1. Have you or a member of your immediate family
been laid-of f from work during the past year?
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2.  Poverty can be defined as a condition of
deprivation due to economic
circumstances that is severe enough that
the individual in this condition cannot
live with dignity in his or her society.
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3.  During a recession, poverty rates may be
higher. A recession is a period of economic
decline lasting half a year or more.
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4.  The administration of Lyndon
Johnson established a wide
range of anti-poverty
programs in the 1960s.
 These included programs for
education, job training and
placement, housing, all as a
part of the “War on Poverty.”
 Within just a few years, many
of these programs, and the
whole ideology behind them,
had come under attack.
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5. At the core of the debate about
pover ty in America is the
question of whether pover ty is
the cause of social ills such as
crime, poor educational
outcomes, divorce, and so on,
or whether it is their result.
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6.  Almost 60 million people are in the working-poor or underclass
 Geography-poor cluster in the south, living in rural areas
 Race/ethnicity-11% of white Americans, 26% of African Americans and
Latinos
 Education-high school dropouts have highest rates.
 Sociologists have coined the term “feminization of poverty”-the trend by
which women represent an increasing share of the poor” (head 53% of
poor families). Single-mothers are the most at-risk and divorce raises the
chances significantly.
 Children are more likely to live in poverty than adults or elderly. 1 in 6
white children and 1 in 3 African American and Latino children. 14
million children live in poverty
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7.  “The big question, 10 years later, is
whether things have improved or
worsened for those in the bottom third
of the income distribution, the people
who clean hotel rooms, work in
warehouses, wash dishes in
restaurants, care for the very young
and very old, and keep the shelves
stocked in our stores. The short answer
is that things have gotten much worse,
especially since the economic
downturn that began in 2008.”
~Barbara Ehrenreich
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=gDgFiW2xtf0 7

8.  Per verse incentives are reward structures that lead
to suboptimal outcomes by stimulating
counterproductive behavior. For example, some argue
that welfare encourages people not to work.
 Unintended consequences are results of a policy
that were not fully anticipated at the time the policy
was implemented, particularly outcomes that are
counter to the intentions of the policymakers.
 Heritage Foundation video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCoTo7umZZo
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9.  The culture of pover ty theor y argues
that poor people adopt certain practices,
which differ from those of middle-class,
“mainstream” society, in order to adapt and
survive in difficult economic circumstances
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GO5b_FwR5HU&feature=related
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10.  Check cashers:
 Charge high fees— up to 5
percent of the check amount for
example it would cost you
12.50 to cash a $250 check;
and usually it costs $3 for a
money order. Average fees
for users are more than
$800 a year!
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11.  Pay day loans are usually made to people who are desperate, need money
right away, and plan to pay it back with their next paycheck.
 Lenders usually offer amounts up to $500 for short periods of time such as
one to four weeks.
 Loan fees range between $15 and $70 , depending on the loan
amount. If you don’t pay off the loan within the agreed amount of time, the
lender renews the loan and adds on late fees. Over 90% of payday
borrowers end up paying more than the initial fees. The Center for
Responsible Lending found that the average payday borrower ends up
paying over $700 for a $325 loan!
 Also, payday loans aren't considered real loans , so no matter when
you pay them off, they don't help you build a credit history. Without a credit
history it is difficult to get a loan from a bank, get a credit card, or buy a car.
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12.  The average rent-to-own customer
spent $1,200 in 2009. That
means that typical customer,
because she doesn’t have a
credit card, paid an extra
$700 above and beyond the
normal cost of an item.
 But ours is a country where so many
middle-class people proved willing to
mortgage the future for a new
bathroom or a large flat-screen TV.
 The point is that for the
security guard making
$25,000 a year or the home
health aide making $20,000,
they’re typically paying two
and a half times as much for
that same item. 12

13.  For all those scraping by on less than $20,000 a year
—the assistant manager at a fast-food restaurant, say,
or a Wal-Mart associate or a home-health-care worker
—that works out to annual poverty tax of at least 10
percent.
