Federal Poverty Lines Essay Example for Free

Federal Poverty Lines Essay The common issue concerning the annual Federal poverty levels that are universal for all the lower forth eight states are that the poverty level measures are limited. In other words, the poverty thresholds doesn’t represent a budget for basic necessities of life nor it addresses the supplementary amount   to allow for other basic needs such as household supplies, person care, etc(Madden, 182). Also, the federal poverty lines by family size do not use consumer expenditure data and it is not updates. It is not adjusted by family types and geographical differences in housing concepts. Problems with Absolute Federal Poverty Level Absolute federal poverty level is enumerates the numeral value of people below poverty threshold which does not depend on time and place (Madden, 183). In other words, it is constant. It is incorrect to calculate absolute federal poverty level because it is only possible because the amount of wealth essential for survival is not constant for all places and time periods.   For example, a person living Alaska requires more sources of heat because of its cold climate whereas a person living in Hawaii does not. As compared to absolute federal poverty level, relative poverty level is dependent on time and place (Madden, 183). Poverty Levels, Family Size and Cost of Living The federal government does not raise the poverty levels by family size to reflect the cost of living of a geographic area because the poverty threshold level varies from one place to another. The current poverty levels by family size are measured by comparing the individual’s family income to the essential amount necessary for standard of living (Rogers, 85). It has been used as the primary statistic by the U.S federal government to allocate mean-tested social welfare benefits. Expenses in NYC versus Other States New York City is considered to be the most expensive cities to live in. New York remains the most expensive city within United States. According to statistics, the median earnings of New York are more that sixty thousand dollars which is ten thousand dollars greater than the national median. The overall average living expenses in New York are more than one hundred and ninety dollars (Rogers, 185). Housing expenses are more than three hundred thousand dollars and secondary education is more than two thousand dollars as compared to the nation average. Other facilities are also expensive as compared to other states. For example, a person living in Pittsburg who earns fifty thousand dollars will need one hundred thousands dollars to survive in New York. Over all, living expenses in New York is twice as much as compared to other states. Juvenilization and Feminization of Poverty Juvenilization of poverty is has been derived from the word juvenile and poverty. Poverty is defined as the scarcity and deficiency assets, income, capabilities or freedoms. Juvenilization is associated with children. Hence, juvenilization of poverty means that children are deprived of basic necessities of life. According to statistics, one out of six children in United States suffers from poverty. Studies also show that more than thirty percent of children are living below poverty line although they make up more than twenty eight percent of the population. The term feminization of poverty has been originated from the definition of two words which are poverty and feminization. Feminization is the term which illustrates that gender partiality and bias in deprivation of resources, capabilities or freedoms. Hence, feminization of poverty is considered to be a concept which compares male and female and what are the differences or ratios between the two in terms of poverty levels. It represents the inability of women to meet the basic necessities of life. Personal Costs of Poverty and Problems with Federal Approach towards Poverty According to the data collected the U.S Census Bureau, the personal costs of poverty on family and children of four is $22,050 per year and for family of eight is $37010 per year and for every additional personal $ 3740 is added (Madden, 196). There are certain sets of specific policies and programs which are flawed because they cannot fight poverty. Aid to Families with Dependent Children has provided families with cash assistance but it comprises about one percent of the federal budget. AFDC polices have serious weaknesses which makes the poverty rate higher as compared to other countries. The weaknesses in the current policies can be classified into two broad categories namely, inadequate livable wage jobs and inadequate social welfare policies. The AFDC policies do not have policies which guarantee childcare for families who are living below two hundred percent of poverty. It doesn’t have policies which assist child support and low incoming individuals. Other problems include lack of workforce education and training programs, benefits and inadequate job policies. Social Work and Poverty and Modifications in Federal Policies As a social worker, I will apply my social work training in system to understand the nature of poverty and its origin. As a social worker, poverty must be combated at macro level so that poor families can afford childcare, housing, mental health treatment and education and employment opportunities (Rogers, 221). On broader scale, the first thing to help poor families would be through community organizing in poor neighborhoods. This can help in organizing the community’s asset and combine them with other resources to create and set up local structure which assist health, education and financial viability. This will empower the community residents to be active and support local initiatives. In order to reduce poverty, the federal government should recognize and produce measures to tackle issues of well being beyond the income status. The federal government should introduce a guarantee for child care for families living at or below two hundred percent of poverty in order to improve the quality of child care. It should also assist child support and fathers who have low incomes. In order to remove the future generation from poverty, the federal government should increase child support programs and adopt pragmatic policies for low income families. At the same time, workforce education and training programs should be introduced to assist low-income individuals to advance economically. The government should also improve job quality with the help of earnings, benefits and other predictable measures so that workers can meet both work and family responsibilities. Work Cited Madden, David. RELATIVE OR ABSOLUTE POVERTY LINES: A NEW APPROACH. Review of Income Wealth 46 (June 2009): 181-199.   Rogers, Harrell, R.. American Poverty in a New Era of Reform. New York: M.E. Sharpe, Inc., (2006).

