organizations, ourselves, who do we turn to for help? These are tough questions to address and are a matter of opinion.
We will commence on a journey discovering how poverty affects the America people, the changes poverty has gone through,
demonstrate policies in place to alleviate poverty, compare the United States to other countries, and predict future trends of
poverty. Hope you enjoy this journey.