Understanding the plight of the poor

USA Today (Society for the Advancement of Education), July, 1995 by Benjamin Ola. Akande

Despite the stereotypes, they are not necessarily lazy and unwilling to work, or content to subsist on welfare.

POVERTY is a state we continue to treat as an abstract social issue that eventually will go away. The Federal government frequently has looked the other way. The old policies and many of the new proposals that are being paraded are unrealistic and fail to grasp the magnitude of the situation. The visible result of this non-action has been the growth of a new type of subculture in the world's richest nation--the working poor.

The glaring reality is that, by not doing enough to address the poverty issue, the U.S. is at risk of creating a permanent bifurcated society, one whose tensions and difficulties could narrow the scope of national aspirations and even limit some of the freedoms--economic, social, and political--we long have enjoyed. Nevertheless, there are viable economic and social alternative policies that could help improve the situation.

In spite of the largest peacetime economic explosion in history, poverty stands as the nation's most conspicuous failure. It has become the most pervasive socioeconomic problem in American society, transcending racial differences and geographical locations.

In America, the rich are truly rich and the poor are hopelessly poor. The lower class is growing at such an alarming rate that it threatens the U.S.'s economic survival.

The new Republican leadership's response to the plight of the poor in their Contract With America would prohibit children of unwed mothers under the age of 18 from obtaining public assistance for the remainder of their childhood as long as the mother remained unmarried. Moreover, it would prevent welfare recipients and their children from receiving benefits for a period exceeding five years. Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich has called for the institutionalization of low-income children. Major Federal welfare programs, including Aid to Families with Dependent Children and food stamps, are to be converted into block grants for states. It is expected that this will remove their entitlement status and allow states to cut off benefits when the money is used up. The missing point here is the human factor. What happens to the children and their mothers when the funds run out?

The U.S. Department of Labor has defined the poverty threshold as a family of four with an income of $12,000 or less. More than 30,000,000 Americans fall into this category-13.5% of the population. Single mothers constitute 37% of this group, 15% are people under 65 years of age, and 11% over 65. It is a racial mix composed primarily of whites, blacks, and Hispanics.

Any realistic assessment of politics and poverty would conclude that the poor are not well-represented in the corridors of power. Their voices are all too absent from debates on policy reform directed at improving their conditions. Some cynics are quick to claim that the poor are all minorities, prisoners of a ghetto pathology, denizens of a self-perpetuating culture marked by teenage pregnancy, single-parent households, chronic unemployment, crime, drug use, and long-term dependency on welfare. These stereotypical characterizations misrepresent the magnitude of the poverty issue and the people enmeshed in this economic condition. Minorities do not make up the greater percentage of those in poverty. The poor are not necessarily lazy and don't want to work. They are not all drug users and drug dealers. In fact, the plight of the working poor may be the most misunderstood aspect of poverty. Ten million full-time working Americans are classified as living under the poverty level.

Poverty is a vicious cycle of economic strangulation. Children brought up in poverty are more likely to remain poor as adults. Sara McLanaham, a University of Wisconsin sociologist, concludes in a study that 36% of girls from welfare families end up on welfare as adults, compared to nine percent from non-welfare families. Steps must be taken to end this vicious cycle.

One of the most far-reaching policy options proposed has come from Lawrence Salmen of the World Bank's Social Policy and Resettlement Division. He offers some alternatives that may prove to be the first step towards resolving the poverty issue in America today. Salmen's cutting-edge proposal, labeled Participatory Poverty Assessments (PPA), involves the assessment of poverty; analyses of relevant public expenditures and institutions and safety nets; and the preparation of strategies to reduce poverty. The idea is to bridge the gap between policymakers and the poor by systematically bringing the human social dimension into this analysis. PPA addresses a wide range of critical questions:

* How do the poor perceive the relative importance of the various manifestations of poverty, such as low income, lack of food, security, and propensity to ill health"

* What do they see as the root causes of poverty?

* What factors block their opportunities for example, insufficient access to assets such as land and credit; geophysical factors causing isolation; and sex, ethnic class, or religious discrimination?