Poverty & Prejudice: Debunking the Common Poverty Myths

Working hard and barely gettin' by, that's the American way. Working less and gettin' filthy rich, that's the American Lie. --Emerald A. Behrens

The rich just keep getting richer. So quotes the Forbes article by Kerry A. Dolan and Luisa Kroll in Inside The 2014 Forbes 400: Facts And Figures About America's Wealthiest, after a time of deep recession in modern American history. According to that same article, those rich people saw an increase of their wealth rise $270 billion from 2013 to 2014. 

According to the article, Wealth and Inequality written by Sarah Glazer (CQ Researcher), 10 percent of America's wealthiest controlled half of the nation's income in 2012, with foreign tax havens that shelter trillions of dollars. 

These new statistics have been compared to the Gilded Age, a time of unprecedented prosperity and great inequality in America. It also raises questions on whether this unanticipated wealth increase comes at the expense of the disappearing middle-class and how it will ripple out to the overall financial situation and joblessness problem in the nation. 

As economists and social activists struggle to defend or raise awareness about this issue, what's interesting to note is how the rich perceive themselves in their new lofty height of elite supremacy in America. 

Many of those in their gilded, economically advantaged plutocracy see themselves as self-righteous individuals whose family values, upbringing and moral character have helped them realize the American Dream. These people have the justification of their immense wealth as proof of their (some would call it god-given) placement in the societal stratosphere. This elite standing allows them to look down upon the poor, the non-workers, the dependents of society, and reprimand them for their lazy, unskilled and nonproductive ways.  

Surely the poor deserve such reprimanding since they are neither productive, as perceived by their lack of wealth, or motivated as perceived by their dependency? 

Unfortunately, much to the chagrin of the extremely wealthy these outwardly depreciating views are not only negative and full of bigotry, they're also incorrect. 

It is a sad truth that poverty has been around in America since the country was founded yet it's surprising that in this day and age of technological advances and previously unheard of wealth, where trillions of dollars circulate through our economy, there's still the issue of poverty. 

As the economic crisis in 2008 and previous decades have shown, when the government suffers from lack of funds, those dependent on the government for their funds, suffer more and oftentimes these security buffers are not enough to alleviate the threat of poverty. 

Sasha Abramsky's book, The American Way of Poverty: How the Other Half Still Lives, is a testimony from interviews of the many who suffer on the margins of society, too poor to be counted as below poverty level, some of whom are living in slums of urban cities and in rural colonias (encampments) without running water or electricity. 

It's proof that Michael Harrington's illumination of the issue of poverty in 1962 with the book, The Other America, hasn't changed the problem of poverty much.

Many in America still fall under the poverty line, despite having a job. Barbara Ehrenreich's book, Nickel and Dimed follows her own investigative journey behind the scenes of the working poor whose full-time jobs as housekeepers, waitresses, hospice workers and Wal-Mart employees, don't pay enough to keep them out of poverty. Eherenreich writes that most people are trapped in their low-wage jobs, unable to climb the ladder of success due to restrictions of location (such as not having a car, or picking a job close to home). Employees have limited options and have little control over the kinds of jobs they get. One major factor in these jobs which makes a worker so helpless is the loss of self-respect and civil rights, as Ehrenreich cites her experience with purse searching bosses, drug testing, and degrading employment personality tests that asks the employee if they "find it hard to stop moods of self-pity". (59) It is a vicious cycle where low-wage workers suffer more than economic hardship, they suffer social stigma too. It is a "culture of extreme inequality" where the corporate decision makers and bosses look down upon their workers. In the chapter, Evaluation, Ehrenreich points out, "For reasons that have more to do with class--and often racial--prejudice than with actual experience, they tend to fear and distrust the category of people from which they recruit their workers." (212)

These full-time low-wage workers who are not by any means lazy or unskilled are what some would call, the deserving poor, those who deserve an extra hand up through government incentives, tax breaks, or an extension of welfare benefits. As Michael B. Katz describes in his book, The Undeserving Poor: America's Enduring Confrontation With Poverty, "Today they are most often referred to as the working poor and in recent years they have elicited sympathy and support from public programs." (3)

However, there are those considered the undeserving poor, those who supposedly bring poverty unto themselves. These people are viewed as: lazy, possessing questionable morals, having inadequate parental backgrounds: born of single-mothers, non-married or divorced parents, unskilled, or mentally unfit for society. 