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14. “The people peddling poverty products have figured out the
there is a strain of Americans who are the financial
equivalent of drug addicts. They will pay any price, fee, or
interest rate as long as they can get an immediate fix. They
don't care about tomorrow. They just want money today.”
Gary Rivlin ~ Broke USA
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15.  There are credit card companies catering to those
with a credit score below 600—but those people will
pay dearly for the privilege of carrying that plastic in
their pocket. For instance, there’s the First Premier
credit card, which charges both an annual fee ($45)
and a $6.50 monthly fee for a card carr ying an
APR of 49.9 percent on carried balances.
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16.  More typically, the working poor carry a prepaid
debit card. That of ten entails an initial
activation fee of up to $30 and also a fee
of between $10 and $20 that first time to
put money on the card. Direct deposit is
typically free but otherwise you pay to load money
on a card just as you pay each time you withdraw
cash at an ATM. Many prepaid debit cards charge a
monthly fee of between $3 and $10, yet they still
charge a few dollars extra if a customer wants a
monthly statement—and they charge for customer-
service calls and balance inquiries.
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17.  Those with lousy credit also pay more for a car loan
—much more. These days those with good credit can
get a car loan carrying an annual interest rate of
around 5 percent. The subprime customer,
though, is hit with rates four or five times
that amount, paying interest rates of 18 or
20 or 25 percent.
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18.  Auto insurance is also more expensive if you live in a
lower-income community, according to a 2007 study
by the Brookings Institution.
At least with a car you can shop at the better
supermarkets and discount stores like Walmart.
Otherwise, you’re hauling groceries on a bus, paying
cab fare, or paying extra at the corner grocer that
charges $3.99 for the gallon of milk you can get for
$2.99 at Walmart.
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19.  While it may be true that reliance on welfare
generates a sense of helplessness and
dependency in some people, there are also
structural reasons why it can be difficult to
transition from welfare to work.
PERVERSE INCENTIVES:
Rising benefits make not working attractive.
Makes marriage unattractive.
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20.  Sociologist William Julius Wilson turned the focus
from welfare to factors such as
deindustrialization, globalization,
suburbanization, and discrimination as causes of
urban poverty.
 In the past 20 to 30 years, policies to combat
poverty have focused on encouraging work and
offering benefits that directly serve children.
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21.  In her book What Money Can’t Buy, sociologist
Susan Mayer writes that she found very little
evidence to support the widely held belief that
parental income has a significant effect on
children’s outcomes.
 What do you think?
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22.  In The Bell Curve, Charles Murray and Richard
Hernstein argued that it’s not poverty or
education or parenting that ultimately has the
most impact on children’s outcomes, but simply
genes.
 What do you think? https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=ZCoTo7umZZo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-
S9Qv29fOLY&feature=related
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23.  James Rosenbaum’s study of the Gautreaux Assisted Living
Program in Chicago and the Moving to Opportunity (MTO)
study began in 1994.
 designed to see if moving to less impoverished
communities might affect quality of life.
 MTO study in particular seemed to show that living in a
quieter, less stressful environment did have very positive
effects on children
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24.  Absolute poverty is the point at which a
household’s income falls below the necessary
level to purchase food to physically sustain its
members.
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25.  The official poverty line in the United States is
calculated using a formula developed in the 1960s
by Mollie Orshansky.
 estimates food costs for minimum food requirements to
determine whether a family can “afford” to survive
 can be problematic, as the cost of food has decreased
but the cost of living (rent, utilities, etc.) have increased
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26.  Relative poverty is a measurement of poverty
based on a percentage of the median income in a
given location.
 The United States has a much broader range of
inequality (our rich are much richer than our poor)
than any other developed nation in the world, as
well as higher poverty rates (a larger percentage
of the population is below the poverty line).
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