Causes and Consequences of Poverty by Humanities https://padlet.com/BISHumanities/d73ro6xk52y79g4g Made with good vibes en-us 2021-09-20 14:07:48 UTC 2025-05-06 03:31:47 UTC hello@padlet.com 2.9 million children in poverty despite working parents https://padlet.com/BISHumanities/d73ro6xk52y79g4g/wish/1754160210 Causes:
- 20% increase in single-person families over the last 2 decades, causing an increase in demand for housing while the supply can't keep up causing prices to skyrocket

Consequence:
- 70% of all children in poverty have at least one working parent despite the record high unemployment rate, up from 67%
- 53% of all poor children are under the age of 5
- Children aren't well dressed or aren't fed

Solutions:
- government increases spending to build social housing and increase wages
- 95bn pounds a year in government spending]]> 2021-09-20 14:16:10 UTC https://padlet.com/BISHumanities/d73ro6xk52y79g4g/wish/1754160210 Consequential - Incomes and Criminal Behaviour https://padlet.com/BISHumanities/d73ro6xk52y79g4g/wish/1754161627 - Lack of income is not the only factor which may lead to criminal behaviour; there is doubt on the chain of causation
- Study in Sweden measured the behaviour of those born between 1989 and 1993 starting once they turned 15 years old
- Although those who grew up with less income had the highest percentage chance of committing both petty and violent crime, people in families which became progressively wealthier were equally as likely to commit crime as older siblings.
- Family culture could be "sticky", similar to sticky wages in Keynesian economics, and certain genes could cause certain groups to be more prone to crime]]> 2021-09-20 14:16:29 UTC https://padlet.com/BISHumanities/d73ro6xk52y79g4g/wish/1754161627 Consequence - "The scandal over Flint’s water is a tale of poverty and race" https://padlet.com/BISHumanities/d73ro6xk52y79g4g/wish/1754190696 - The article discusses the great downfall of Flint, covering 2 famous books, written by a journalist and a pediatrician.
- The city had the highest median income for those under the age of 35 in the entire country in the 1980s, but the employment levels were very dependent on General Motors which employed 75,000 workers at the time.
- Nowadays with the decline in the car-making industry, General Motors only employs 7,000 workers.
- This resulted in a lot of people, especially a large portion of the African-American population, ending up in poverty. 40% of the population was below the federal poverty line.
- The city had to cut costs, so they decided to switch their water supply to the local Flint River, known for its toxicity.
- Instead of spending millions, the government decided to rely on cheap anti-corrosion agents which would only cost around $100 a day.
- Resulted in thousands of people getting poisoned by lead and bacteria, developing diseases and DNA mutations.]]> 2021-09-20 14:23:30 UTC https://padlet.com/BISHumanities/d73ro6xk52y79g4g/wish/1754190696 Consequence: When a job is not enough https://padlet.com/BISHumanities/d73ro6xk52y79g4g/wish/1754196221 As poor pensioners have become fewer, people in working households constitute an ever-larger chunk of Britain's poor.

40% of absolutely poor people lived in “working” households, which included people in some sort of employment

The minimum hourly pay £7.20 ($ 10.60), worth £ 252 a week

“absolute” poverty includes all those in households with income less than 60% of the national median in 2010-11, in constant prices (around £ 280 a week for a couple with no children today)

On average London tenants now pay about a third of their disposable income on rent

Causes
- Soaring cost of housing, since the depths of the recession in 2009, the average price of a home has increased by a tenth in real terms.

-  Relative scarcity of full-time jobs, about one in every 25 people in employment work part-time even though they would prefer full-time employment.

- Median hourly real wages are still 7% below their pre-recession level. This is largely because of measly growth in productivity.

Consequences
- By the absolute-poverty measure, the number of people in working-poor households has grown by more than 2m over the past decade, a rise in the rate of over one-quarter.
- For parents in full-time work the rate of absolute household poverty has increased from 5% to 8% in the past decade.]]> 2021-09-20 14:24:56 UTC https://padlet.com/BISHumanities/d73ro6xk52y79g4g/wish/1754196221 Are 8 men as wealthy as half the worlds population ? Consequence https://padlet.com/BISHumanities/d73ro6xk52y79g4g/wish/1754211066 - If you could squeeze the 8 richest men on the planet in one van then that van would be worth $426bn which is greater than half the worlds combined population of $409bn.

- This study is flawed in how it deals with indebtedness. The worlds least wealthy include 420m adults whose debts exceed their assets. For example over 21m americans hold a combined wealth of -$357bn, which is not an indication of poverty as only people relatively well off my global standards can afford a debt like this. 

- Excluding people in debt would result in the remaining populations combined wealth equivalent to that of the 98 richest men as a oppose to the 8.

- Wealth data also excludes the poor's biggest assets in human capital. Although some of the return of this asset is shown through wages. This in turn means that although the poorest half of the earth hold 0.15% of market wealth but 10.6% of global income 

- Oxfam has also made a rounding error in the bottom half of the worlds population's wealth from $384bn to the $409bn. $384 is less than the 7 wealthiest men meaning we can exclude Michael Bloomberg. 

]]> 2021-09-20 14:28:50 UTC https://padlet.com/BISHumanities/d73ro6xk52y79g4g/wish/1754211066 The IMF adds to a chorus of concern about competition(A new study adds to worries about market power) https://padlet.com/BISHumanities/d73ro6xk52y79g4g/wish/1754217016 Issue: Article is seeking the causes for the rich-world macroeconomic trends of the past decade and with that the rising inequity in the distribution of income in the society

Causation: In this article, they specifically focus on monopolies - competition has weakened as markets have become more concentrated and higher market power usually makes economies less productive overall.