There has been much talk from conservative and liberal groups on how to deal with these so-called undeserving poor but not many bi-partisan solutions have resulted. Many reforms in the past seeking to eradicate poverty were put in place during Lyndon B. Johnson's time with the War on Poverty crusade that was later criticized by conservatives. In order to put these plans in place it was important to count how many people needed it and how much they needed. Thus a system of counting a poverty level had to be made. 

According to the article Framing the Poor by Max Rose and Frank R. Baumgartner, poverty has historically been measured by income. In 1961, the poverty line was established by multiplying by three the minimum income required for a basic diet. Inflation, changing incomes and other factors have altered this formula, though current formulas are more accurate. (33)

The chart study of the poverty gap used in Framing the Poor, shows that the gap has increased since the 1970's, more than twice since the 1960's in fact. In the authors' words, "The poor have gotten poorer." (35)

With so many more government programs in place to help the poor now, the question of why poverty still exists is a conundrum for major economists. Conservatives (and their rich counter-parts) are eager to answer that global economies have created more competition in job markets along with higher technological careers that require more than a high-school diploma to apply, thus creating an uneven employment field for many Americans. Conservatives are also quick to point out that the government has wasted "Trillions" of dollars in welfare programs designed, as they say, to help the "welfare queens" and "cheaters" of the system. 

Robert Rector along with William Lauber, of the conservative Heritage Foundation, wrote a disparaging account of how the government wastes "Trillions" of U.S. taxpayer dollars in, America's Failed $5.4 Trillion War on Poverty. (Katz 198)

Rector, along with many conservatives, cite the collapse of the marriage culture, the breakdown of the family and other social ills, as contributing to the problem of poverty. Rector was a major player in the 1996 federal welfare reform legislation which required those on welfare to work in order to get their benefits. Another popular target on the cause of poverty in America, as cited by Rector's profile on the Heritage Foundation website, is immigration. 

What the Heritage Foundation neglects to mention (as with many other conservatives) is the racial profiling, single-mother blaming and overall bigotry that colors their rhetoric when it comes to their reform measures.

The biggest shame in America in regard to social inequality has been the issue of race and its connection to poverty. With the history of slavery, indentured servitude of women in the early American colonies and harsh treatment of Native Americans, this nation of freedom and liberty for all has hardly lived up to its constitutional promise. Race still plays the biggest role in regard to poverty and its stereotypes in connection to welfare have yet to wear off.

Black welfare queens. Promiscuous women with many children. Single-mothers. Fathers likely in jail or on the street selling drugs. These are all the conceptions of those on the welfare system, particularly people of color. It's no coincidence these ideas have been fostered and enforced by the white elite. 

According to Michael B. Katz' chapter, Poverty and the Politics of Liberation, Social Darwinism beginning in the late 1800's became the scientific argument in favor of good breeding stock, as described later in eugenics (29-38), which was the leading vogue of social politics concerning the poor in the 1900's. As the poor, namely immigrants and those of foreign blood were seen as inferior, blacks fit this new role as the undesired race. Under the guise of birth control (and many other supposed illnesses such as hysteria), sterilizations were performed for women deemed mentally ill and unfit to have children. 

Many of these were most likely involuntary and Katz writes of one 1920's court case in Virginia where the sterilization order on a woman was challenged but overturned, upholding the statute that allowed sterilization "within the police power of the state... and that it did not constitute cruel or unusual punishment." (37) During World War II, with the knowledge that the German Nazi's supported eugenics to further their agenda of racial superiority, the popularity of eugenics waned. However, involuntary sterilization would remain in America well into the post-world war era, much to the horror of civil rights proponents. 

Involuntary sterilization of Black women was a rude awakening to the existing racial hatred that remained after Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the civil rights movement. In September 1973, Triple Jeopardy, a magazine published by the Third World Women's Alliance (TWWA) in the 1970's, focused on the plight of black women in the U.S. who were being involuntarily sterilized, based on the legacy of eugenics. (Katz 91)

According to Dorothy Roberts Killing the Black Body, 5,000 black women during the 1930's and 1940's were sterilized under the diagnosis of being mentally deficient in states that still recognized eugenics in their laws. In 1980, cites Roberts, 700,000 sterilizations took place under the form of birth control. She states, "It was a common belief among Blacks in the South that Black women were routinely sterilized without their informed consent and for no valid reasons." Government reimbursement to surgeons under Medicaid acted as financial incentives to perform such unnecessary surgeries, even though these had a "greater risk of killing the patient". (Katz 91-92)

Little has changed since then regarding the belief that Black women are the major recipients of welfare and that they have too many children, as conservatives are always pointing out as the epidemic of single-motherhood and the curse of dysfunctional families (mainly blacks and immigrants) are to blame for America's poverty crisis. 

