Hector 1

Aleshia Lexus Hector

Dr. Babcock
Honors 2013
9 May 2014
The Poverty Problem
Americans tend to believe that poverty is caused by a lack of effort, or laziness.
This individualistic view of poverty asserts that people in poverty had all the
opportunities to be above the poverty threshold and just didnt work hard enough
(Seccombe 89). Lack of effort and laziness may be the cause of poverty for some people,
a very small minority, but there are other definite reasons for poverty that cant be fixed
simply by making someone get off the couch and do something. Using the absolute
measure of poverty, a family of four is said to be in poverty if the income of the family is
less that $19,971 (Seccombe 33). The amount of money a family can make to be
considered in poverty is called the poverty threshold, and it is changes with the number of
people in the family (Seccombe 31-33). The two main different types of poverty that can
be seen in the United States are rural poverty and urban poverty. As the names suggest,
rural poverty is the poverty that can be seen in rural places and urban poverty is the
poverty seen within the city. The specific reasons of why people are in poverty are
different in the urban and rural settings, however, the root causes for poverty are still the
same. Poverty, both rural and urban, is caused by several things coming together:
structural violence, childhood development, education, lack of jobs, and inadequate
healthcare. Relating rural and urban poverty to Louisiana, rural poverty can be seen in
many of the very small towns around the state, and urban poverty can be seen in almost
every big city. East Baton Rouge is a great example of urban poverty because the
transition from the ultra rich, zip code 70810, to the ultra poor, zip code 70805, can be
seen on one street, without making any turns.

Hector 2
Structural violence can be seen in both rural and urban settings and can be
described as the injustice of individuals by a social structure. Structural violence is
violence exerted systematicallythat is, indirectlyby everyone who belongs to a
certain social order: hence the discomfort these ideas provoke in a moral economy still
geared to pinning praise or blame on individual actors (Farmer 307). In rural poverty,
specifically in Louisiana, structural violence can still be seen in the form of racism. A
person may not get a job for the sole reason of being black. Many rural people in
Louisiana are still raised in very old-fashioned ways, where they learn that blacks are still
inferior to whites. This causes white farmers to often want to just hire white workers,
thereby inflicting structural violence on the blacks in the community, and often causing
rural black families to fall into poverty. In urban poverty in Louisiana, structural violence
can be seen acting on people who are already in poverty. Impoverished families in the
city are usually clumped together in parts of the city, often the inner city. This happens
because all of the industry and everything else was focused around the inner city, but
when people with money started moving to the suburbs, the jobs and the nice places
moved to the suburbs with them. This left the poor people in the inner city with no way to
get to the jobs, thereby almost forcing them to stay in poverty. Many of the sections of
the city where most of the inhabitants are in poverty are also food dessert. A food dessert
is a community with no grocery store to get fresh foodonly fast food or convenient
stores are present.
For children in poverty, living in a food desert means only one good meal a day,
and that is in the form of free lunch at school. Malnourishment can cause serious issues in
a childs development, and adds to an already negative home-life. A study by Harvard
University shows that executive function skills develop the most in children from the age

Hector 3
of three to the age of five (Building the Brains Air Trafc Control System). This means
that if a child grows up in poverty and learns the ways of life in poverty, that is what will
primarily stick in their brains. This creates a circle of poverty that is extremely hard to get
out of. Childhood development is the main factor that determines how successful the
adult will be. There is a factor of self-power or self-learned skills but most of an adults
drive and personality comes from how they were raised as children. Working memory,
inhibitory control, and cognitive flexibility are three factors that Harvard focused on in
their study.
Plans to help childhood development have been very popular, however, the plans
are not followed through to the end. President Obama, at the beginning of his career,
before he got high up in politics, had plans for a sort of childrens zone: a place where
children would be safe and could have a good education and a sturdy upbringing (Tough).
Obama saw the poverty in Chicago first had, where the neighborhood he was watching,
Roseland, was declared as being in extreme poverty, meaning that at least 40% of the
people in that neighborhood lived in poverty (Tough). Obama even went as far as to
compare the lives of the children living in this Chicago neighborhood to the lives of the
poor children he saw in Indonesia, a third world country. This extent of poverty,
especially when it is over 40% in one neighborhood should never exist in a developed
country such as the United State yet it is seen across the entire country. Giving a child the
developmental tools it needs is absolutely necessary for success. Working memory,
inhibitory control, and cognitive flexibility all make for a child to be better prepared to
enter and do well in school. School sets a child up for the rest of his/her life, and is
thereby the way a child can directly get his/herself out of poverty.

