Poverty. How does one define poverty?
How much do you really know and understand about what poverty is? The root causes, the symptoms, actions to take, or education to pursue are all areas that even in my mind are not completely clear. I would like you to take 5 min of your time to complete an activity that I myself completed when I decided to take on this project.
I would like you to first take out a piece of paper and your lucky pencil. Shut off any and all distractions including your 80’s Rock Tunes and reality TV shows. And at the top of your page I would like you to write the word POVERTY. Seems simple enough right? Now in 5 min, I want you to define what poverty is, to list the causes of poverty, and then I want you to list the characteristics of poverty. Now don’t go add a tab and find the Google definition and research everything to look smart, this is for you, to see how you understand poverty in its simplest form.
READY…GO! (Cue Jeopardy Music Here)
I encourage you to share with everyone some of your answers to the questions I asked you to think about above. You can do that by adding a comment to this post or going to the Facebook group and posting it under the discussion board!
When using the Merriam-Webster, ‘picture-perfect’ definition of poverty we get:
POVERTY ~ the state of one who lacks a usual or socially acceptable amount of money or material possessions.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/poverty
Basically this definition looks at poverty from a solely economical view point. Now I am sure that we have all been at this stage at some point in our lives. The United States is driven by its economy and as American citizens, we drive ourselves along that never-ending highway right into retirement or the poor house, which ever comes first. Now I could bore you all by going into a cost-benefit analysis of why money is good and why it’s bad but instead I would like to deconstruct the above definition I have presented you with.
Like many of you, I would guess we had similar definitions as the one above when completing the exercise. Most people look at poverty from a monetary perspective because that’s the easiest way to measure it. However, I ask you to reflect on the definition above and your own based off my following observations.
The Unusual Use of the Word Usual
The use of the word
USUAL in the definition brings me to my first concern about who exactly is the one defining
USUAL. So, we go on the internet, turn the pages of a book, searching for that specific answer and realize that
USUAL is defined by our government. They set what is known as a POVERTY LINE. This is an average number collected by surveying through the Census Bureau of the pretax annual income of a single individual. Presently, awaiting the results from the recent 2010 Census, the United States Government defines the poverty line for an individual citizen below the age of 65 as $11,201.00. So the
usual amount of money for a US citizen to live on is slightly higher than that total. Now I believe that the definition would make more sense if the
usual amount of money was defined by a range as opposed to a single averaged value. Unfortunately the Census does not supply this information so we are left to believe that if our yearly bank accounts are wavering somewhere around this number, we are at risk for being impoverished members of society.
Socially Acceptable Money?
Now that we understand what exactly
usual amounts of money are defined as, let us look at the next option the definition gives us. Someone who lacks a socially acceptable amount of money or possessions is considered to be poverty stricken. Now when we define socially acceptable certain basic life necessities come to mind. Access to a food source, shelter, safe water, access to healthcare and education, and perhaps even an Ipod are all items that one may considerable socially acceptable. Now in the grander scheme money is necessary for all of these services or entities so, someone who is able to afford a home, food, healthcare, and bottled water is doing relatively ok. It’s the people that are not able to afford such basic needs that are truly stuck at or below the poverty line.
In trying not to sound like a complete cynical college graduate, I would like to challenge the use of the phrase “socially acceptable amounts of money”. Now who’s to say that our star athletes, some of our mediocre actors, and certain government officials who find their salaries sky-rocketing into the 10s of millions of dollars are not poverty ridden? By the definition it states that people who “lack” the
usual amount of money needed to survive are considered to be living in poverty. How is a paycheck for 20 million dollars to make an hour and a half film considered socially acceptable? I believe that we need to move away from an economically dominating definition for poverty and look at it on multiple levels instead.
Root Causes of Poverty
I want you to look back at your list of causes for poverty. Going back to our definition, most people when looking for the direct causes of poverty consider money to be the largest factor determining an individual’s status. This often times creates the poor-man’s stereotype that the primary causes of poverty result from the individual characteristics of the poor themselves. David Hilfiker, a family doctor turned clinic specialist, discusses this notion in a short book entitled
Poverty in Urban America: Its Causes and Cures.
http://speakingoffaith.publicradio.org/programs/seeingpoverty/pamphlet1.shtml He challenges that it is not the individual’s characteristics that define the root causes of poverty but instead results from imbedded “social structures that are beyond the individual’s control”.
