Sociology

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rethinking american poverty bymark r. rank

It’s a fundamental paradox: in America,

the wealthiest country on earth, one also

finds the highest rates of poverty in the

developed world. Whether we examine

children’s rates of poverty, poverty

among working age adults, poverty

within single parent families, or overall

rates of poverty, the story is much the

same—the United States has exceedingly

high levels of impoverishment.

It’s a fundamental paradox: in America,

the wealthiest country on earth, one also

finds the highest rates of poverty in the

developed world. Whether we examine

children’s rates of poverty, poverty

among working age adults, poverty

within single parent families, or overall

rates of poverty, the story is much the

same—the United States has exceedingly

high levels of impoverishment.

rethinking american poverty bymark r. rank

17spring 2011 contexts

food stamps at some point during childhood. Life expectancy in

Harlem is shorter than in Bangladesh. The bottom 60 percent

of the American population currently holds less than 1 percent

of the financial wealth in the country. And two thirds of the

counties that black children are growing up in are considered

high poverty with respect to impoverished neighborhoods.

Although there are several possible explanations for why

these conditions exist, the argument developed here is that a

major reason has to do with how we as a society have tended

to conceptualize the issue of poverty and, based upon this

thinking, how we have acted (or better put, failed to act) toward

the issue.

The traditional manner of thinking about poverty in the

U.S. has viewed impoverishment as largely the result of individ-

ual inadequacies and failings. These shortcomings include not

working hard enough, failure to acquire sufficient skills, or just

making bad decisions. Consequently, the problem of poverty is

often seen through a lens of individual pathology. Since indi-

viduals are perceived as having brought poverty onto them-

selves, our collective and societal obligations are seen as limited.

The age-old distinction between the deserving versus the unde-

serving poor reflects this perspective—unless the working-age

poor have very good grounds for their

poverty, they’re deemed largely unde-

serving of help. Poverty is therefore

understood as primarily affecting those

who choose not to play by the rules of

the game. Ultimately, this perspective reflects and reinforces

the myths and ideals of American society: there are economic

opportunities for all, individualism and self-reliance are para-

mount, and hard work is rewarded.

This overall mindset has long influenced both the general

public’s attitudes toward the poor and much of the policy and

academic work analyzing poverty. Nevertheless, it seriously mis-

construes the true nature of poverty and fosters a lack of polit-

ical and social will to address the problem itself. Three major

changes are essential for realistically and proactively reframing

American impoverishment.

poverty affects us all A first fundamental shift in thinking is the recognition that

poverty affects us all. All too often we view poverty as some-

one else’s problem, or think that poverty is confined to certain

areas and neighborhoods (such as inner cities or remote rural

areas), and that by avoiding such areas we can simply ignore

the issue. The notion is “out of sight, out of mind.”

Clearly, this perspective is incorrect and intellectually lazy.

In one way or another, poverty affects us all. There are at least

two ways of thinking about this. The first is that whether we

realize it or not, we pay a steep price for our high rates of

poverty. As mentioned earlier, the extent and depth of poverty

and economic inequality in the U.S. are far greater than in any

other Western industrialized country.

As a result, we spend considerably more money than

needed on social problems associated with poverty. These

include greater health problems, family problems, a less able

work force, and so on down a long list. When we speak about

homeland security, these are the issues that undermine us and

our security as a nation. We wind up paying a tremendous

price for quietly allowing so many of our citizens and commu-

nities to remain mired in poverty.

As an example, a study by the economist Harry Holzer and

colleagues attempted to quantify the annual monetary cost of

childhood poverty in the U.S. They calculated the economic

costs that growing up in poverty had for future earnings, risk

of engaging in crime, and health quality in later life. Their esti-

mate was that the overall cost of childhood poverty was an

eye opening $500 billion per year—nearly 4 percent of this

country’s GDP.

The result is that we end up spending much of our tax dol-

lars and resources on the by-products of poverty, assuredly a

more expensive approach over the long term than preventing

poverty in the first place. In short, each of us pays dearly in a

number of ways for letting poverty exist at such levels, but we

too often fail to see this connection.

