Poverty in America Summary

CASE 3.3
Poverty in America
AS A RESULT OF THE ECONOMIC CRISIS and
recession of 2008-09?the most serious economic melt-
down since the Great Depression of the 1930s?an addi-
tional 4 million Americans have fallen into poverty. Altogether,
around 50 million adults now live below the poverty line, offi-
cially defined as an income below $11,490 for a single adult
or less than $23,550 for a family of four. 82 Nearly fifty years
after President Lyndon Johnson declared ?war on poverty,”
16 percent of our fellow citizens, many of them children,
continue to live in penury. That’s about one out of every six
people. Even before the current economic collapse, the aver-
age American adult had a 60 percent chance of living at least
one year below the poverty line and a 33 percent chance of
experiencing dire poverty. 83
Poverty is particularly hard on children. Among other
things, it mars their brain development. This is not just a
result of poor nutrition or exposure to environmental tox-
ins, as one might expect. Rather, researchers have found
that children growing up in very poor families experience
unhealthy levels of stress hormones that impair memory
and language acquisition. 84 Still, many people think that
those described as ?poor? in the United States are pretty
well-off by world standards. The truth is, in life expec-
tancy, twenty-year-old U.S. males rank thirty-sixth among
the world’s nations, and twenty-year-old U.S. females rank
twenty-first. Our infant mortality rate is worse than that in
twenty-one other Western nations. Beijing’s infant mortality
rate, for instance, is lower than New York City’s. In fact, if
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116
PART ONE
MORAL PHILOSOPHY AND BUSINESS
the majority of Americans believe that redistribution favors
racial minorities (an idea they tend to dislike), they sup-
port the present political system, which assists those at the
socioeconomic bottom far less than European governments
do. Indeed, cash assistance for poor families in the United
States amounts to only one-tenth of 1 percent of the nation’s
economic output; the average for O.E.C.D. countries is 11
times greater.104 That’s one reason you are twice as likely
to be poor if you live in the United States than if you live in
Western Europe. 105
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. Does the existence of poverty imply that our socio-
economic system is unjust? Does the concentration of
poverty in certain groups make it more unjust than it
would be otherwise?
fewer than half of those entitled to it receive the full amount.
Of family households headed by women, 38.4 percent have
incomes below $25,000 and 21 percent have incomes below
$15,000.97 Not only do households headed by women earn
only half the median income of all households, but also their
overall net worth is two-thirds less. 98
Most poor people in our nation?about two-thirds of
them?are white, but blacks are about two and a half times
more likely to be poor. Whereas one out of every ten white
Americans is poor, one of every four African Americans and
one out of every five Hispanics live below the poverty line.
Many members of these minority communities have suc-
ceeded in moving up the economic ladder, but the overall
picture is disheartening. African American family income,
to pick just one statistic, is only 62.8 percent that of white
family income.99
Although it is doubtful that there is more social mobility in
the United States than in Europe, what is certainly clear is that
Americans believe that they have plenty of it. In line with that
belief, 71 percent of them, but only 40 percent of Europeans,
think that the poor have a good chance to escape their
plight.100 Americans figure that the poor can push their way
out of poverty on their own because they typically assume
that one’s success or failure is largely determined by factors
within one’s own control. 101 Americans, even poor Americans,
favor individualistic explanations of poverty (such as lack of
effort or ability, deficient morals, and poor work habits) over
structural explanations (such as inadequate schooling, low
wages, and lack of jobs), whereas Europeans favor structural
explanations of poverty over individualistic explanations. 102
They tend to see the poor as unfortunate rather than as per-
sonally responsible for their condition.
Seventy percent of Germans, for example, express the
belief that people are poor because of imperfections in soci-
ety, not their own laziness, whereas 70 percent of Americans
hold the opposite view. 103 Because of that belief and because
2. What are the causes of poverty? Are they structural
or individual? How is one’s answer to this question
likely to affect one’s view of the justice or injustice of
poverty?
3. What moral obligation, if any, do we have individually
and as a society to reduce poverty? What steps could
be taken? What role should business play?
4. How would a utilitarian view the facts about poverty?
What are the implications for our society of the con-
cept of the declining utility of money?
5. How would a libertarian like Nozick view poverty in
the United States? How plausible do you find the
libertarian’s preference for private charity over public
assistance?
6. How would our economy be assessed from the point
of view of Rawls’s difference principle? Can it be
plausibly maintained that, despite poverty, our system
works to “the greatest expected benefit of the least
advantaged?? Is this an appropriate standard?
Copyright 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights,
some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially
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