It's largely ignored by the conservative rich finger pointers that many welfare, single-mothers are white, particularly those in the mid-west, south, and Appalachia region. 

Location also defines a person's poverty level, from upbringing to schooling and employment, where you live determines how poor you are. In Stephen J. Scanlan's paper, "Mined" for Its Citizens? Poverty, Opportunity Structure, and Appalachian Soldier Deaths in the Iraq War, Scanlan uses a spatial inequality framework on poverty and connects it to research on the military and society. Drawing sources from websites that lists the casualties of the Iraq War, Scanlan gathered information about the soldiers' hometown and found a disproportionate number of them from Appalachia, noting also the employment opportunities there and how it may have affected military recruitment. 

Some of the most startling findings include facts that, "The hometowns of Appalachian soldiers dying in Iraq have poverty rates nearly 30 percent higher than the rest of the country." (55) As a poor region, employment would be lower, as well as educational opportunity. 

Most people looking for better conditions would have to move to another area (if they could afford to do so), or look for existing work that may not pay a living wage. In a region such as Appalachia, where mining and manufacturing may be the only jobs available, there is limited opportunity for anything else and these jobs are considered high-risk when it comes to health and livelihood for families. 

Also, according to Scanlan, these jobs have not increased wages or reduced unemployment or poverty. Retails jobs that are available, don't pay enough and are not prevalent enough for the citizenry to escape the poverty of the area. As a result, the citizens are being "mined" by the military and with limited opportunity for employment or education, a career in the Army, Marines or Navy is seen as an attractive alternative to poverty, especially with promises of GI benefits including a paid ticket to college. However, many of these recruits never live to see these promised benefits and as proven by the results, a disproportionate number have died overseas, as stated, "Appalachia has a higher rate of soldier deaths from the Iraq War than the United States as a whole...". (56)

Education as a way out of poverty and as a path to employment is the most sought after goal. For those who can afford it, a degree is a ticket to higher pay and better employment. For those who can't afford it, there is financial aid and Affirmative Action, which remains disputed. But what if getting an education is not the ticket to better employment? What happens when education fails in its goal for employment?

Barbara Ehrenreich visits this new hard truth in uncertain economic times (before the downturn of 2008), to see what happens to people who have Master's Degrees and still can't find a job in her second book dealing with poverty and inequality, Bait and Switch The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream. 

Ehrenreich puts herself in the middle of a white-collar job search, along with those who have finished college, started families, saved for retirement and have done everything right, except for being fired. For these people who've never been on welfare, never exhibited "laziness" and have done an "above and beyond" job, it's a harsh reality of economic uncertainty when the job you've sacrificed your life for betrays you. In the Conclusion, Ehrenreich states that many CEO's profited from firing their employees. "...by eliminating other people's jobs, top management can raise its own income." (224) In the end, these former employees have to start all over and it's a tough climb back to the top again, some never make it but must content themselves with low-wage jobs that may not be temporary. Ehrenreich states this new trend in her chapter, Downward Mobility, where many have found "survival jobs" and although no longer unemployed, their new job has no chance of upward mobility. "...in a society where worth is measured entirely by income and position, downward mobility carries a sense of failure, rejection and shame."(210) For those who've spent over twenty years in a white-collar job, entering the new job market as an "older person" brings shocking revelations of discrimination and existing ageism in our society. 

As Ehrenreich finds out, she can't even find a job. After going through job coaches, job fairs, job make-overs, job seminars and even Christian job searches, it's surprising that a person with a Ph.D. and background in writing can't land a descent employment spot. 

For those recent graduates entering the job field, competition is high and most rural towns where these students hail from suffer the condition of "brain drain" (Scanlan 46), where higher-employment jobs in other cities or even other states, lure those with higher-education to other locations. 

Those who do graduate with higher-education degrees find themselves entrenched in student loans, with thousands of dollars in debt increased with any medical bills and previous debt they suffer from. Even finding a full-time job after graduation is a herculean task and many stick with part-time jobs that can't pay off their debt. 

