Poverty can invoke difficult times when it comes to families or individuals. Poverty can lead to starvation, homelessness, and health issues. The organization that my group has chosen to take on is the “Allentown Rescue Mission”, which helps men who are homeless and provide shelter to them. As of now, there are not a lot of shelters that target men and they are not considered to be needing help as much as women are. There is also the worry that men could cause stress to the females because they symbol a past that they wish to get away from, therefore, they are left to fight for themselves. The book that I have chosen to read is called Poverty in America: A Handbook by John Iceland. In this book, Iceland discusses …show more content…
There are numerous social programs that assist the poor and the cost of everything has increased as well. John Iceland discusses the beginning of poverty, a concept that was believed to be defined on the social conditions, as Iceland states, “the roots of poverty lay primarily not in structural economic causes but in individual behavior.” (Iceland 338) The term, “pauper” was introduced as a means to describe one who receives aid from the government and those who did were often viewed as defective or were considered to be delinquents (Iceland 372). There are stigmas when it comes to the word “poor”, but many Americans are experiencing it. He explains that U.S government did not have a method of measuring poverty until 1969, when the Office of Management and Budget gave a statistical definition of poverty (Iceland 538). It was meant to see how much a family would have to make to be considered below the poverty line. He explains what it means to be in poverty, for example, he reports that food insecurity is stated as, “a household having difficulty…providing food for all their members due to a lack of resources” (Iceland 950). The book mainly focuses on poverty but within the topic, it goes into the issues of inequalities within the classes and the stigma of living in …show more content…
They live in neighborhoods where they only know what is around them and the children living there are more likely to be involved with crime or with drug-use. There is also the problem of high pregnancy rates. In a way, the different classes live in different societies and are excluded from one another. Some people still live in extreme poverty, which is living on less than $1.25 a day. As of 2011, 6.6 percent of people were still living in these conditions (Iceland 947). Yet, there are still about 1.4 billion people of the world’s population that live on less than $1.25 a day (Iceland 1251).
Social exclusion can happen and is described as, “the degree to which the economically deprived suffer from multiple forms of social deprivation” (Iceland 747). John Iceland discussed the three elements of social exclusion defined by A.B. Atkinson and would be stated as such,
“1) relativity-individuals are excluded from a…community or society; 2) agency-people are excluded by…people or institutions, such as employers, schools…3) dynamics-…function not just of current circumstances but…of future prospects.” (Iceland