Read The Blackwell Companion to Sociology Online
Authors: Judith R Blau
concept, poverty can be applied to a vast array of conditions and circumstances, varying tremendously across time and place.
Definitions of poverty are themselves revealing of a given society's material
standards, as well as providing an indication of why poverty exists. That is, how a society conceptualizes poverty tells us something about why that society thinks people are poor. Since poverty is a normative concept, levels of poverty and the causes of poverty cover a broad range of human conditions from developed to
less-developed societies. A family of four in the USA may live on $15,000 per
year, while a similar family in India exists on a mere $100 a year; on what basis do we consider these very different circumstances poverty? Poverty can be
conceived and defined in either relative or absolute terms (see also Ruggles,
1990; FuÈrster, 1994). An absolute measure sets a fixed poverty threshold in
which those below the threshold are considered poor and those above are not.
An example of an absolute poverty measure is the United Nations `èxtreme
poverty'' construct, which considers any individual living on less than one dollar per day as extremely poor. A relative concept of poverty is based on the
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163
distribution of resources among all members of a society. Defining poverty in
relative terms, for example, might consider the poor as the poorest 10 percent of a society.
Both absolute and relative poverty measures have advantages and disadvant-
ages. From a social policy perspective, absolute poverty has the advantage of
being fixed and thus providing a yardstick with which one can measure changes
in poverty cross-nationally, over time, and due to various interventions, such as social policy initiatives or economic change. An absolute measure may become
problematic, however, if the standard upon which it was originally based no
longer corresponds to the material reality of a society. And, of course, the
establishment of a poverty threshold is itself a political process that reflects the values and judgments of those with the power to define a social problem.
Relative measures of poverty place a greater emphasis on the distribution of
resources in a society and thus provide a better sense of social inequality. Social inequality, rather than absolute poverty, is often more closely related to violence and social, economic, and political instability than absolute poverty. However,
relative poverty measures are often resistant to change over time by definition
and make the impact of policy, or other, interventions, difficult to evaluate.
Poverty in the United
United States
The official poverty line in the USA was established in the 1960s, based on an
estimated annual minimum dollar amount for a family to procure adequate food
and housing. Thus, poverty in the USA is defined quite simply as a lack of
money. Conceptually, this definition is based on the cost of food and housing,
not simply for survival, but for an `àdequate'' standard of living. The calculus of this absolute poverty measure in the USA has remained virtually the same since
its creation, adjusted for inflation, with families considered above or below the poverty threshold based on family income and family size. In 1998, the poverty
line was $16,660 for a family of four (Dalaker, 1999). More than 34 million
Americans (12.7 percent) were estimated to be below the poverty line in 1998.
Trends in poverty in the USA are reported in figure 12.1. The proportion of
persons in the USA who were below the poverty line declined steadily following
1959, until stagnating during the economic recession of the mid-1970s. The
incidence of poverty increased through 1983 and then averaged about 14 percent
through the 1990s. The strong economic performance of the USA in the 1990s
pushed poverty in 1998 (12.7 percent) to its lowest rate since 1979.
Poverty does not, however, affect groups equally. Fifty-seven percent of the
poor today, for example, are women. Since poverty statistics have been tracked
in the USA, certain groups of Americans, in addition to women, have experi-
enced poverty at a higher incidence than others; racial and ethnic minorities and children, have been, and continue to be, overrepresented among poor Americans. Poverty among black and Hispanic Americans have persisted at a far
higher rate than the national average, as shown in figure 12.1. The poverty
rates of racial and ethnic minorities generally follow national trends over time, 164
Melvin L. Oliver and David M. Grant
Figure 12.1 Percentage of persons below the poverty line in the USA by race,
1959±1998.
Source: US Bureau of the Census, Current Population Reports, Series P60±207.
Washington DC, US Government Printing Office, 1999.
except that the trends tend to be much sharper for minorities than for whites.
These trends suggest that African and Hispanic Americans are at greater risk of
becoming impoverished during periods of economic dislocation. On a more
positive note, the most recent data report the lowest level of black poverty on
record (26 percent), yet it remains more than three times greater than the
incidence of poverty among non-Hispanic whites (8 percent).
In contrast to the persistent higher incidence of poverty among African and
Hispanic Americans, a dramatic shift has taken place in the age composition of
the poor. As shown in figure 12.2, the elderly, those aged 65 and over, were much more likely to be poor than other Americans until the mid-1970s. Poverty among
the elderly, however, has dropped consistently, falling, and remaining, below the national poverty rate since 1982. Since official poverty records have been kept, the rate of children (those under age 18) in poverty has always been higher than that of the total population. As poverty fell throughout the 1960s and
early 1970s, the rate of children in poverty closely followed the decline. While the poverty rate held steady for other groups during the 1970s, the rate of child poverty increased. More than one in five American children has been below
the poverty line for the past two decades and roughly two in five black and
Hispanic children are below this line.
What accounts for these trends? Certainly the expansion of social security
coverage for elderly Americans and the increase in private and corporate retire-
ment programs play a major role in the declining incidence of poverty among the
American elderly (Treas and Torrecilha, 1995). Poverty reductions among
the elderly are particularly impressive and important to overall poverty rates in the USA, since they are the fastest growing age group in the population. That is, The Persistence of Poverty in a Changing World
165
Figure 12.2 Percentage of persons below the poverty line in the USA by age,
1959±1998.
