The Economic and Government Effect on America's Poor

"Low-income working families have always been the least insulated from market forces. When the economy sneezes, they get pneumonia." Bernstein and Lazere (2001) make this statement to point out that when our economy is struggling, our poor are in the worse trouble (p. 1). The working poor in America face many challenges not only during economic struggle, but during every occasion. Sherman (1999) explains that the level of poverty is high today partly because of economic aspects such …

…of the household's earnings in the U.S. has increased 40 percent in the last 23 years, while the bottom one-fifth has only increased by 4 percent. This gap, as Koch (2000) points out, has been the largest ever since these statistics have been kept. Because of this gap, the number working poor as increased by 1.3 million in the last 10 years. Inner cities' poverty is also increasing with 1/3 of the African and Hispanic population below the poverty line (p.2).