Persistent Poverty And Welfare Programs In The United States

Once heralded as "the land of opportunity," America has become, for increasing numbers of her inhabitants, a nation of disappointment and hardship. In a land characterized by innumerable economic, environmental and social problems, poverty is escalating to the point where approximately one-third of the population is composed of the poor and the near poor. Persistent Poverty provides a comprehensive and critical analysis of one of America's most disturbing social problems.In a clear, uncompromising style, Richard H. Ropers, Ph.D., a noted authority on the plight of the poverty-stricken, unravels a skein of government inconsistencies in handling the mounting effects of poverty, homelessness, the welfare system, and the gradual polarization of our class system, resulting in the gradual erosion of the middle class. After examining various "blame-the-victim" and "blame the system" theories of inequality, Dr. Ropers asserts that such poverty results primarily from long-term economic, social, and political policies and is not necessarily derived from the supposed deviant behavior of the poor.With a staggering 70 million Americans living just above or below the poverty line, the author advises that urgent attention be paid to the structural roots of poverty in light of significant increases in the rate of crime, juvenile delinquency, substance abuse, domestic violence, and unemployment. As an objective focus on the enormous scope of poverty, this groundbreaking work offers keen insights into the argument that despite substantial efforts to alleviate similar plights worldwide, the United States cannot provide sufficient care for her own impoverished citizens.Sociologists, educators, politicians, urbanologists, public officials, and concerned citizens will all benefit from this provocative and thoughtful appraisal.

Poverty estimatesthe number and percentage of persons living in povertyhave been of interest to Congress not only to gauge the nations economic health, but also because they are used to determine funding allocations for a variety of programs. Chapter 1 provides a synopsis of poverty measurement in the United States, focusing on the following: the official measure of poverty, which is used to obtain official counts and percentages of the poor; the Supplemental Poverty Measure, which is used for research purposes only and was developed to improve upon some limitations of the official measure; and the Health and Human Services (HHS) poverty guidelines, which are used in administering programs for low-income persons but not to measure the poor population. In chapter 2, the numbers and percentages of those in poverty are given based on the Census Bureaus estimates. It also presents a historical perspective as well as information on poverty for demographic groups (by family structure, age, race and Hispanic origin, and work status) and by state. The Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM) is a measure of economic deprivationhaving insufficient financial resources to achieve a specified standard of living. Chapter 3 describes the SPM, how it was developed, how it differs from the official poverty measure, and the insights it can offer. Chapter 4 explains why targeting funds to persistent poverty counties might be of interest, how persistent poverty is defined and measured and how different interpretations of the definition and different data source selections could yield different lists of counties identified as persistently poor. Our current welfare system is failing to deliver results for those that need it most. The current system is a disjointed maze of more than 80 different programs. We need a system that provides more Americans with personalized solutions, real paths out of poverty, and better opportunities to realize their potential, as detailed in chapter 5.

The authors convincingly rebuff the 20-year assault on the United States welfare state, launched by the left and the right. They argue that America's "insurance-opportunity"-oriented welfare is compatible with two basic U.S. ideological principles: rugged individualism and mutual support. The authors systematically dismantle arguments, used in the assault, that U.S. welfare is economically undesirable, unaffordable, and ungovernable; and successfully defend America's welfare achievements while correcting and dispelling popular misconceptions and myths about it. The authors reject comprehensive reform but promote workable incremental reforms, compatible with America's fundamental ideological beliefs, to specific welfare programs. ISBN 0-465-05969-4: $22.95.

For more than thirty years, students, scholars, and policymakers have relied on successive editions of Sar A. Levitan's Programs in Aid of the Poor. Now, in conjunction with the eighth edition of that classic work, coauthors Garth Mangum, Stephen Mangum, and Andrew Sum offer a brief but comprehensive overview of the facts of poverty in the United States, its underlying causes, and the reasons for its persistence in the richest nation in the world. Providing a wealth of data and cogent analysis, this book can be used along with Programs for additional background, or can stand on its own. "This volume demonstrates more starkly than its parent the persistence of poverty in this nation. Though some individuals and families manage to escape it, the phenomenon diminishes not at all—or at least very little . . . Having been sobered by this thought, the student may ponder what more might conceivably be done to reduce the incidence of that endemic economic and social disease."—from the Preface

Since the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 was enacted, policy makers, agency administrators, community activists, and academics from a broad range of disciplines have debated and researched the implications of welfare reform in the United States. Most of the attention, however, has focused on urban rather than rural America. Welfare Reform in Persistent Rural Poverty examines welfare participants who live in chronically poor rural areas of the United States where there are few job opportunities and poor systems of education, transportation, and child care. Kathleen Pickering and her colleagues look at welfare reform as it has been experienced in four rural and impoverished regions of the United States: American Indian reservations in South Dakota, the Rio Grande region, Appalachian Kentucky, and the Mississippi Delta. Throughout these areas the rhetoric of reform created expectations of new opportunities to find decent work and receive education and training. In fact, these expectations have largely gone unfulfilled as welfare reform has failed to penetrate poor areas where low-income families remain isolated from the economic and social mainstream of American society. Welfare Reform in Persistent Rural Poverty sheds welcome light on the opportunities and challenges that welfare reform has imposed on low-income families situated in disadvantaged areas. Combining both qualitative and quantitative research, it will be an excellent guide for scholars and practitioners alike seeking to address the problem of poverty in rural America.

A team of anthropologists, economists, geographers, political scientists, social workers, and sociologists examine the leading explanations for why poverty persists in rural America. Their findings discredit established theories such as the "culture of poverty" and suggest new explanations for rural poverty and new directions for antipoverty programs and policies.

Applying lessons from history to the reality of poverty today in the United States—the most affluent country in the world—this book analyzes contributing factors to poverty and proposes steps to relieve people affected by it. American history is replete with efforts to alleviate poverty. While some efforts have resulted in at least partial success, others have not, because poverty is a multifaceted, complicated phenomenon with no simple solution. Winning the War on Poverty studies the history of poverty relief efforts in the United States dating to the nineteenth century, debunking misperceptions about the poor and tackling the problem of the ever-widening gap between the rich and poor. It highlights the ideological differences between liberal and conservative beliefs and includes insights drawn from a well-rounded group of disciplines including political science, history, sociology, economics, and public health. Premised on the idea that only the lessons of history can help policymakers to recognize that the United States has a persistent poverty problem that is much worse than it is in many other democracies, the book suggests an 18-point plan to substantively address this dilemma. Its vision for reform does not pander to any particular ideology or political party; rather, the objective of this book is to explain how the United States can win the war on poverty in the short term.