Identifying the Working Poor

In the 1960’s one in four women who had children less than six years old worked outside the home. By the year 2000, a remarkable two-thirds of all women worked outside the home. Aside from the feminist movement, this increase is due in part to the strong work requirements of the welfare reform of 1996. It put women in a position of making a difficult decision; either stay home with their children and lose welfare or go to work and pay for child care. Many chose the former and found that life was more difficult to afford than before.

Those who went to work and were already poor found that they only had access to jobs that paid minimum wage. Since they earned wages below the poverty line, they were classified as the working poor. Currently, an estimated 2.8 million working families are poor. Chaudry argues that the government wants those who are impoverished to simply work harder, but often times those who are part of the working class poor are working the hardest. In fact, many of them work over 60 hours a week and possibly work two jobs yet they still can’t pay their bills because their wages are so low.

A group of people called the near-poor experience similar struggles as the working poor. There are an estimated 53 million people considered as near poor whose wages come in at 100 percent to 200 percent of the poverty line. The federal poverty guideline standards can be really harsh on these families because even if they make a dollar over the threshold they will be denied support they actually need. Government policies are not the only factors contributing to our nation’s poverty.

There are thousands of people in Milwaukie who currently find themselves in the working-poor and near poor categories after they lost their jobs due to globalization. Several top companies found that they would save a lot of money by exporting jobs to other countries and paying foreign workers a fraction of what they would pay American workers. This left 60 thousand people competing for 8 thousand jobs. Many families had to go to local churches to accept food donations when before they were the ones donating food.

Overall, one in eight people in American live below the poverty and 12 million are children. There are 33 million people without health insurance most of those are the working poor. Poverty affects every type of person in different ways and for different reasons. The middle class who cannot afford to pay their bills and what to maintain the middle class lifestyle, live on credit to avoid the poverty stigma and have a negative net worth. This is called asset poverty. Elder poverty is the poverty of senior citizens who cannot afford health care and can no longer work. Child poverty is the poverty of children who suffer in the classroom because their brains are malnourished. Generational poverty is poverty that goes on for two generations or more. These people grow up with the mindset that they will never get out of poverty so they never do.