Rise Of Poverty In America

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As Adam Smith, a Scottish economist once said, “The real tragedy of the poor is the poverty of their aspirations.” Aspiration is defined as a strong desire, or a goal or objective that is strongly longed for. By saying this, without aspiration many people would get nowhere in life. The amount of poverty in America has constantly been increasing, and now seemed to hit an all time high. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 35.9 million people live below the poverty level in America, including 12.9 million children. These sad statistics arise the question of why poverty rates have been rising, and the consequences of it. Three main reasons for poverty rates continuing to grow directly correlates to changes in family dynamics, income imbalance, …show more content…
According to Global Issues, almost half the world- over three billion people- live on less than $2.50 a day (1). Poverty is a direct indication of how well the economy is and is not doing. The fact that the majority of humanity lives on just a few dollars a day, whether you live in the richest nation in the world, or one well known for poverty, you will see high accounts of inequality everywhere, which is eye-opening to say the least. People that are just making ends meet, when they lose their jobs don't have the resources to pay their bills. There is a lot of people who live month to month, and paycheck to paycheck, being very dependant on the exact amount of money they bring in. They have to learn to make sacrifices for their style of living. For example, a young single mother may have a daughter in need of new shoes, but if she purchases them her budget will only fit to be eating Ramen Noodles the rest of the month. As stated in 3 Things You May Have Missed in the New Poverty, Income and Inequality Data, Shawn Fremstad reported that the average women earned only 79 cents for every 1 dollar earned by the average man, which illustrates the persistent wage gap problem we have in our society today (Fremstad,1). When people that are poor are stuck in poverty, they have a hard time getting out of it because minimum wage jobs don’t provide them with everything they need to get by. There are only so many minimum wage jobs to go around, and those are what many countries rely so heavily on. For a teenager, having a low income job may be great just to have some pocket money, because many teens don’t have, or aren’t exposed to all the expenses we will see in many years to come. Minimum wage jobs are usually very basic, low-skilled jobs that don't require much of an education. The higher your education, the more opportunities one can open up for

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