This reality goes against rich conservatives who say all you need is a good education and a good job to reach the middle class and if you're lucky reach the very wealthy top. Ron Haskins, former White House advisor to Republican President George W. Bush, published his book Creating an Opportunity Society (2009) with Isabel Sawhill, which was covered by Sarah Glazer who wrote in the CQ Researcher that, "Haskins stresses the role of personal responsibility. In 2009, he analyzed census data to see how adult Americans were doing if they followed three norms of modern society: finish high school, get a full-time job, and wait until age 21 to get married before having children. Young adults who followed all three had only a 2 percent chance of winding up in poverty and a 74 percent chance of reaching the middle class, he found." (Glazer 344)

Of which young adults who followed this formula isn't clearly stated, nor are the statistics he uses to back this claim up. It's hard to know how Haskins analyzed the census data to find his claim out but there isn't always a right way to analyze data as economists stills struggle with how to calculate poverty and there are many ways of reading statistics. 

In Kip Hagopian and Lee E. Ohanian's paper The Mismeasure of Inequality, the authors find other studies reporting about income inequality misleading and their paper seeks to correct these issues using the Gini coefficient (also Gini index). They state the Gini coefficient is the most common methodology used in measuring income inequality, where "The figure of merit for the Gini coefficient for income inequality ranges from zero to I.0, where zero represents total equality (all persons have identical incomes) and I.0 represents total inequality (one person has all of the income)." (4) The authors compare the Gini coefficient to other European nations and contest that better measures of living standards are not income, but consumption. 

Although, according to Julie A. Litchfield's article, "Inequality: Methods and Tools." (1999) published on the World Bank website, whose mission is to end extreme poverty and promote shared prosperity, the Gini coefficient is the most commonly used measure of inequality but it varies when the distribution varies. The Poverty Analysis page, Measuring Inequality, states, "If a society is most concerned about the share of income of the people at the bottom, a better indicator may be a direct measure... ." (http://go.worldbank.org/3SLYUTVY00) The Gini coefficient has been criticized by some as misleading and too easy to oversimplify. 

It is curious that Hagopian and Ohanian include "income from underground economy" as part of the lower-income household. It does not specify what kind of underground economy provides an income along with bartering. 

Although the authors quote that "46 million Americans live below the official federal poverty line" they stress that they have "a somewhat higher standard of living than is commonly believed", quoting another report from a 2009 American Housing Survey showing that poor households: own a home, have air conditioning, a color TV, a refrigerator, stove and oven, a car or truck, microwave oven, DVD or VCR, satellite connection and dishwasher. (11)

The authors stress they are not making light of the poor but that poor by their definition needs to be redefined. Though they state that there isn't a clear consensus among economists about why inequality in the U.S. is higher than other industrialized countries, they present their own findings about what makes people poor and incomes suffer. "Differences in individual ability and preference (defined as capacity and desire to earn), age, globalization... [and] the substantial influx of low-skilled, low-income immigration into the U.S. workforce over the past 30 years." (12-13) While they argue that what makes incomes greater is, greater economic freedom, lower aggregate taxes, less stringent regulation, entrepreneurship, and technology.

Since Kip Hagopian and Lee E. Ohanian are from the conservative right (citing sources from the Heritage Foundation and where Ohanian is a senior fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution), they support anti-tax measures against the rich, saying that they disagree that public policy should address the issue of inequality through income distribution. The usual argument is that billionaires such as Sam Walton (Wal-Mart) and others have contributed much to the economy and growth of America. They claim that enacting policies based on "value judgements" is counterproductive and that even a small increase in taxes ("taxes on capital income") would bring down labor productivity, wages and living standards. Instead of trying to tax the rich, the authors claim, it is more important to fix a broken K-12 education system. (18-19)

It is interesting to note in the paper how many times the argument shifts from taxes to educational values which are seen to be broken and how immigrants and those who are unskilled and have no "desire to earn" are to blame for income disparity. The rich are not to blame, for in a Capitalist society, earning a billion dollars a year is a sign of success, not a crime. Yet it's curious to see how reluctant the rich are to share their earnings, having contempt for those who don't make nearly enough as they do, and how they support many reports and studies that show how the poor aren't really that poor. They put much money into conservative think-tanks, private schools and Republican parties that share they same "family values" and anti-government spending "fiscal conservative" ideas they do, raising an alarm to any hint of tax increase or unfriendly business environments with government regulations and oversight. If being rich isn't a crime in this country, why are the rich people so reluctant to share the wealth or have any government oversight? Perhaps it is because the means by which the rich get rich, isn't all that family value friendly after all.