However, there is also a second way of thinking about

All too often, we view poverty as someone else’s problem.

All images from series “AmericanOutsiders.” © Tom Stone, tomstonegallery.com.

As a result, half of U.S. children will reside in a household that uses

Contexts, Vol. 10, No. 2, pp. 16-21. ISSN 1536-5042, electronic ISSN 1537-6052. © 2011 American Sociological Association. http://contexts.sagepub.com. DOI 10.1177/1536504211408794

18 contexts.org

poverty as affecting us all. And that comes in considering the

chances that an average American will directly encounter poverty

at some point during his or her lifetime. As it turns out, the num-

ber of Americans who are touched by poverty during adulthood

is exceedingly high. My co-author, sociologist Thomas Hirschl,

and I have estimated that between the ages of 20 and 75, nearly

60 percent of Americans will experience at least one year below

the poverty line and three quarters will experience a year either

in or near poverty. Perhaps more surprising is the fact that two

thirds of Americans between the ages of 20 and 65 will wind up

using a social welfare program such as Food Stamps or Medicaid;

40 percent will use such a program in at least five years scat-

tered throughout their working age adulthood.

Consequently, although those in poverty and welfare recip-

ients are routinely vilified and portrayed as members of “margin-

alized groups” on the fringes of society, most of us will find

ourselves below the poverty line and using a social safety net

program at some point. After all, during the course of a lifetime,

any number of unexpected, detrimental things can happen—

job loss, family break ups, or the development of a major health

problem. In addition, recent research has shown that this life

course risk of poverty and economic instability has been rising

since the 1990s. More and more families, including middle class

ones, are experiencing greater income volatility, greater instabil-

ity in the labor market, and a lack of benefits such as health and

unemployment insurance. Jobs are no longer as stable as they

once were, health care benefits are harder to get, and the safety

net has weakened over time.

A first shift in thinking therefore asks the question, “Who

is at risk of poverty and its consequences?” The answer is: vir-

tually all of us. As a result, each of us has a vested interest in

and an imperative for reducing poverty in the U.S.

structural failings A second critical change in thinking is a recognition that

American poverty is largely the result of failings at the economic

and political levels, rather than at the individual level. In the

past, we’ve emphasized individual inadequacies as the major

reason for poverty; that is, people aren’t motivated enough,

aren’t working hard enough, have failed to acquire enough

skills and education, or have just made bad decisions. These

behaviors and attributes are seen as leading people into poverty

and keeping them there. And in fact, we tend to confront most

social problems in this country as individual pathologies.

In contrast to this perspective, the basic problem lies in a

shortage of viable opportunities for all Americans. Certainly,

particular individual shortcomings, such as the lack of education

or skills, help explain who is more likely to be left out in the

competition to locate and secure good opportunities, but they

cannot explain why there’s a shortage of such opportunities in

the first place. In order to answer that question, we must turn

to the inability of the economic and political structures to pro-

vide the supports and opportunities necessary to lift all of us

out of poverty.

19spring 2011 contexts

The most obvious example is in the mismatch between

the number of decent paying jobs and the pool of labor in

search of those jobs. Over the past 30 years, the U.S. econ-

omy has been producing more and more low-paying jobs, part-

time jobs, and jobs without benefits (it’s estimated that

approximately one third of all jobs are low-paying—less than

$11.50 an hour). And of course, beyond those in low-paying

jobs, there are millions of unemployed Americans at any point

in time. During the recent economic downturn, six to seven

people have been competing for every single job opening. Cou-

pled with the country’s lack of universal coverage for child care,

health care, and affordable housing, this situation leaves an

increasing number of families economically vulnerable.

In class, I often use the analogy of musical chairs to help

students recognize this disconnect. Picture a game with ten

players, but only eight chairs. When the music stops, who’s

most likely to be left standing? It will be those who are at a

disadvantage in terms of competing for the available chairs

(less agility, reduced speed, a bad position when the music

stops, and so on). However, given that the game is structured

in a way such that two players are bound to lose, these indi-

vidual attributes only explain who loses, not why there are los-

ers in the first place. Ultimately, there are simply not enough

chairs for those playing the game.

