Poverty in United States

Colleen Murray

October 16th 2011

Exercise #3

a. What topic interested you the most in the chapter?

The topic I have found most interesting in this chapter was about poverty in the United States. Your region can have a lot to do with this too or even your ethnicity. In 2007 12.5% of American lived below the poverty line, 24.5%of all blacks and 21.5% of Hispanics fell into the group of poverty. They say that sometimes your region can also decide if you fit the stereotype and fall in the poverty group. It seems in more rural areas poverty is at the highest rate. 30 percent of are nation that lives in poverty lives in rural areas of America. But you have to look at the kind of jobs that are needed in rural areas, jobs in manufacturing are declining and so id most of there sources of money including mining, agricultural and the oil industries. Sometimes these people have not as great of an education as many people so it is harder to find a better job for them considering all of there jobs are slowly diminishing. I also found some of the myths about poverty very interesting. For example that single mothers are mostly poor. Most single moms are receiving aid most of the families that live in poverty are married. Another common myth is that most minorities are poor. But that is not true it is mostly whites mainly cause more whites live in America than other minorities. I found this chapter very interesting because it showed me that there are a lot more reasons why people are in poverty then there is just on the surface.

b. How is this topic relevant to you or to someone you know?

This topic has a lot of relevance to me because I'm a new college student 11 and a half hours from home on my own having to make my own money. I'm one of five kids my parents or family is not in poverty at all but if I wanted to go out or do something in high school I needed my own job. Now in college I had to save up my own spending money. Like most college students we kind of don't have a sense that we are spending too much and can run out of it fast. So basically were all kind of living in poverty as college students. I know I'm going to have to go right back to work during breaks so ill have more money for next semester. Another way I can relate to this section of the chapter is cause my father used to be a teacher in inner-city schools in New York. He would tell us all kinds of stories about the poverty and the bad area that those kids were exposed to, and that exposing them to that makes them think its okay to be poor that they don't have to work in life they can just skim by. He always made me try much harder because he never wanted me, or any of my siblings to think just skimming by in life was all right.