Hector 4
Getting a good education is getting more and more costly in the United States. As
the government cuts more and more funding, parents are starting to have to put their
children in private schools in order for them to get a good education. For a family living
in poverty, this is simple unattainable. The average cost of private school in the United
States in 2008 was $8549 and about 25% of all schools in the United States were private
schools (Facts and Studies). This would cost a family of four in poverty close to one
third of their yearly income for one child, and two thirds to send two children. A family
of four is considered in poverty if the yearly combined income of both parents is less than
$23,624 (Livermore). Vouchers for private school exist for these families in poverty but
are very scarce. The public school system in some places can still give children an
incredibly good education, however, there are other places where the children are facing
the same problems in conditions in schools, as they are at home which just deepens the
childs roots in poverty. There are two big parts to educationenrichment in school and
enrichment in homeand both of them often cost money. In the cases where the public
school system is sub-par, families living in poverty simply dont have the option of
putting their children in private school, or sending them further away to a better school,
because of the cost, so the childs enrichment in school is not very good, leading to subpar education. On the other side, if a family living in poverty is lucky enough to live in a
school district with good public schools, parents are often expected to further engage
their children at home. This often takes money in order to buy books and other materials
for at home enrichment that the families simply cannot afford, and so the child gets
behind his/her peers in the classroom and once again gets a sub-par education.
Money is often the biggest problem associated with children in poverty not
getting the education that they need in order to get themselves out of poverty. Why do the

Hector 5
parents of these children not just work more so they can make money to encourage their
childrens educations? As stated earlier, jobs are often scarce around the neighborhood
that the poor are confined to. Because of the movement to suburban areas be wealthier
people, the inner city, along with the poor, was left abandoned and without a sufficient
amount of jobs. Often these poor people do not have a means of transportation and so
cannot search for jobs far outside of their neighborhoods. Transportation is often a bigger
issue for people in rural poverty than it is for people in urban poverty. In urban poverty,
public transportation is an option, not a very good option in Louisiana, but nevertheless it
is an option. In rural poverty, public transportation may be completely non-existent, and
so if a family is in poverty, and does not have a car, there is no way to make it to a job
that is more than just a few miles away.
Lack of jobs is always a problem everywhere; if it werent a problem, then the
unemployment rate would be 0, which is ideal. Someone in unemployment is described
as someone over the age of 16 actively seeking work (Livermore). As of March 7, 2014,
the unemployment rate in the United States was 6.7% and the number of people
unemployed in the United States was 10.5 million people (United States). An
unemployed individual does not even have the chance to have some of the benefits that
come with being employed, namely healthcare. Full-time employees are often given a
healthcare plan from the company as part of their benefits package. This healthcare is not
always fully paid, but it at least becomes affordable for the individual. So being
unemployed not only means no income, but also no healthcare benefits for the person.
Even some of the people who work low-wage, low-skill jobs, are not given the benefit of
healthcare because the employers do not want to pay it for these lower-income
individuals. This leads to the majority of people in poverty living without healthcare.

Hector 6
The average family in the United States spends $2,976 on healthcare ("Health
Insurance Historical Tables"). This average is composed of all families in the US; broken
down, whites spend more than double as much as blacks on health-related costs ("Health
Insurance Historical Tables"). Whites then in turn, have more coverage under private
health insurances than do any other race. The upper class and perhaps even middle-class
in the United States of America does not have issues with the health care that is currently
available. Most well paying jobs provide some sort of health insurance option, and the
upper and middle economic classes have the money to pay for good private healthinsurance. However, the lower class, and parts of the middle class with mediocre jobs,
does not have the extra money to purchase private health insurance especially if not all
employers offer it. In the book Healing of America, T. R. Reid tells a story of a woman
named Nikki White. Nikki White died because she had too much money to qualify for
Medicare and didnt have enough money to buy private insurance. She was diagnosed
with systemic lupus erythematosus, which is highly treatable with medicines. Nikki did
not have the money to pay for this out of pocket, still didnt qualify for Medicare, and
was still completely without any insurance coverage; she died from the completely
manageable disease a few years later (Reid). Because healthcare is so expensive for
people who dont qualify for Medicare, if someone slightly above the poverty become ill
and has to go to the hospital, paying those bills off may well push them into poverty.
Health in general is also a big issue for people in poverty because most of them grew up
no used to going see the doctor. If a person in poverty, or even slightly above poverty gets
very sick and has to go to the hospital, the cost of medical bills can pull them into deeper
poverty forever. This reinforces the circle of poverty in that since a person is in poverty,

