The Blackwell Companion to Sociology (41 page)

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

The Persistence of Poverty in a Changing World

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