Forbes magazine article, John Paulson Pays A High Price For His Adventure in South African Gold, written in 2014 by Tim Treadgold, shows the ugly side of Capitalism in America and those that profit from the suffering of others. Paulson, a billionaire fund manager of Paulson & Co. is described by Treadgold as, "a man who played the sub-prime crash of 2007 to perfection, making billions of dollars for himself and clients of his fund-management business, Paulson & Co." (Forbes.com)

While many lost their homes and were thrown into poverty, people like Paulson made more money, billions of dollars, at the poorer people's expense. Banks were given government bail-outs and a hidden world of corruption was unveiled within banks, where bank employees were given commissions for every loan they signed a customer onto, whether or not that customer could afford to pay off that loan. Many people years later are still suffering from the effects of that horrible scandal, which happened because government oversight was lifted and banks were given free reign over the loans they controlled. 

But Paulson's scandal doesn't end there as Treadgold goes on to describe how the billionaire botched his gold investment in South Africa, a region of destitute people, where horrendous working conditions exist alongside the history of apartheid. The company which Paulson has a stake in, AngloGold Ashanti, was accused of human rights violations in the scope of $2.1 billion dollars by Council on Ethics, The Government Pension Fund Global, in a report to the Ministry of Finance in June 2012, "due to an unacceptable risk that the company’s operations may cause severe environmental damage and contributes to serious or systematic human rights violations." (http://www.regjeringen.no) 

The Council on Ethics was established by Royal Decree [Norway] 19 November 2004 and provides an evaluation of whether investments in specified companies are inconsistent with the ethical guidelines. It is also of particular note that this council has strict measures of ethical responsibility and has a List of Excluded Companies that are excluded from the Government Pension Fund's investment universe. Companies that "violate fundamental humanitarian principles", conduct "sales of weapons and military equipment to Burma", "Manufacture tobacco" and conduct "Behavior that is considered to involve contributing to grossly unethical conduct" are listed. Under that last section, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (31 May 2006) is listed along with companies committing malfeasance: Boeing Co. (Production of nuclear weapons), Phillip Morris Cr AS., and Phillip Morris International Inc. (Production of tobacco). 

Such ethical violations are not always present with multi-billion dollar companies, their CEO's and their investors but it's a problem that the country of Norway has seen fit to address and raises the question of whether the United States of America should also have a list of companies that violate human rights and ethical standards, and whether more regulation is necessary.

Those that push for more regulation argue that companies need to be responsible for the harm they do and mitigate the damage, either with harsh fines, imprisonment of CEO's who knowingly commit these crimes or with a complete shutdown of the companies. For those whose interests rely on the corporate powers for profit, where corporate entities enjoy the same rights as an individual before the law, they argue that punishing the corporations goes against the American ideals of freedom, prosperity and Capitalism. 

However, in a country that values Capitalism, prosperity and freedom, it remains to be seen who gets to realize these ideals and who doesn't, namely the poor who are left out of the political process altogether. Those living on the margins can't even vote, because they posses neither a living residence, drivers license (mandatory to have in order to vote in some states), or means to vote by transportation or time off work. How can they be expected to change a system so throughly built against them?

As Katz notes in The Undeserving Poor, "poverty is, in part, a problem of power." (135) It is hard to feel empowered when you struggle to make ends meet, when you're working all hours of the day and night to provide for your family and are still not able feed them, when you've lost your home and have nowhere to go, when you're living on the streets and people look down upon you. Being poor is disempowering and it's hard for an individual or their family to feel as though they can make a difference when they've lost every form of security and support they had relied on.

Many public programs have been put in place as a security buffer for those less fortunate in hard times but many have been taken off the agenda due to budget cuts. 

James Larkin, who has a B.A. in Political Science from San Francisco State and an M.A. in Economics from Hayward Cal State, worked for the Food & Nutrition Service with the U.S. Department of Agriculture in the 1980's, retiring from his job in 2002. Larkin says, "There is a very definite need for programs." However, in tough times when the economy suffers, the funding for these programs drop. Larkin explains, "The resources a government expends is dependent on taxes to pay for programs. Those resources are funded through taxes. When income tax decreases, the government programs may face a decline in funding." He notes that income tax relies mostly on the middle class since rich people pay more but there are less of them to pay taxes. 

Previously, James Larkin worked in Contra Costa County's school lunch program in 1969, where he said a lot of kids met the criteria based on income which made them eligible for the program. Due to inflation, the income level criteria has changed today compared to 1969. When presented with the current poverty level of $23,000 a year (not quite $25,000) for a family of four (Abramsky, The Nation, 12) Larkin exclaimed, "Back then $25,000 a year was big bucks!". 

When confronted with the question of what causes poverty, Larkin offered that educational level, individual mindset, and mental or physical issues was what kept an individual from taking care of themselves or a household. 

