Final Final Blog Post....

Hey Guys, I promise that this is the last blog post that you will ever have to read for now… But I think it’s time to educate others on the important topic that is at hand: poverty? Poverty as people know it means poor. Poor is correct, but it goes more into depth than just “poor” Did you guys know that living in poverty means limited access to resources that is needed to survive in the world? A higher chance of getting diseases, such as obesity, heart attack, etc.? Because of not having the resources that is needed to survive in the world, many people lack ambition which Is needed if they wanted to become successful in this world. WOW, poverty can do so much damage to society, so how much longer can poverty do to society before society starts to be deteriorate? Let’s hope by the end of this blog, you can educate others about it and fight to reduce poverty in the world….

To reduce poverty, we would have to understand what really causes poverty. In the world, there are so much negative views about poverty that people would rather make fun of those who live in poverty instead of helping them…  Let’s look at these two memes that were being said about poverty….

    

When people look at these memes, all they would want to do is laugh and would not want to help. Theses memes are not sociological because theses memes are going based off what they are seeing in the media. For starters, it’s not only African Americans going through poverty, its other ethnicities as well. Second, African Americans are not “stupid”. African Americans have the same knowledge as Whites, but nobody’s going to say anything about it, because they do not see blacks and whites equal. Think about it for a moment, when do you ever see blacks and whites ever being 
equal? Of course, they would discourage and talk bad about black people because people see black people as “unfit” to do anything in the world. Make sense??? Now let’s move on to the second meme with Paris Hilton… With this meme, the only question that I want to ask and hope you would want to ask as well, HOW CAN POOR PEOPLE JUST BUY MORE MONEY IF THEY NEVER HAD MORE MONEY IN THE FIRST PLACE?? I think when that question gets answered, then this meme would make sense. It’s not sociological at all because they would know that people living in poverty barely has the funds to survive in the world and barely has food to eat, so how can they get more money unless they commit illegal crimes? and what would be the purpose of doing that, so they can continue to get talked down badly??  Now, it’s important to have an informed sociological perspective in everything that we do to educate others on topics. If we don’t have sociological perspectives on things, then we would be completely biased in everything that we see around us. And what good would biasness do for the world? Wouldn’t we just rather the truth and facts instead of false information and opinions? I would rather have the facts than opinions.

This semester, I have learned a great deal about poverty while learning about poverty. I realized that there is a lot of research being done on poverty and not a lot of people realize that there’s research. If people could listen and go on the internet and read the biasness about poverty, then they could read the research that is being done on poverty; all of which is facts by the way…  I’ve learned that poverty is caused by a person barely surviving because of their income. I know people’s first reaction would be “they should just look for a job that will pay them more” but people should realize that’s not always the case…  One of the people who helps understand this is Yoshikawa, Lawrence Aber, and Beardslee. With this, these people decide to look at previous models of other researcher’s research about poverty and how it connects to income. Yoshikawa, et. Al (2012) states “First, underemployment or job loss limits families’ economic resources and, hence, their ability to purchase resources and goods, schools, food, housing, and safe environments necessary for development” (275) By this statement, they are saying that when there are barely any jobs or when jobs ended up closing due to economic loss, people barely have any income that is needed to buy things to survive. In the United States, there are barely jobs and with the jobs that are available, not everyone has the certain skills that is needed for the job. So, either, one has the skills that is needed for the job or they will become unemployed. Which would make sense as to why there are less people having jobs because they don’t have the skills for that job. And the reason why they do not have the skills is because of the upbringing that they were brought into and the certain neighborhoods must come with the parents can afford, which relates back to poverty…. Wow, as I was reading this research, I said “It makes sense as to why there are so many people in the United States unemployed” The next thing that I have learned is neighborhood factors relating to poverty. The person to help me understand this view was Jefferey Timberlake. Jefferey Timberlake used data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics which had surveyed families about their economic well-being. Timberlake, 2009 wrote “... household and especially urban ecological factors strongly affect the amount of time that black and white children can expect to spend in poor and nonpoor neighborhoods throughout childhood” (469). White children would hardly live in a low-income neighborhood because their parents don’t want them to be exposed to that specific type of upbringing, whereas black children have no choice but to stay in the low-income neighborhood because the parents could afford the houses within that neighborhood. What people don’t realize is depending on where one grew up, it has a huge influence on them. The last point that I learned while reading this research is there is a decline in a person’s life expectancy rate due to poverty. Simone Rambotti used data collected from the Equality Trust website which was conducted by Wilkson and Pickett to find the correlation between income inequality and life expectancy rate. Rambotti (2015) states “inequality negatively affects life expectancy only in high-poverty countries, and does not affect it in low-poverty countries” (129). Countries that have the most income and doesn’t have people homeless or underemployed typically has a longer chance of life expectancy because those countries have the resources that are available to them for them to be healthy. These resources include many supermarkets for people to buy groceries and less fast food restaurants or faster emergency rooms and better hospitals that can fix the health problems. Countries that has the least income are bound to have a lower life expectancy rate because there are little to no resources available and the rate for unemployment is extremely high. Did you guys know that United States has the highest rate of poverty? How can that be if we have “money”?? So where is our money going to?? Just let that sink in for a minute….

The point that I am trying to make hence for the long research post is… poverty is damaging our society. Of course, we can not control unfortunate situations but as a country, we are not doing anything to reduce the problem at hand. How many more people can we lose due to poverty? I am not saying that there’s a permanent way of deleting poverty, because as much as we would like for that to happen, it just can’t. But what I am saying is, there should be more jobs opening for those who doesn’t have a job, for people to learn certain skills that is needed for jobs, for better hospitals and better resources. I want you to think about the families who barely has any food, money to eat, a home due to poverty. So, the next time you see a person talking about people living in poverty or make horrible memes, refer them to this blog because I have learned a great deal by researching this topic and I know they will too by reading this blog.

                                                                                                                                    Sincerely,

-          Anikka

References for the research that I have cited

Rambotti, Simone. 2015. "Recalibrating the spirit level: An analysis of the interaction of income inequality and poverty and its effect on health" Social Science and Medicine.  Retrieved October 13, 2017(https://ac-els-cdn-com.webproxy.potsdam.edu/S0277953615001094/1-s2.0-S0277953615001094-main.pdf?_tid=b030185e-b2e9-11e7-8ea9-00000aab0f6c&acdnat=1508210421_b0df6247b24407a6ba55a752a9768fec)

Timberlake, Jeffery M. 2009. "Effects of household and neighborhood characteristics on children’s exposure to neighborhood poverty and affluence" Social Science Research. Retrieved October 14, 2017 (https://ac-els-cdn-com.webproxy.potsdam.edu/S0049089X09000040/1-s2.0-S0049089X09000040-main.pdf?_tid=d1d21546-b2f0-11e7-b6f7-00000aab0f27&acdnat=1508213484_12d3c875677cfe54b393e274aec168b1

Yoshikawa, Hirokazu, Lawrence- Aber, J and Beardslee, William R. 2012.  "The Effects of Poverty on the Mental, Emotional, and Behavioral Health of Children and Youth Implications for Prevention" American Psychologist Association. Retrieved October 13, 2017(https://www.researchgate.net/profile/William_Beardslee/publication/224956205_The_Effects_of_Poverty_on_the_Mental_Emotional_and_Behavioral_Health_of_Children_and_Youth_Implications_for_Prevention/links/00463527aa2b4851e3000000.pdf)