Question

Some of your family members are having a discussion about politics. You try to run away, but unfortunately you can’t. Your cousin says, “Man, poor people are bums! They just want to be on Instagram all day, showing off expensive stuff they bought instead of going to work.” Your aunt responds by saying, “I don’t know. When I came to the United States, you could get a decent paying job, but now a lot of people are working, but they’re still poor. They’re not getting paid enough, and they have no benefits.”

a. Explain what theory of poverty your cousin believes. How does this theory explain the existence of poverty in our society? How does this theory propose to solve poverty?

b. What theory of poverty is your aunt expressing? How does this theory explain the existence of poverty in our society? How does this theory propose to solve poverty?

Answer 1

Answer A: Cousin belives in theory on " individual poverty": In which people are in poverty because they are lazy, uneducated, ignorant, or otherwise inferior in some manner. and if this theory were true, then it would follow that impoverished people are basically the same people every year. And if that were true, we could whip poverty by helping that particular 15% of the population to figure things out and climb out of poverty.

Answer B: Here Aunt is expressing the  theory of "Structurall poverty": In which people are in poverty because they find themselves in holes in the economic system that deliver them inadequate income. Its a failure of the job market to provide a proper number of jobs which pay enough to keep families out of poverty. Even if unemployment is low, the labor market may be saturated with low-paying, part-time work that lacks benefits (thus limiting the number of full-time, good paying jobs).  It follows from this that impoverished people are not the same people every year. It follows further that the only way to reduce poverty is to alter the economic structure so as to reduce the number of low-income holes in it.