Minimum Wage Is A Social Problem Essay

The social problem that I have chosen to write about is the issue of the livability (or lack thereof) of the minimum wage in the city of Chicago. I think it’s a social problem because the current minimum wage in Chicago, $10/hr (abc7chicago.com) is not nearly enough for people to live off of, and it impacts a gigantic number of people. About 329,000 people in Chicago make under $15 an hour [the proposed minimum wage] (Fortino 1). A social problem also involves people needing a resource that is not readily available to them, and in this instance, it involves people needing money that isn’t there when it’s needed. One of the major effects of living on minimum wage is emotional stress and feelings of anxiety. An article from the February 2, 2014 issue of The Chicago Tribune shared some first-hand stories from people living on minimum wage. One woman, Rocio Cervantes said, “It is impossible to live at $8.25 an hour…not even three jobs are enough… ” Cervantes described herself as ‘panicked, at times’ when she thought about how she’d pay all her bills (McCoppin 1). Another woman, Akila Rose Thompson, another minimum wage earner, said, …show more content…
According to a recently published article in The Washington Post, ‘…there were still almost 3 million people who made the minimum wage or less in the United States in 2014’ (DePillis 1). Washington state currently has the highest minimum wages in the country, at $9.15/hour (Ncsl 1). Even so, it’s not humanly possible to live on that little money, especially if you have children. MIT has a calculator that allows users to calculate the amount of money that a typical single American parent needs to raise a child. The average minimum wage per hour required to raise a child in the U.S is around $7.75/hour, and some states don’t even pay that much. Of course, the average is higher if you have more than one