Literature Review 3

Literature Review 3

Citation

Rank, Mark R., Yoon Hong-Sik, and Thomas A. Hirschl. "American Poverty As A Structural Failing: Evidence And Arguments." Journal Of Sociology & Social Welfare 30.4 (2003): 3-29. Academic Search Premier. Web. 23 Nov. 2015.

Summary

The reading discusses how poverty is the result of structural failure, or how the government has intentionally or unintentionally set the poor up to fail.  It brings up educational programs set up by the government with the intent to aid people, the struggling market of labor to supply jobs for workers and the difference between wages and increasing living expenses.  It also brings up the contrast, that it's the person's fault that they are poor.

Authors

Mark R. Rank of Washington University, George Warren Brown School of Social Work

Hong-Sik Yoon of Chonbuk National University (Korea), Department of Social Welfare

Thomas A. Hirschl of Cornell University, Department of Rural Sociology

Quotes

"15.3 percent are at jobs in which their earnings will not get their families above 1.25 of the poverty line, and 22.0 percent are eomployed at jobs that will not get their families above 1.50 of the poverty line.  We can clearly see that the jobs one parent family heads are working at are much less able to sustain these households above the level of poverty than that for all families." (Rank, Yoon and Hirschl 12)

"On one hand, poverty has been viewed as the result of individual failings.  From this perspective, specific attributes of the impoverished individual have brought about their poverty." (Rank, Yoon and Hirschl 4)

"On the other hand, poverty has periodically been interpreted as the result of the failings at a structural level, such as the inability of the economy to produce enough decent paying jobs." (Rank, Yoon and Hirschl 4)

Relation to Topic

The idea that it's the fault of the structure (government/corporations) failings that result in poverty is being applied to my paper when regarding student debt through student loans, and the increasing student loan bubble.  The three people use pieces of evidence that mirror the events that are happening today in regards of student debt, and the concepts tie in to both topics.  In the same way that people are poor due to inadequate jobs is the same reason that people cannot earn enough to pay their debts.