EconomicIssues
Poverty &
Unemployment
Unemployment
Unemployment means that all Americans are not equal………
Unemployment can lead to
• poor health
• low self respect
• low standard of living (poverty)
• poor housing or homelessness
• poor education
• crime
•Unemployment is not shared equally amongst ethnicgroups and it is a major problem in American Cities.
•Unemployment is increasing and is hurting the ethnicminorities more than the whites.
•In 2003, the unemployment rate for Blacks was doublethat of Whites.
•Also Blacks do not earn as much as Whites.
• Black earnings are only two thirds those of whiteearnings. This can be explain because:
- Blacks drop out of school earlier
- Even when Blacks and Whites have equal qualifications, black earningsare lower.
- Discrimination still exists when hiring for jobs.
However….
• many minorities are reaching top jobs thandecades ago with better education, especially forAPI’s leading to improved job prospects andgreater earning potential.
• Less racism than decades ago has also helped.We now have an African American as President ofthe USA.
Poverty in America
Many Americans cannot afford the basic necessities
What do you consider to be a necessity?
The American Dream would have us believe that all Americansare rich and enjoy a high standard of living. However theAmerican Reality is that all Americans are not equal and thereare millions of poor people in the USA.
food
house
sanitation
water
healthcare
clothes
transport
Factors which can lead to poverty:
• Unemployment
• Low paid jobs
• Low educational achievement
• Discrimination
• Single parent families
• Welfare cutbacks
• The poverty cycle
Who are the poor?
•Ethnic minorities are three times more likely to suffer from povertythan whites.
•A child who lives in a poor family will not get the sameopportunity for education or healthcare as a child in a well-to-dofamily.
• The poverty rate for African Americans was 24.7% in 2004 and21.9% for Hispanics.
•Nearly 1 in 3 black children suffer the effects of poverty in theUSA
•The overall US poverty rate increased to 12.7% in 2004.
• ‘White flight’ (middle class white people leaving to live in thesuburbs outside the inner cities) has left many ethnic minoritiesliving together in poverty in the inner cities – ghettos.
Welfare Reforms
Poor Families have also suffered the effects of cutbacks in welfare.
In 1996, ‘Temporary Assistance for Needy Families’ (TANF), wasintroduced.
This provided welfare payments on condition that people worked fortheir welfare.
It provided childcare payments so that single parents (mainlymothers) could go and work a forty hour week for their welfare.
It also imposed a lifetime limit of five years on welfare payments.
This ‘Welfare to Work’ programme forced many people to find workand it eventually removed others from welfare for ever.
This benefited America as long as the American Economy wasincreasing, as more jobs were available, however since 2000, the USeconomy has been getting weaker, and poverty has again increased.
This has left many children and single parentfamilies living in poverty in the USA. The majoritybeing ethnic minorities!
Questions
Questions 1-7 on page 43 ofIdeology and Emerging NationsBook.