The Informal Economy: Poverty In The United States

The reason why the informal economy is crucial to both analyze its definition and function in our capitalist nation is because people residing within power structures have applied a malfeasant connotation which forces people with privilege to identify struggling individuals and use them as scapegoats to demonstrate the high levels of poverty in the United States. One of the reasons that could explain the growth and expansion of the informal economy is that it is “driven by the structure of the world economy and processes of economic globalization” (Roberts 2013). Along these lines, transforming its negative and criminalized view into a positive mechanism that helps individuals and families, mostly of color, generate income for the main purpose of survival and making ends meet would be more accepting

Matthew McKeever through a study done about reproduced inequality, he found out that, “success in both economies tends to favor whites, men, and those with more education and experience, nonwhites, women, and the less educated are more likely to work in the informal economy” (McKeever 1998). When economies are constructed to favor just one phenotype, others suffer the consequences, which referring back to my research question, it leads Hispanics and Latino individuals or their entire family to participate in the informal economy. Going back to my experience, my parents were well off for the first two years of me being born. Then my father was diagnosed with diabetes and that overall led my family selling tortillas door to door. Since I was young they would take me to the neighbors house to babysit me, but once I had strength and walked well, I was dragged into the family business. I had no choice, but at the same time I did not complain because it benefitted my