Sociological Perspectives on Poverty

0:00 alright so in this final video we are going to apply the big three sociological perspectives to this topic of poverty and we're also going to discuss the potential solutions about what we can specifically do here in the United States to overcome the issues of pertaining to poverty that we're currently experiencing before we do that though I just wanted to provide a few more statistics to help again debunk this myth that poor people are just poor because they're lazier because they aren't working hard enough which is kind of the rhetoric that's supported by this idea of the American Dream in our society that anyone can overcome poverty that anyone can improve their social standing and achieve upward social mobility if they just work hard enough there's also this myth that's out there

0:45 that some people believe that people want to be poor so they can take advantage of the system if you've ever heard of the awful term of a welfare queen people that just have have children and refuse to work so they can have their family supported by subsidies and benefits that are put in place by the federal government to protect people who are living below the poverty line of course again there may be some exceptions to every rule right there are always going to be individuals who challenge these who support these myths that are in place but that is definitely not the norm here the vast majority of people who are poor who are currently living in poverty do not want to be there the vast majority of people that are living in poverty are doing everything in their ability to get

1:31 out of poverty but as we'll discuss here in this coming slide it's not as easy as some of us may think it is so with the total number of poor people currently living in the United States is 46 million over 46 million people are currently living below the poverty line in the United States out of that 46 million over 16 million of them right so about a third of them are people under the age of 18 and another 3.5 million of people living in poverty are over the age of 65 right so people under the age of 18 legally defined as minors in our society wouldn't expect them to be working in the first place people of it age of 65 which is kind of understood as

2:16 the general age of that people retire in our society wouldn't expect them to be working in the in the other place so that leaves us with about twenty six million poor people in the United States who are between the ages of 18 and 64 so out of these 26 million people between the age of 18 and 64 that are currently living in poverty over nine million of them are working full or part-time already right so they are working they're just not getting paid a living wage you know there's a lot of discussions in our society that the minimum wage and minimum wage needs to be drastically higher in order for people to actually work and get paid that puts them above the poverty line another about 3.5 million of people current living in poverty are unemployed but they're looking for work right for

3:03 whatever reasons maybe they just can't find a job again think of the activity we did with Mason at the beginning of the semester sometimes people do everything in their power to get a job but these structural barriers in place can prevent individuals from attaining employment another four million individuals who are living in poverty are disabled which prevents them from working about 77,000 of people who are living in poverty are in the Armed Forces so something very important a lot of veterans living in poverty in the United States and then the remaining nine million people are able-bodied but not in the workforce and not looking for jobs okay so let's put this in context eighty percent of the poor people in the United States are either too young or

3:49 too old to work they're already working they're looking for a job they're disabled or they're in the Armed Forces over 80% right as for the remaining 20% of poor people most are either taking care of small children or elderly relatives preventing them from finding even part-time employment they might be retired for health reasons or like you they're in school a growing number of college Dage adults in the United States we're living in poverty right so it's not that these people are poor just because they want to be or because they're not working hard enough there's structural factors that take place that prevent opportu for certain individuals and of course as we unpack in these coming weeks the number of marginalized identities that an individual occupies makes this

4:36 problem significantly worse say if you're a person of color if you are a woman if you are a single parent if you have a lower education level if you have a criminal background all of these factors impact the likelihood that you would ever be able to get out of poverty or achieve upward social mobility so in reality the number of poor people who could really work if they wanted to is very very small very small and definitely much smaller than most people think and the common believes that poor people could really work if they wanted to isn't it while there are likely some individuals who do try to take advantage of the system the idea of welfare queens being the norm is also very much a myth and here's a link for a video that we won't watch now but if you open up the slides on blackboard you can click this

5:22 link and it tells you how this stereotype of the welfare queen was exaggerated based off of one individual many years ago and since then that's just kind of been perpetuated in society as this mythical stereotype that really doesn't have any solid basis in reality let's take a look at some sociological explanations of poverty will start with functionalists which is kind of problematic in my perspective here in explaining the persistence and the functions of poverty in our society so if you remember functionalism as the theory assumes that society structures exist because they help society function and maintain a level of stability in society so in turn functionalism argues that stratification exists because it is

6:08 actually functional and inevitable for any society so in any society functionalist would argue that some jobs are considered more important or have more prestige in comparison to others and these more prestigious jobs typically require more skill and knowledge than others for example being a surgeon an executive or a lawyer requires a higher level of education and more skill since important or more prestigious jobs are more difficult to attain functionalist would argue that society should encourage individuals to pursue those important by promising them higher incomes and rewards as in other words you know if working as a as a lawyer requires let's say eight years of school outside of high school and it would pay the same

