The Three Main Causes Of Poverty In The United States

What is poverty? I ask myself as I ponder the thought of what contributes to it. Poverty is the state of being extremely poor. Simple to define, right? Poverty is also defined as not having enough money to meet basic needs for a minimum standard of living such as food, clothing, and shelter. Poverty is split into three main groups, cumulative, previous period, and concurrent. The main reasons one might fall into one of the groups of poverty are health problems, illiteracy or even lack of income but the foremost contribution to poverty, in my opinion, is government assistance and social welfare. It is no secret that lower income individuals are more prone to disease and a lower life expectancy. “Moreover, lower SES is associated with each of the 14-major cause-of-death categories in the international classification of diseases, as well as many other health outcomes including major mental disorders.” One of the main problems with health care and individuals living in poverty is job security. Most jobs in which you are not a non-exempt employee (meaning you aren’t salary) only give you a certain amount of days to miss work without consequences. For those living in …show more content…
Of course, there is nothing that can be done about health problems contribution to poverty but two out of three of the main causes/ contributes to poverty can easily be changed by changing small things in life such as Early literacy. Early literacy can break a cycle of poverty in one’s family. Another thing that can help potentially end poverty is finding something that motivates the individual to always want more out of life even if that motivation comes from the government putting a time limit on how long one can be on government assistance or some other program that wings an individual off any welfare programs. Let me conclude by saying that I am liberal (simply because a lot of my views on poverty make me seem like a