Although economic activity is becoming concentrated in the best firms which could explain rising average markups, Higher markups are also associated with less investment in physical capital, Top firms with higher markups paying a smaller share of the economic value they create to workers, and market power could put a brake on innovation, should such firms get too cosy.

Evidence to this: a IMF study confirms that in most places a small share of firms are responsible for rising markups, which have soared among the best and are flat among the rest (see chart). The 10% of firms with the highest markups are 50% more profitable than their peers, more than 30% more productive ..

What they did was examine the markups over marginal cost—one proxy for market power—charged by over 900,000 firms in 27 countries

Resolution: These must be reconciled with low interest rates, pockets of technological advance and juicy returns for investors willing to take risks.

]]> 2021-09-20 14:30:21 UTC https://padlet.com/BISHumanities/d73ro6xk52y79g4g/wish/1754217016 Poverty in America https://padlet.com/BISHumanities/d73ro6xk52y79g4g/wish/1754232268 -          Federal poverty rate was 15% in 2014, a drop of only 2.5% in 50 years says the US census Bureau
-          Adjusting for taxes and transfers, poverty fell 10% between 1968 to 2012
-          The method for calculating official poverty rate is designed to obscure the effect of government programs despite better measurements suggest welfare has lifted millions out of poverty
-          Only 5% of Americans think that anti-poverty programs have had a big impact while 47% think they have had little to no impact. 

]]> 2021-09-20 14:34:13 UTC https://padlet.com/BISHumanities/d73ro6xk52y79g4g/wish/1754232268 Black boys are the least likely of any group to escape poverty https://padlet.com/BISHumanities/d73ro6xk52y79g4g/wish/1754234333 Consequences:
A study finds that black men fare worse economically than white men even if they are raised in households with similar incomes and educated similarly. The study involving 20 million people finds that a black man born to parents at the median income would expect to end up lower on the income ladder than his parents, while a white man born to parents of median income would rise by a very small amount. In terms of income, black men from those families face barriers because of poverty and race.

Possible causes:
The presence of fathers seems to make a difference to a boy regardless of whether his own father is present, suggesting that other fathers can act as role models and mentors, however very few black children grow up in areas with low poverty and a father figure.

Blacks are arrested twice as often as whites for drug crimes despite similar usage rates and black males in particular are given longer sentences for the same crime. The overall incarceration rate for black men in its sample is 10.3% compared with 1.6% for white men, which suggest the role the criminal-justice system plays in the lives of black males.

A significant negative effect of a criminal record on employment outcomes that was substantially larger for African Americans was found when black and white men with equivalent resumes applied for  a job in New York.
]]> 2021-09-20 14:34:45 UTC https://padlet.com/BISHumanities/d73ro6xk52y79g4g/wish/1754234333 Universal lessons https://padlet.com/BISHumanities/d73ro6xk52y79g4g/wish/1754261032 Causes:
In poor countries only 35% of students complete school to the age of 16 compared to 96% in rich countries.
The quality of education in poor countries is very low, in New Delhi the average student is 2.5 years behind school in 6th grade and 4.5 years behind in 9th compared to students in developed countries.
This is in part due to teacher absenteeism as in developing countries it is 11-30% and in South Africa, the average primary school teacher is less knowledgeable than the average 6th grader in developed countries.
The united nations estimates that 3 in every 5 children don't meet the minimum standard of quality of education.

Consequences:
Attending school is seen as a step to becoming successful later in life, and students, even if they learn very little in school, are much more likely to be hired for jobs than non-educated students.
Also child fertility decreases if students are in school and the ones that do get born have a much higher chance of not dying in infancy.
 ]]> 2021-09-20 14:41:43 UTC https://padlet.com/BISHumanities/d73ro6xk52y79g4g/wish/1754261032 Nearly three million children in poverty despite parents working https://padlet.com/BISHumanities/d73ro6xk52y79g4g/wish/1757751929 2021-09-21 16:20:22 UTC https://padlet.com/BISHumanities/d73ro6xk52y79g4g/wish/1757751929 The scandal over Flint’s water is a tale of poverty and race https://padlet.com/BISHumanities/d73ro6xk52y79g4g/wish/1757774106 - After powerful firms that offered a lot of employment (GM employed 75000 people there) left, since the dependency in them was too much, poverty was quick to take over, leading Flint eventually into a financial emergency

- After more financially stable groups left, and the people left were black communities falling into poverty, it became a racial issue too

- Then the government, in an effort to reduce cost (smth that's really difficult when 40% of the population is already living below the national poverty line), changed the water source to a toxic yet cheaper one

- Even though they saved around $100 a day by not using all safety measures, it ended up costing the city and the state thousands of thousands of dollars in the long run

- Authorities denied proof before it was undeniable, posing health problems for the whole population]]> 2021-09-21 16:27:38 UTC https://padlet.com/BISHumanities/d73ro6xk52y79g4g/wish/1757774106 Is there any correlation between the amount of money the government (state or national) puts into things that help communities and the financial status of those communities? https://padlet.com/BISHumanities/d73ro6xk52y79g4g/wish/1757782615 Ex. Is the government more willing to help richer communities and give them more commodities or poorer people with the rich people's taxes? Why?
If not more willing, then which changes take less time/ more time?]]> 2021-09-21 16:30:25 UTC https://padlet.com/BISHumanities/d73ro6xk52y79g4g/wish/1757782615