The critical mistake that’s been made in the past is that

we‘ve equated the question of who loses at the game with

the question of why the game inevitably produces losers. They

are, in fact, distinct and separate questions. So while charac-

teristics such as deficiencies in skills or education or being in a

single parent family help to explain who’s at a heightened risk

of encountering poverty, the fact that poverty exists in the first

place results not from these characteristics, but from a failure

of the economic and political structures to provide enough

decent opportunities and supports for the whole of society.

By focusing solely upon individual characteristics, we can

shuffle people up or down in terms of their likelihood to land

a job with good earnings, but when

there aren’t enough of these jobs to go

around, somebody will still end up in

poverty. We’re playing a large-scale ver-

sion of musical chairs.

The recognition of this dynamic rep-

resents a fundamental shift in thinking

from the past. It helps explain why the social policies of the last

three decades have been largely ineffective in reducing poverty

rates. We‘ve spent our attention and resources on altering play-

ers’ incentives and disincentives through various welfare reform

measures, or, in a very limited way, upgrading their skills and

ability to compete with various job training programs, but we’ve

left the structure of the game untouched.

Overall rates of poverty do go up and down, but primarily

as a result of changes on the structural level (that is, increases

or decreases in the number of available opportunities—the

“chairs”). In particular, the performance of the economy has

been historically important, since, when the economy is expand-

ing, more opportunities are available for the competing pool

of labor and their families. The reverse occurs when the econ-

omy slows down, as we saw in the 2000s and the economic

collapse that began in 2008. To attribute the rise of poverty

over the past ten years to individual inadequacies or lowered

motivation is absurd. Rather, the increase in poverty has every-

thing to do with deteriorating economic conditions, particularly

in the last few years.

Likewise, changes in various social supports and the social

safety net affect how well families are able to avoid poverty.

When such supports were increased by the War on Poverty ini-

tiatives of the 1960s and buoyed by a strong economy, poverty

rates declined significantly. Likewise, when Social Security ben-

efits were expanded during the 1960s and 1970s, poverty rates

Between the ages of 20 and 75, nearly 60 percent of Americans will experience at least one year below the poverty line.

20 contexts.org

among the elderly dropped sharply. Conversely, when social sup-

ports have been eroded, as in the case of children’s programs

over the past 30 years, rates of poverty among those relying on

such services have gone up.

The recognition of poverty as a structural failing also makes

it clear why the U.S. has such high rates of poverty when com-

pared to other Western countries. It’s not that Americans are

less motivated or less skilled than those in other countries, but

that our economy has been producing millions of low-wage jobs

and our social policies have done relatively little to economically

support families compared to other industrialized countries.

From this perspective, one key to addressing poverty is to

increase the labor market opportunities and social supports

available to American households. We must shift our thinking

to recognize the fundamental distinction between who loses

at the game and why the game produces losers in the first place.

the moral ground Let’s turn to the third shift in thinking that’s needed to cre-

ate a more realistic and proactive approach toward poverty. And

that is the moral ground on which we view poverty in America

must change. In the past, our moral perspective has been rooted

in the ethos of individual blame, with a resulting general accept-

ance of the status quo. In other words, since people bring it

upon themselves, poverty’s their problem, not mine.

But poverty is a moral problem. It represents an injustice

of a substantial magnitude. Severe deprivation and hardship

have been documented in countless studies—not to mention

millions of human lives. And, as argued earlier, a large portion

of this poverty is the result of failings at the structural rather

than the individual level, which places much of the responsi-

bility for poverty beyond the poor.

However, what makes this injustice particularly grievous is

the stark contrast between the wealth, abundance, and

resources of America and its levels of destitution. Something

is seriously wrong when we find that, in a country with the

most abundant resources in the world, there are children with-

out enough to eat, families who cannot afford health care,

and people sleeping on the streets for lack of shelter.