Source: US Bureau of the Census, Current Population Reports, Series P60±207.
Washington DC, US Government Printing Office, 1999.
without policies and programs to reduce poverty among the aged, the USA
would be facing a tremendous surge in poverty levels due to the aging of the
population.
Explaining the persistence of poverty among racial and ethnic groups, as well
as the high incidence of poverty among children, is a complicated affair. Since
poverty in the USA is defined on the basis of income and family size, explana-
tions of poverty focus largely on labor market participation and household
structure. The persistently higher poverty rates among African and Hispanic
Americans are undoubtedly linked in part to the long legacy of discrimination
and exclusion in the USA; the contemporary role of racial discrimination in such outcomes, however, is subject to considerable debate.
For many years, following anthropologist Oscar Lewis's study of poverty in
Mexico (1959), the culture of poverty was the dominant explanation of poverty
in the USA and elsewhere. In short, this perspective argues that living conditions among the poor lead to a set of adaptive behaviors that function to help the poor survive the experience of their impoverishment. These non-normative behaviors,
such as an inability to defer gratification and drug abuse, however, ensure their poverty will continue and that of their children as well, since these cultural
attributes are transmitted in the family from one generation to the next. More
recent variations on the culture of poverty theme suggest that the well inten-
tioned, but misguided, policies which expanded the welfare state during the
1960s created an incentive for people to be poor and actively discouraged
marriage and family formation (Murray, 1984). The decline in marriage and
increase in child poverty are, from this perspective, the result of generous welfare 166
Melvin L. Oliver and David M. Grant
payments and eligibility requirements. Furthermore, the culture of poverty
paradigm contends that welfare has destroyed both the work ethic and the
self-esteem of the poor, rendering them incapable of responding to economic
opportunity (Mead, 1992).
The principal alternative to the culture of poverty explanation emphasizes
changes in the structure of the economy and the declining employment oppor-
tunities for low-skilled workers, particularly African American men concen-
trated in central cities. The combination of residential segregation and the loss of good-paying jobs for persons without a college education has led to high rates of unemployment and joblessness. As jobs, economic development, and the
middle class have left the cities for the suburbs, those left behind became
increasingly isolated from mainstream lifestyles, values, and aspirations (Wilson, 1987, 1996). Declining marriage rates, particularly of African American women,
are thus due to the lack of attractive marriage partners (i.e. men with stable
employment) because of economic dislocation and expansion of the criminal
justice system (Wilson and Neckerman, 1986). Nonetheless, liberal proponents
of this economic restructuring perspective argue that the poor prefer work to
welfare and are willing and able to respond to employment opportunities. The
principal obstacles to employment in this scenario are the availability of jobs
paying decent wages, transportation, medical insurance, and childcare.
The tight labor market of the booming American economy in recent years has
pulled many young black men into the world of work. Gains in employment and
earnings were most pronounced among young black men in cities with unem-
ployment rates below 4 percent. And crime rates fell most dramatically in those
metropolitan areas with the lowest unemployment rates between 1992 and 1997
(Freeman and Rodgers, 1999). Such findings are consistent with the liberal view
that poverty and social dislocation results from limited opportunities, and solutions to poverty should focus on the expansion of employment opportunities. A
recent study conducted in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, however, shows that even
guaranteed employment with comprehensive support structures cannot fully
overcome the complex obstacles that often keep the poor from stable employ-
ment. ``The problems that kept people from maintaining steady employment
comprise a catalog of inner-city ills: drug and alcohol abuse; jealous and or
violent boyfriends and husbands; conflicts with employers; unreliable baby
sitters and cars, and generally flagging spirits'' (DeParle, 1999).
We briefly raise these examples of recent studies on poverty and employment
to document the importance of opportunity and economic growth to employ-
ment and reducing poverty, but also to suggest that there are real limits to
current and past poverty reduction policies in the USA that stress work and
family formation (Katz, 1986, 1989). Neither welfare payments nor forcing the
poor to work in low-wage jobs significantly improves the material conditions of
the poor (Bane and Ellwood, 1994). Indeed, the fastest growing segment of
children in poverty are the children of working parents (Annie E. Casey Founda-
tion, 1996). And despite sustained economic growth and the widely celebrated
trimming of thousands of persons off the welfare rolls, there is persistent hunger in the USA. A recent study by the US Department of Agriculture found that
The Persistence of Poverty in a Changing World
167
during the years 1996 and 1998, 10 million households (9.7 percent) experi-
enced food insecurity each year, with more than one in three of these households experiencing hunger at some point during the year (Nord et al., 1999).
Policies that fail to address the broader social context in which the poor are
situated condemn another generation to the risks and violence of poverty, such
as hunger. In addition to a strong economy and opportunity, we contend that
policy to reduce poverty in the USA and elsewhere must seek to build resources
in those persons at greatest risk from the devastating consequences of poverty.
Policies to build assets and resources to fight poverty in the USA need to address the complex obstacles related to poverty among adults and their children.
Following a discussion of poverty in less-developed regions, we will return to
this theme of asset building to reduce human suffering.
Poverty in Developing
Developing Regions and Countries
As complex and multidimensional as poverty is in the USA, shifting our focus