Social Factor Poverty

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The Social Factors Causing Poverty
In society, there are many social structural factors and social psychological factors that influence the occurrence of poverty. People describe social issues as something that is wrong and affects many people and is changeable. In our society today, poverty is a serious issue that brings many hardships to individuals, families and communities. Poverty is a condition where people are struggling to meet their basic needs of food, housing, clothing, etc. Both social structural factors and social psychological factors impact the perpetuation of poverty. Even though both may have the same outcome, they are different from one another. Social structural elements are the negative effects to the poor because of the …show more content…
Its origins are traced to structural factors that link directly to the state of the economy. The distribution of power is one of the leading structural factors driving the current degree of poverty. With the distribution of power, comes politicians who introduce macroeconomic policies that dictate many facets of the structure of our economy. It is argued that other decisions that government officials make are geared toward the interests of the upper middle class or upper class of people and not the middle and lower class of people. Throughout the years, some of the decisions resulted in the lowering of corporate and business taxes, deregulating pay levels for executives, and taking the strength out of the labor unions that assist in helping the middle class and lower class people. Furthermore, the structures of the electoral process of the United States leaves the poor out of the equation. For example, when electing the President of the United States, it is possible for a candidate to win without winning the popular vote. This occurred in the 2000 election when George W. Bush lost the popular vote to Al Gore by 543,816 votes. Some believe that this is a way to take the voice away from the American people and leave it in the hands of the …show more content…
Individuals with certain characteristics have influence on the psychological factors that perpetuate poverty. Some of those characteristics include class, race, religion, gender, age, disability etc. People discriminate the lower class based on the characteristics that they possess. This is stereotyping at the highest degree. Furthermore, those who are wealthy have a tendency to look at the characteristic in a negative attitude. This leads to poor self-esteem and self-respect growing in the lower class person. The wealthy will continue to look at the poor in the same manner despite the state of the economy. Furthermore, because of the close-minded society, many people look at the qualities of an individual and not the social system in place as the main cause of wealth or poverty. Many intelligent people have fallen below the poverty line, not due to their traits, but due to the state of the economy. Those who have money and get into a bind have an easy out by filing bankruptcy. In most cases, the poor do not qualify for bankruptcy because their debts are not credit based. Eventually, this attitude from the wealthy causes detrimental and lasting effects on the individual, which carries over for many generations to
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