It should also be noted that the gap between extreme

prosperity and vulnerability has never been wider. The vener-

able economist Paul Samuelson, writing in the first edition of

his introductory economics textbook in 1948, observed that if

we were to make an income pyramid out of a child’s play blocks,

with each layer representing $1,000 of income, the peak would

be somewhat higher than the Eiffel Tower, but almost all of us

would be within several yards of the ground. By the time of

Samuelson’s 2001 edition of the textbook, most of us would

still be within several yards of the ground, but the Eiffel Tower

would now have to be replaced with Mount Everest to repre-

sent those at the top.

Or consider the distance between the average worker’s

salary and the average CEO’s salary. In 1980, the average CEO

of a major corporation earned around 42 times the pay of the

average worker. Today, it is well over

400 times. Adding insult to injury, dur-

ing the past 30 years, an increasing

number of companies have demanded

concessions from their workers, includ-

ing pay cuts and the elimination of

health benefits in order to keep their

labor costs down, while those at the top have prospered beyond

any sense of decency.

Patterns of wealth accumulation have become even more

skewed. The top one percent of the U.S. population currently

owns 42 percent of the country’s entire financial wealth, while the

bottom 60 percent of Americans are in possession of less than 1

percent. And while all of these trends have been emerging, our

social policies have continued to give more to the well-to-do and

less to the economically vulnerable, with the argument that these

policies help all Americans through “trickle down economics.”

A new way of thinking recognizes this as a moral outrage.

Injustice, rather than blame, becomes the moral compass with

which to view poverty amidst abundance. The magnitude of

There’s a fundamental distinction between who loses at the game and why the game produces losers in the first place.

21spring 2011 contexts

such injustice constitutes a strong impetus for change. It signals

that a wrong is being committed and cries out for a remedy. A

shift in thinking is premised upon the idea that social change is

essential for addressing the injustices of poverty.

This is in sharp contrast with the old way of thinking, in

which the moral focus is upon individual blame. Such think-

ing simply reinforces the status quo by letting us do little while

poverty rates climb. The perspective of injustice exhorts us to

actively engage and confront poverty, rather than comfortably

settling for widespread impoverishment.

In his last book, Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or

Community?, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote, “A true

revolution of value will soon cause us to question the fairness

and justice of many of our past and present policies. We are

called to play the Good Samaritan on life’s roadside; but that will

be only an initial act. One day the whole Jericho road must be

transformed so that men and women will not be beaten and

robbed as they make their journey through life. True compas-

sion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it understands

that an edifice that produces beggars needs restructuring. A

true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring

contrast of poverty and wealth.” This revolution of values must

begin with a fundamental shift in how American society under-

stands, and ultimately acts toward, the poverty in which so

many of our citizens live. These are the building blocks on which

to challenge and confront the paradox of poverty amidst plenty.

recommended resources Alberto Alesina and Edward L. Glaeser. Fighting Poverty in the US and Europe: A World of Difference (Oxford University Press, 2004). A comparison of the differing approaches taken in the U.S. and Europe to addressing poverty.

David Brady. Rich Democracies, Poor People: How Politics Explain Poverty (Oxford University Press, 2009). Demonstrates that the extent of poverty across countries is largely the result of variations in social policies and programs.

Jacob S. Hacker. The Great Risk Shift: The New Economic Insecurity and the Decline of the American Dream (Oxford University Press, 2008). Ties Americans’ increasing economic vulnerability over the last 30 years to the shifting of economic risk from government and employers to individuals and families.

Alice O’Connor. Poverty Knowledge: Social Science, Social Policy, and the Poor in Twentieth-century U.S. History (Princeton University Press, 2001). Argues that U.S. poverty research has shifted from a focus on structural causes to an over-emphasis upon individual behavior and personal characteristics as the reasons for poverty.

Mark R. Rank is in the George Warren Brown School of Social Work at Washing-

ton University in St. Louis. He is the author of One Nation, Underprivileged: Why

American Poverty Affects Us All.

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