Book Response for \'$2 a Day; Living On Almost Nothing in America\' PDF

Preview

Summary

This is a mandatory end of the semester essay that requires a thoughtful summary and remarks about the book '$2 a Day; Living On Almost Nothing in America'. This particular essay is titled "The Truth About Poverty". ...

Description

SOC 1101-02 Book Response Paper The Truth About Poverty In Kathryn Edin and H. Luke Shaefer’s book, $2.00 a Day; Living On Almost Nothing In America”, the focus is on the very real idea of extreme poverty within the United States. As emphasized throughout this book, this is not just the “poor people”…this is the poorest of the poor. These are the people that are often forgotten or overlooked because most people in the United States have absolutely no clue that this severe of poverty even exists. The meaning behind this book title signifies the fact that roughly 1.5 million households, which includes more than 3 million children, were all living on less than $2.00 per day per person due to neglect of any type of cash income. Due to the elimination of the Aid to families with Dependent Children, the number of households facing this problem has increased dramatically. An argument that Edin and Shaefer bring up in this book references the lack of low wage work and how this presents a burden on these families that are suffering. For example, one woman named Jennifer, found herself getting sick after working in poor conditions that consisted of unheated houses in the winter weather which included having no electricity and no access to water to help clean the houses with. Jennifer took time to ensure she could get herself better and avoid passing any type of virus on to her kids, and because of this her hours got cut and eventually she got let go. There is not much low wage work available anymore for people that do not have some type of higher education. There was another instance in which one went to school for art but because she did not receive any financial help from her family and she did not have enough income to pay for it on her own, she maxed out on student loans and eventually dropped out. This puts one in a sticky situation in which they have to work to pay back the student loans with money they did not already have and without the degree to make much of it. Personally, I relate these unfortunate circumstances to aspects of Chapter 9 in our textbook Essentials of Sociology. In Chapter 9, it is explained that it is in fact “features of society” are what can be responsible for the denial of education or training in job skills to some individuals. There is typically the belief that the people that are suffering from poverty are lazy. Discussed in this chapter and in this assigned novel reading, it is apparent that this is more often than not simply a stereotype. Most people try to get work at jobs that are seasonal, undependable, or pay poverty wages. Many families live on the edge of this poverty line and it takes something easy, like inconsistent work hours or the inability to hold a job (for whatever reason), to take these distressed individuals below the poverty line. Lack of work in a time of poverty shows to be a troubling and difficult cycle that seems endless, especially when one is deficient in necessary skills or qualities to obtain a job due to their financial conditions in the first place. In other words, people with less education are more likely to be poor, as expressed in this chapter as well. A statistic referenced in our class textbook reads, “One of every 4 people who drop out of high school is poor, but only 5 of 100 who finish college end up in poverty”. Evidently, the higher the education someone has, the lower chances of poverty they have in turn. It seems as though this book accurately portrays poverty and economic struggle in the way that this book illustrates a lot of personal stories and statistics that Edin and Shaefer actually went out, discovered, and drew conclusions from this information on their own. As I mentioned earlier, it is explained that many Americans do not even know this level of poverty exists so it could be hard for those individuals to make an extremely educated estimate on how accurately poverty is portrayed due to their lack of knowledge or ignorance to the issue. If anything, I think there could potentially be more people affected than what the total numbers indicate, but I do think this is an educated rough estimate. I personally have never known anybody in this type of circumstance so this book has been the first real introduction to educating myself on the severity of the poverty that exists within this country. Because of this, I feel as though that is why I believe this book could be a pretty accurate portrayal because I do not have a lot of background knowledge to argue against it or any reason to believe the research they did was not well thought out and carefully compared against current statistics and other findings....