Poverty as a Social Problem in United States
What is Poverty and why is it a social problem? Poverty is a standard of living below the minimum needed for maintenance of adequate diet, health and shelter (Eitzen187). Thirty seven million Americans were reported poor in 2005 (Eitzen 187). The key word is reported because about another 30 million Americans are unreported since many are homeless or illegal immigrants. These millions of people are discriminated in schools, courts, job market, and marketplace. This discrimination has trapped many poor people in these conditions (Eitzen 187). People living in poverty are placed there by an invisible line which divides them from the non poor. This line is the poverty line which is computed by the Social Security Administration which figures out the basic cost of adequate diet and multiples it by 3. The poverty line equation was computed in 1955 and was multiplied by three because SSA felt that people spent a third of their income on food. Nowadays people are spending more than half of their income on shelter, which does not allow this income to stand up against inflation (Eitzen 187). The poverty line is $10,160 for single person under 65, $ 15,277 for family of three, and $20,144 for a family of four. Poverty is defined as a social problem. A social problem is defined as the problem must has a social origin, must be harmful to many individuals, must be defined publicly as a social problem and must has a social solution (Charon 6). Many people blame poverty on the victim but in essence the social structures that coincided with poverty allow poverty to continue. Many people in poverty do not have adequate jobs that can alleviate them out of poverty even if they are working full-time. Many full-time workers are affected by this idea; 2.8 million full time workers are below poverty line (Eitzen 194). Many people in poverty are in the secondary sector job force which is low paying job that pay above the minimum but still pay low enough to be below or slightly above the
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