The other question was if people chose to be poor to which Larkin answered, "I don't know of very many people who choose to be poor." He stated, "You're never going to erase poverty." With that in mind the question of who should provide for the poor becomes an altruistic endeavor. "Society has a moral obligation to provide for the poor, even with the knowledge that there will always be poor people."

This statement falls on deaf ears as society turns its back on the poor while the government and its publicly funded programs follow suit, in punitive measures against those less fortunate. 

In Sasha Abramsky's chapter The Wrong Side of the Tracks (135-136), during 2012, states were allowed to mandate men and women, claiming unemployment insurance while applying for jobs, to take a drug test in order to access their insurance benefits. Many families seeking to be considered for welfare must pass a series of applications, tests and forms proving by their income and tax level that they deserve help and must go through red-tape bureaucratic measures by city, county, state and federal assistance programs. 

Abramsky notes with sarcasm that banks rarely have to go through such red-tape in order to get their bailouts from the government, that people who rely on Medicare and Social Security are not required to piss in a cup, and that conservatives against welfare use much of the so-called Socialist handouts such as Veteran Administration benefits, Medicare and Social Security. 

Yes, there are people who cheat the system (just as the banks and billionaires cheated America) but denying help to the many because of a small number of unlawful individuals is both cruel and demeaning. This rhetoric of punishing the poor assumes that all poor people are vagrants looking for hand-outs, yet this is what is commonly heard on most conservative news talk shows, funded by the billionaires who own them, and even in common platform debates with Democrats and Republicans. The sad truth is, what the media says about the poor can affect government action. 

Framing the Poor by Max Rose and Frank R. Baumgartner, shows a correlation to how the media perceives poverty versus what the government does about it. Starting with the 1960's when the War on Poverty was put into action through 2008, when the economy took a drastic hit, Rose and Baumgartner follow newspaper stories, presenting statistical models concerning aspects of poverty, government action and spending and conclude that, "The portrayal of the poor as either deserving or lazy drives public policy." (22)

America's optimism and prosperity after World War II, drove the idea that hard work was all one needed to succeed and that all opportunities were available to those who applied themselves to task. Even women were included, as images of Rosie the Riveter brought a new image of can-do attitude for women who found a somewhat broader field of employment available then.

But poverty still loomed in the background of all this celebration with Michael Harrington's book, The Other America, which showed that millions of people suffered and were left out of the so-called optimism of the day. In those times, the poor were to be pitied, to be brought up from their lowly level to an acceptable living standard. They were seen as unwilling victims, not participants in their own misery but as sufferers from external conditions of which they had no control over. Public sympathy overflowed then and the government responded with the War on Poverty. 

Turbulent times however changed this mindset, along with the Vietnam War and thousands of returning wounded veterans, to a more conservative and discriminating view of poor people. The poor became the undeserving lot, those who for too long drained the prosperous economy of America, and became the unwanted population with their breeding and propagation of loose morals and kin. Terms such as, "lazy", "dysfunctional", "dependent" and the ever-popular "welfare queen" were the new descriptions of the poor. The poor became a separate race (in more ways than one with regard to racial discrimination) and were not worthy of the middle-class America that was seen as the ultimate picture of conformity with the suburban house, family wagon filled with 2.5 children and dog. Government views followed suit and began to limit assistance and proceeded to re-vamp former welfare measures, such as the welfare reform of 1996. 

The stereotypes of poverty and its causes are still misrepresented today in the media but a surprising group of educated people lending their own conclusions as to what causes poverty has raised the question of whether poverty is in our genes. As Katz points out "neuroscience and epigenetics have fostered the emergence of a new version of poverty as a result of individual biology." (Katz 269)  

For Kids, Self-Control Factors Into Future Success (NPR), explains a study showing that self-control in childhood can make the difference between getting a good job or going to jail in adulthood. Nancy Shute, host of Morning Edition, interviewed Professor Terrie Moffitt of Psychology and Neuroscience at Duke University, who studied 1,000 young people since birth, and published her study of childhood self-control in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 

The transcript shows the dialogue between the host and interviewee.

SHUTE: Social scientists say three things matter for success in life: I.Q. family socio-economic status, and self-control. Only one of those things is easy to change, and it's self-control.

Katz debunked the myth that I.Q. matters, noting that race is often a comparison to such tests, including skewed scientific statistics easily manipulated by those with conservative agendas. (Katz 35)

SHUTE: But the children who struggled with self-control had problems as young adults. 