It is important when looking at a social issue, such as poverty, that we are able to differentiate between the root cause of the problem and the symptoms that are produced from those causes. Many times we will confuse a symptom for a direct cause to the problem. This is what Dr. Hilfiker discusses in his above book, that our society looks poorly on the poor because often times we blame their condition on their own actions. We blame the poor for being lazy, uneducated, drug addicts, and violent. Now this is not to say that these above issues are present in the urban poor of America, but it is a very small percentage.
So where does poverty come from? Certain social structures that are presently in place in the United States continue to result in poverty and cause the symptoms that you and I are more readily familiar with. The root causes that I am going to present you with result from completing a Root Cause Analysis. This summer I had the great opportunity to work with a summer program that partnered with
Ashoka Youth Venture Programs where I was introduced to this exercise. It follows the 5 Why’s Model to find the primary causes of a problem rather than solely working on fixing the symptoms. I encourage you to use this same model to identify for you what the root causes of poverty are in America today and compile your own list.
http://www.slideshare.net/CharlesGYF/cat001-root-cause-analysis
Root Causes of Poverty
Government Policies
Racial Inequality
Segregation/Wealth Disparity
Corruption
Economic Re-Structuring
Lack of Basic Human Rights
My above list is not all encompassing to say the least. However, in the next 30 days, I will be exploring if my list is actually true. Could it be that the US government is causing poverty within its own borders? Is their still racial inequality in the land of the free? Isn’t economic restructuring necessary for Third World countries to join the rest of society? I hope to answer these questions along with many others on my travels of the US.
Characteristics or Symptoms of Poverty
The last part that I asked you to do is to create a list of characteristics of poverty. I want you to consider this list more of a list of symptoms that occur because of the above causes. Again as I had stated previously, these “symptoms” are generally what each of us would think about when asked what we understood the word poverty to mean. These may include low-income, job loss, domestic violence, limited access to healthcare and an education, and perhaps housing issues as well. To give you a brief (not all inclusive) list, here are some major symptoms that result from the causes of poverty:
Symptoms of Poverty
Hunger & Homelessness
Decreased Access to Healthcare
Decreased Access to Education
Increased Violence & Crime
Destruction of the Environment
Non-Sustainable Living
Decreased Access to Affordable Housing
Employment Opportunities & Income Levels
Now on the surface level, it is these symptoms that we “Do-Gooders” try to work on eradicating when we contribute to our own communities. The food and clothing drives we run so that the homeless person on the street won’t go hungry or cold or the houses we build for those less fortunate are thought as addressing the issue of poverty directly. Just like when a doctor makes a diagnosis, treatment is mainly focused on improving the symptoms of whatever ailment your body is going through. It has many positive outcomes such as increasing your daily health, creating hope and a vision for a healthier future, and better yet attacking the bad organisms or juju that is raging through your body and making you sick in the first place. Without organizations that are addressing the above issues in our communities we would be nowhere right now, and the world may look a little darker than it may seem now.
However, I pose this question to you. How many times have you gone to a doctor, been prescribed medicine based off your symptoms but never actually told what was causing those symptoms in the first place? Or better yet, been given medication that actually worsened your condition because the root causes of your symptoms were not addressed? As individuals, organizations, and human beings we need to be asking the root cause questions on a daily basis. We are not looking for a quick fix here and a new house there, but rather ensuring that the long-term benefit of each of our actions has been well thought out and ties back to the greater issue, in this case poverty.
As I embark on my adventure on September 7th, I look forward to working with some of the greatest organizations in the 11 cities I will be landing in. I plan on talking to agencies working on the larger picture of attacking the root causes of poverty while working for organizations that are doing diligent work to help fix the symptoms in hopes of providing a positive sustainable change in the lives of many US citizens. As my excitement for the trip heightens I encourage you to reach out to more of your friends and family members to start thinking more constructively about issues happening in your own communities.
Cheers to discovering the roots of every tree in the country!
Bryan