Hector 7
they dont have healthcare, and since they dont have healthcare, it is very expensive if
they ever get sick, and so if they get sick, they are pulled down further into poverty and
will probably never be able to afford healthcare.
Baton Rouge, Louisiana is a perfect example of people in poverty being cast out
to certain parts of a city. There are two very distinct postal codes that show the two
extremes within the city: 70810 and 70805. These postal codes are about 15 minutes apart
from each other, and can both be seen while driving down one road. By race, the
population split in 70805 is 93.5% black and 4.7% white whereas in 70810, the
population split is 62% white and 31.9% black ("ZIP code data"). The poverty rate in
70805 is significantly higher than in 70810 and as a result the people in 70805 are much
worse off than those in the same situation in 70810. For example, in 70805, out of all of
those employed, there are 16.6% of those employed people still in poverty, while in
70810, only 7.9% of those employed are in poverty. That means that living in the 70810
zip code while employed cuts the chance of being in poverty in half. As stated earlier, it is
generally more expected for unemployed people to be in poverty, the chance of this is,
however, also different between the two parts of Baton Rouge. Of the unemployed people
in 70805, 44.60% of them are living in poverty, and in 70810, 23.20% are living in
poverty. Once again, living in 70810 cuts the chance of poverty in half (Livermore). The
average house value in 70810 is $218,000, which significantly reduces the number of
low-income people that could even have the chance to live there. That is, of course, only
an average and so some houses may be in the price-range of lower income families but
definitely not many ("ZIP code data").
Baton Rouge is the perfect model for the statistics throughout the United States.
Almost every big city has distinct regions where there is more poverty. This is usually in

Hector 8
the inner city since the wealthy people could afford to move out to the suburbs, leaving
only lower income people in the middle of the city. When these wealthier people moved
to the outskirts of towns, they also took jobs with them, leaving no jobs for the lower
income people in the inner city who really need the jobs. The people in the city usually
have no means of getting to a job that isnt within walking distance, leaving many of
them without any job opportunities.
Poverty is a worldwide, nationwide, statewide, and even citywide problem. The
fact that Obama compared poverty in part of the United States to poverty in a third world
country shows how far behind the US is in beginning to solve this issue (Tough).
Politians are scared to begin solving poverty because it will require a lot of money at
first, which is frowned upon by most of the citizens here. Once a politician gets over the
fear of being criticized, progress can begin to be made toward eradicating poverty.
Creating universal healthcare is a good step towards helping people in poverty, and
universal healthcare in the United States is currently being worked on, but alone it will
not solve the issue of poverty completely. Structural violence plays one of the biggest
roles in poverty, so it should be focused on along with education, childhood development,
and job availability. Once all of theses issues have been addressed, poverty can be
eradicated nationwide in the United States.

Hector 9

Works Cited
Building the Brains Air Trafc Control System. Diss. Harvard University, 2010.
privately published, Web.
<http://moodle2.lsu.edu/pluginfile.php/736053/mod_resource/content/1/WP11[1].
pdf>.
"Facts and Studies." Council for American Private Education. Council for American
Private Education. Web. 10 Mar 2014. <http://www.capenet.org/facts.html>.
Farmer, Paul. "An Anthropology of Structural Violence."Current Anthropology. 45.3
(2004): 305-325. Web. 10 Mar. 2014.
<http://moodle2.lsu.edu/pluginfile.php/735955/mod_resource/content/1/farmer1.p
df>.
Livermore, Michelle. "POVERTY IN LOUISIANA." Honors 2013. LSU. Louisiana,
Baton Rouge. 06 Feb 2014. Lecture.
Seccombe, Karen. Families in Poverty. 1. Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 20077. 1-212. Print.
Tough, Paul. "The Birthplace of Obama the Politician ."New York Times Magazine. 19 08
2012: n. page. Web. 10 Mar. 2014.
<http://moodle2.lsu.edu/pluginfile.php/735974/mod_resource/content/1/The
Birthplace of Obama the Politician .pdf>.
Kidder, Tracy. Mountains beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, A Man Who
Would Cure the Maryland: Random House Inc, 2004. Print.
Reid, T. R. The Healing of America. New York: The Penguin Press, 2009. Print.

Hector 10
United States. Department of Commerce. Health Insurance Historical Tables. 2012. Web.
<http://www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics-Data-and-Systems/Statistics-Trendsand-Reports/NationalHealthExpendData/downloads/highlights.pdf>.
United States. Department of Labor. Economic News Release. Washington DC: , 2014.
Web. <http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm>.
"ZIP code data." Zip-codes. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Mar 2014. <http://www.zipcodes.com/zip-code/70805/zip-code-70805-2010-census.asp>.