Prof. MOFFITT: We found that they were more likely to have a criminal conviction record.

SHUTE: They were also more likely to be poor or to be single parents.

Prof. MOFFITT: And finally, we found that the children with low self-control had great difficulty in their 30s with financial planning. 

SHUTE: That means they were more likely to be in debt, have bad credit or have declared [sic] bankruptcy.

Moffitt and Shute's discussion of these problems: single-motherhood, bad financial planning, drug-use, criminal convictions and poverty, as a result of childhood self-control issues puts too much blame on the child and on the parent who must oversee their child's actions to make sure they don't end up a single-mother, on drugs, who spends too much and as a result, becomes poor and in jail. The correlation between a child's self-control and their future adult decision making skills seems a bit contrived, as if a child's destiny were pre-ordained by the choices they made at four-years-old. 

What isn't discussed in the interview is how Professor Moffitt reaches her conclusion through a supposed thirty-year-study of these children. But similar studies have been conducted with very little changes in the result and also very little proof that what a child does at four-years-old can affect their living situation at thirty-years-old. 

The study, Self-Control And Impulsivity In Children: Multiple Behavioral Measures (Forzano, L. B., et al.), meant to measure impulsivity, self-control and gratification delay in children with a barrage of tests concerning food, is mainly a self-serving test showing no conclusive evidence that the behavior shown by the children at the time leads to bad behavior later in adult life or that these children suffered from the listed consequence of impulsivity such as: attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD; American Psychiatric Association, 1994), substance abuse, borderline personality disorder and impulse-control disorders such as gambling. 

In a previous test by Reynolds and Stark in 1986, 132 children in grades 4-6 were "divided into two groups based on teacher referrals (the referred children were said to lack self-control and behave impulsively)." (Forzano, L. B., et al. 427) This already sets the test up with children perceived as having impulse control problems, rather than doing a blind study which would be more fair. Basically the test consists of an adult presenting a marshmallow to a kid, telling them if they wait a number of minutes and not eat the marshmallow while the adult is gone, they'll get more marshmallows later. A similar test was done with non-humans. Gender, age and time-wait correlation were compared but again, no conclusive results could be made to predict impulsivity in these children or that it would lead to crime, only the conclusion that self-control is greatest in humans, lower in rats, and lowest in pigeons. Given more options and actual control children could have more self-control. It ends with the phrase, "Again, each of these explanations warrants further research." (442)

If it sounds like a re-hash of the eugenics myth, it probably is. 

Trying to predict the occurrence of crime committing individuals among children is a strangely Orwellian task and one that hints of the Nazi experiments during WWII when they tried to prove scientifically that Jews were inferior to Germans (Katz 38). Having a pre-ordained prescription for failure and one that is a precursor to poverty is unsettling in the scientific realm which should put more use of its monies to solving the problem of real poverty in America. 

What makes a person commit crime is a complicated question, often times though it's tied to poverty and the circumstance by which they live. Looking at the prison systems in this country can tell you a lot about poverty. There are more prisons in this country than colleges or universities. 

Sasha Abramsky writes that, "In fact, in most states, it costs about as much money to keep someone in prison for one year as it would cost to send that person to an Ivy League university." (241) 

The overcrowding situation in the many prisons we have leads to non-violent incarcerated individuals being let out onto the street when there's no more room for them. 

According to Abramsky, America has quintupled its incarcerated population since the early 1970's... and [sic] houses far more nonviolent inmates than any other country on earth... ." (241)

Those former prisoners are left with no job, no housing and no means of changing the situation, other than going to a shelter or living on the street. Many homeless are former incarcerated people who have found it hard to re-enter the society that put them behind bars. 

Abramsky quotes the 2012 Department of Justice finding that, "a spell behind bars can reduce a person's future earnings by 40 percent." (241)

Also, a disproportionate number of incarcerated people are black and hispanic/latino people which puts an added disadvantage on those looking for work based on discrimination and installs a deep sense of mistrust in those former prisoners who know the government system is out to get them, which makes it harder for them to ask for assistance from welfare or other programs. 

Discrimination against black and hispanic/latino people is a sad factor of today's poverty, as quoted by Sasha Abramsky in The Nation, "a disproportionate share of the nation’s poor are African-American and Latino. More than a quarter of blacks and Latinos live below the government-defined poverty line (about $11,000 per year for an individual, $23,000 for a family of four), compared with 12 percent of Asian-Americans and slightly less than 10 percent of whites." (12)

These injustices have sparked the uprising of the 99% also known as The Occupy Wall Street protesters, who are still protesting inequality in both income and prejudice in America's streets. But as the media spin has so often shown, what's out of sight is out of mind for most policy makers who are controlling the shots and the conversation has drifted to other subjects, mainly that of the ongoing wars overseas. 

