Poverty In The United States Essay

The odds of poverty in the United States (the least generous welfare state) are greater by a factor of 16.6. In fall 1996, after President Clinton signed the welfare reform bill, three senior officials in the Department of Health and Human Services. Believing that the abolishment of the entitlement to assistance, the five-year hard time limit, and the block granting of funds would increase poverty among children to an unacceptable degree. Those belief was shared by Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who predicted on the Senate floor that passage of the bill would lead to “children sleeping on grates.” It was supported by a study done by the Urban Institute, which estimated that one million children would be thrown into poverty if welfare reform was enacted.

Urban builders for the first time constructed housing exclusively for the poor. Growing numbers of the poor were foreign-born, especially Irish immigrants fleeing the potato famine in the 1850s and eastern European immigrants later in the century. Chinese immigrants to the West Coast faced both racial discrimination and especially low wages. There are many factors that contribute to poverty such as ignorance, disease, apathy, dishonesty and dependency, are to be seen simply as conditions. As well as the income gap between the rich and the poor, lack of jobs that pay adequate wages. Increased economic globalization and its uneven impact on U.S. workers, lack of access to major transportation routes. And lack of free or inexpensive child care. Ignorance means having a lack of information, or lack of knowledge. When a community has a high disease rate, absenteeism is high, productivity is low, and less wealth is created. Apart from the misery, discomfort and death that results from disease, it is also a major factor in poverty in a community. Apathy is when people do not care, or when they feel so powerless that they do not try to change things, to right a wrong, to fix a mistake, or to improve