6:53 amount as working as a janitor which requires no additional education or training outside of high school why would anyone want to put in that extra eight years of work so by incentivizing these more prestigious jobs by providing them with higher incomes functionless argue and enables society as a whole to kind of create this healthy source of competition to encourage certain individuals who are able to pursue these higher levels of education in these higher levels of skill development and critical thinking to do so and as a result we should reward them with higher higher levels of income so as such stratification is inevitable for functional society is what the argument that structural functionalist would make furthermore according to functionalism if stratification is inevitable poverty then also becomes inevitable if poor

7:41 people are poor it is because they lack the ability to gain the skills and knowledge necessary for high-paying jobs according to functionalism poverty is also functional for society remember functionalist are always trying to provide some sort of justification or explanation as to how even perceivably bad things in our society are actually good for society as a whole so functionless would argue that poverty is actually functional because poor people do the work that rich people don't want to do right we need people doing jobs like custodial service and working for sanitation and being fast-food workers which definitely don't have a lot of prestige to them but we need people who are willing to do those jobs because they are important for society as a whole programs and services

8:26 that help poor people provide jobs for others right so the fact that we have a welfare system and that we need social workers and policy makers in place to to kind of enable these the distribution of subsidies and benefits creates a lot of jobs for society which is a good thing poor people also help the economy by purchasing goods like day-old bread and use clothing that would otherwise go to waste so another functionalist argument here according to this line of reasoning the middle and upper classes have a vested interest in neglecting poverty to help ensure its continued existence so obviously a functionalist perspective the very fact that it's arguing that poverty is good and that it should be maintained very problematic which is why I personally as a sociologist don't find

9:12 much utility in a structural functionalist argument obvious problems with functionalism number one who decides what jobs are quote unquote important in the first place and deserving of more money as the video we watched earlier suggested it's very difficult for me to come up with any logical argument that a CEO of a company deserves to be making three hundred and eighty times more money than an average worker at the company so who decides how we're going to distribute wealth from these ways and assign different levels of prestige and incumbent jobs another problem is that functionalism implies that people can improve their economic status by improving their skills or knowledge which obviously disregards our society's lack of equal opportunity as we've talked about often times structural barriers in place prevent individuals from getting a higher degree or obtaining certain jobs in society

9:58 conflict theory I think a much more applicable and useful sociological perspective to explain poverty and what we can do to eradicate it conflict theorists argue that stratification results from a lack of opportunity and from discrimination and prejudiced against the poor women and people of color conflict theory argues that poverty and social stratification is neither necessary nor inevitable in society conflict there's also argue that people with power take advantage of their position at the top of society so they can stay at the top even if this means oppressing people at the bottom right so this is really important when we're talking about poverty here recognizing that if that top 1% of the United States the top wealthiest percent of people that own 40% of our nation's

10:43 wealth if that wealth was more equally distributed throughout people in the u.s. specifically helping people who are currently living in poverty we could have a much more equal distribution of wealth but still allowed for a healthy degree of competition right it's not saying that everyone needs to be paid the exact same amount we can still you know pay more money to those more prestigious jobs that require high levels of training and skill but we could definitely level out that distribution of inequality instead of having it be this huge disparity we could level it out more and doing so would drastically reduce the poverty that we have in the United States and save our economy billions of dollars conflict theory are recognizes that they're often structural barriers that prevent individuals from achieving upward social mobility for instance it's hard to get a job in quote-unquote pull

11:28 yourself up by the bootstraps if you are homeless and are living in poverty since most jobs require that you have things like a residence or a phone or reliable transportation it's also hard to get a better job if you can't afford to go to college if you have children or other dependents at home etc so complex theory recognizes these discrepancies that prevent certain individuals specifically those who occupy marginalized identities from achieving this upward social mobility and lastly we'll take a look at a symbolic interactionist perspective here unlike the functionalist and conflict views symbolic interactionism does not try to explain why we have stratification in the first place rather against the bong interactionism very interested in how we as human beings and as groups of humans assign meanings to

12:14 things and kind of ascribe symbols and systems of language symbolic interactionism is interested in examining the differences that stratification makes for people's lifestyles and their interaction with other people so for example symbolic interactionism would recognize that the labeling of certain groups as poor affects so other members of society view and interact with them right so let's wrap it up here for now and then in the final video we will take a closer look at some of the actual implications that poverty has on people's lives in the United States and then we'll also address some possible solutions for poverty