Poverty: A Sociological Persecptive

I’ve decided to major in sociology. Go, me! Anyhow, since I’m feeling too lazy to post anything major, here’s my final paper for the Soc 251 class I took this semester. Got an A, of course. Just 10 points off of perfection for the term.

Poverty is a nasty thing. It can destroy hopes and dreams, be physically unhealthy due to unaffordable medical care and poor nutrition and, perhaps most importantly, it can create a cycle; a feedback loop where one generation sinks into poverty and subsequent generations have a hard time escaping it. Let’s examine what the three primary theoretical explanations might say about poverty as a social issue.

Structural functionalism might say that poverty comes with a breakdown in the social normal that might otherwise keep such a state from occurring. For example, with the increased ease and availability of divorce, it becomes more and more likely to have single-parent households, which almost by definition earn less money than two-parent households.

Conflict theory might state that the upper-classes have a vested interest in keeping the lower classes powerless, poor and ignorant. It’s hard to get away with paying hard workers minimum wage if they’re educated enough to understand that their labor is being exploited by management. This sort of oppression of the poor by the wealthy might be intentional or it might not, but either way, conflict theory would say that it happens.

Symbolic interaction might say that poverty is a problem because we say it is. Except for the incredibly destitute, most people in this country, even the poor, have a place to live, food on the table, a TV, a phone, some form of transport, and the like. That phone may be a twenty-year-old land line, the food might be nothing but hot dogs and ramen, the TV might be an old black and white, and the transport might be the bus when they can afford it and feet when they can’t, but they still have these things, and compared to other places in the world, that hardly makes them poor at all.

I think all three of these approaches are useful and all have elements to them that can serve to explain the problem. We really have experienced a shift in the cultural norms, allowing for an increased number of single-parent families. The upper-class really does oppress the lower class, however unintentionally. To a lesser extent, yes, poverty is partly a social problem, rather than a personal one, because we believe it is.

Several fallacies have grown up around the notion of poverty. One is that poor people are simply lazy and don’t work hard enough. In a country like America, the theory goes, surely anyone can be a success if they try? Related to this is the fallacy that even if you are working hard, and you still aren’t rich, you probably aren’t working right, so it’s your fault. Then a third fallacy is the notion that providing a strong social safety net simply encourages people to remain poor.

These are all incorrect, though may apply in individual instances. In America, with the system set up the way it is, it’s entirely possible to work two full-time jobs and still be poor. If neither of those jobs provides health insurance, and someone gets cancer, well, they’ll likely end up bankrupt rather quickly. But surely in that case, it’s because the person may have worked hard, but didn’t do it in the right way by having a job that pays them well enough? But if they haven’t the education for a better paying job, what are they supposed to do? Go to school, yes, but if they’re already working 80 hours a week and, say, taking care of a couple of kids, when are they supposed to attend classes?

The most odious fallacy is the one that says a strong social safety net encourages people to be poor. While, again, it might be true in certain individual instances that people who are receiving some sort of government assistance are happy to do nothing but draw on that assistance, in my experience dealing with other people on these programs, and my own experience of being on food stamps and similar programs, I can tell you that most of the people I’ve known getting help from the government didn’t want to have to do it. They did have some level of pride, and even if they didn’t have that, no one can live well on the small amounts of assistance our rather niggardly government hands out.

My hypothesis is that poverty is caused by way too many factors for any one set of fixes to work for all people all the time. We need a comprehensive approach, one centered around education for impoverished adults and their children, that helps people to get the skills they need to lift themselves up out of the cycle of poverty.

This means extensive education reform, including a national educational standard, so that students in Maine learn the same thing as students in Alabama, who learn the same as students in Hawaii, etc. It also means the government needs to provide subsidized day care for children who aren’t yet in school. That way their parents can save money by not having to pay for expensive day care or hire a sitter. Those parents should also receive financial assistance so that not only can they attend school, but they can do so while working only one full time job.

Extensive educational reform isn’t the only part of the solution. We also need affordable universal health care, with an emphasis on preventative care. We also need stronger regulations to keep the rich from exploiting the poor through various financial schemes both legal and illegal. We also need a stronger emphasis on reproductive management. Everyone who is on any form of government assistance should also be provided with, at their option, free birth control. If you already can’t afford to take care of four children, you don’t need a fifth.

It would be difficult to test the validity of my hypothesis without looking at other countries. Places like the Nordic nations and Germany do a lot of what I mention here. They have far less poverty than we do, have a higher standard of living than we do, have a better educational system than we do, and generally are doing better than we are in every quantifiable way. I think that by following some of what they do we can get the same results, but it’s going to take time. At least twenty years, I’d imagine, before any real changes are noticed.

Of course, the longer we wait, the longer it will take.