With today's limited economy, marginal job-improvement number and engrossment in the many wars overseas, it remains to be seen how much an issue (or priority) poverty is in the current state of affairs. 

President Obama's Address to the United Nations General Assembly at the United Nations General Assembly Hall in New York City, on September 24th, 2014, stated: 

America is committed to a development agenda that eradicates extreme poverty by 2030. We will do our part to help people feed themselves, power their economies, and care for their sick. If the world acts together, we can make sure that all of our children enjoy lives of opportunity and dignity.

It's a promising speech and one that holds a lot of optimism for the future but like all public statements, it's a vague and limited framework for government action. If America, the country of greatest prosperity and opportunity in the world, cannot provide for its own citizens in regard to basic living standards of food, shelter and security, how can our country be an example of prosperity and policy to others? 

There's still a long way to go before the problems of poverty can be solved but the prejudice against poor people which remains today is a sad reminder of how little we've come to realizing the American Dream of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, for all our people. 

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Works Cited

Abramsky, Sasha. "The Other America 2012. (Cover Story)." Nation 294.20 (2012): 11-18. Academic Search Premier. Web. 13 Oct. 2014.

Abramsky, Sasha. The American Way of Poverty: How the Other Half Still Lives. New York: Nation, 2013. Print.

The Council on Ethics. Recommendation to exclude AngloGold Ashanti Limited from the investment universe of the Government Pension Fund Global. Oslo, Norway. 3-29. Web. 22. Oct. 2014.

Dolan, Kerry A., and Luisa Kroll. "Inside The 2014 Forbes 400: Facts And Figures About America's Wealthiest." Forbes. Forbes Magazine, 29 Sept. 2014. Web. 13 Oct. 2014.

Ehrenreich, Barbara. Nickel and Dimed. N.p.: Henry Holt, 2001. Print.

Ehrenreich, Barbara. Bait and Switch: The (futile) Pursuit of the American Dream. New York: Metropolitan, 2005. Print.

For Kids, Self-Control Factors into Future Success. Washington, D.C.: National Public Radio, 2011. ProQuest. Web. 14 Oct. 2014.

Forzano, L. B., et al. "Self-Control And Impulsivity In Children: Multiple Behavioral Measures." Psychological Record 61.3 (2011): 425-448. Academic Search Premier. Web. 14 Oct. 2014.

Glazer, Sarah. "Wealth and Inequality." CQ Researcher 18 Apr. 2014: 337-60. Web. 15 Oct. 2014.

Hagopian, Kip, and Lee E. Ohanian. "The Mismeasure Of Inequality." Policy Review 174 (2012): 3-19. Academic Search Premier. Web. 13 Oct. 2014.

Katz, Michael B. The Undeserving Poor: America's Enduring Confrontation with Poverty. Second ed. New York: Oxford UP, 2013. Print.

Larkin, James. Personal interview. 28. Oct. 2014. 

Litchfield, Julie A. "Inequality: Methods and Tools." (1999) The World Bank Group. Web. 22 Oct. 2014. .

"Remarks by President Obama in Address to the United Nations General Assembly." The White House. The White House, n.d. Web. 23 Oct. 2014. .

Rose, Max, and Frank R. Baumgartner. "Framing The Poor: Media Coverage And U.S. Poverty Policy, 1960-2008." Policy Studies Journal 41.1 (2013): 22-53. Academic Search Premier. Web. 13 Oct. 2014.

Scanlan, Stephen J. "Mined" For Its Citizens? Poverty, Opportunity Structure, And Appalachian Soldier Deaths In The Iraq War." Journal Of Appalachian Studies 20.1 (2014): 43-67. Academic Search Premier. Web. 13 Oct. 2014.

Treadgold, Tim. "John Paulson Pays A High Price For His Adventure in South African Gold." Forbes. Forbes Magazine, 16 Sept. 2014. Web. 22 Oct. 2014. .

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Author's Note

This was a school paper I did at Diablo Valley College for English. My topic was poverty and over the course of this assignment I learned a lot which enforced my belief that poverty in this country (USA is counted as one of the richest countries in the world), is morally, financially and inexcusably wrong.

Any errors in this writing are mine… except for the stupid formatting that isn’t my fault but rather the result of inept pasting method.