Jerry Springer Compared To Oprah Winfrey :: essays research papers fc

Springer vs. Winfrey   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  In the world of entertainment, TV talk shows have undoubtedly flooded every inch of space on daytime television. Many of us have seen and heard the often recycled topics found on such veteran shows as Geraldo and Sally Jesse Raphael. Anyone who watches talk shows on a regular basis knows that each one varies in style and format. One might enjoy watching the sometimes trashy subject matter found on Jenny Jones, while someone else might prefer the more serious and light-hearted feel of the Maury Povich show. But no two shows are more profoundly opposite in the content, while at the same time standing out above the rest, than the Jerry Springer and Oprah Winfrey shows.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Jerry Springer could easily be considered the king of â€Å"trash talk.† The topics on his show are as shocking as they come. For example, the show takes the ever common talk show themes of love, lust, sex, sexuality, adultery, cheating, guilt, hate, conflict and morality to a different level. In a vintage Springer show, one finds women who cheated on their boyfriends and are ready to confess. But the boyfriends are in for an even bigger surprise when they find out who their girlfriends have been cheating with. As the secret lovers are patiently waiting back stage, the girlfriends confess that they have been cheating on their men with other women. Another episode seemed reminiscent of the John and Lorenna Bobbitt case, only more twisted. A man cuts off his own genitals because he claimed that his homosexual neighbor was stalking him. Shocking, indeed, but the list of talk material goes on from dangerous love triangles, broken homes, pregnant strippers, teen age prostitutes, adult film stars, devil worshippers, and the always popular rates booster, the KKK. Clearly, the Jerry Springer Show is a display and exploitation of societies moral catastrophes; yet people are willing to eat up the intriguing mishaps of other people’s lives.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Oprah Winfrey was once a follower of the trash TV format, but her long running popular TV talk show has since been reformed. Like Jerry Springer, the Oprah Winfrey Show takes talk TV to its extreme, but Oprah goes in the opposite direction. Oprah’s show is probably the most immaculate talk show there is. It is unlikely that you will find guests on Oprah that have committed adultery, or have sold their souls to the devil. Instead, the show focuses on the improvement of society and an individual’s quality of life.

The Hunters: Moonsong Chapter Eleven

â€Å"Coffee, my dear?† Professor Campbel – James, Elena reminded herself – asked. At her nod, he bounced to his feet and bustled over to the tiny coffeemaker perched on top of a teetering stack of papers. He brought her a cup of coffee, creamed and sugared, and settled down happily in his chair, gazing across his crowded desk at her with an expression of innocent enjoyment. â€Å"I think I have some cookies,† he offered. â€Å"Not homemade, but they're reasonably tasty. No?† Elena shook her head politely and sipped her coffee. â€Å"It's very good,† she said, and smiled at him. It had been a few days since she had told Stefan and Damon she needed to take a break from them. After a much-needed sob session with Bonnie and Meredith, she had done her best to be normal – going to class, having lunch with her friends, keeping up a brave mask. Part of this attempt at normality was coming to James's office hours, so that she could hear more about her parents. Even though they couldn't be there to comfort her, talking about them offered some solace. â€Å"My God!† James cried out. â€Å"You have Elizabeth's face, and then, when you smile, Thomas's dimple comes right out. Just the same as his – on only one side. It gave him a certain raffish charm.† Elena wondered if she should thank James. He was complimenting her, in a way, but the compliments were real y directed toward her parents, and it felt a little presumptuous to be grateful for them. She settled for saying, â€Å"I'm glad you think I look like my parents. I remember thinking when I was little that they were very elegant.† She shrugged. â€Å"I guess al little kids think their parents are beautiful.† â€Å"Well, your mother certainly was,† James said. â€Å"But it's not just your looks. Your voice sounds like hers, and the comments you made in class this week reminded me of things your father would have said. He was very observant.† He delved into his desk drawers and, after a bit of rummaging, pul ed out a tin of butter cookies. â€Å"Sure you won't have one? Ah, Well.† He chose one for himself and took a bite. â€Å"Yes, as I was saying, Elizabeth was extremely lovely. I wouldn't have cal ed Thomas lovely, but he had charm. Maybe that's how he managed to win Elizabeth's heart in the end.† â€Å"Oh.† Elena stirred her coffee absently. â€Å"She dated other guys, then?† It was ridiculous, but she had kind of imagined her parents as always being together. James chuckled. â€Å"She was quite the heartbreaker. I imagine you are, too, dear.† Elena thought unhappily of Stefan's soft, dismayed green eyes. She had never wanted to hurt him. And Matt, who she had dated in high school and who had quietly gone on loving her. He hadn't fal en in love, or even been real y interested in, anyone else since then. Heartbreaker, yeah. James was watching her with bright, inquisitive eyes. â€Å"Not a happy heartbreaker, then?† he said softly. Elena glanced at him in surprise, and he set his coffee cup down with a little clink. He straightened up. â€Å"Elizabeth Morrow,† he said in a brisk businesslike voice, â€Å"was a freshman when I met her. She was always making things, particularly amazing sets and costumes she designed for the theater department. Your father and I were both sophomores at the time – we were in the same fraternity, and close friends – and he couldn't stop talking about this amazing girl. Once I got to know her, I was sucked into her orbit, too.† He smiled. â€Å"Thomas and I each had something special about us: I was academical y gifted, and Thomas could talk anyone into anything. But we were both cultural barbarians. Elizabeth taught us about art, about theater, about the world beyond the smal Southern towns where we'd grown up.† James ate another cookie, absentmindedly licking sugar off his fingers, then sighed deeply. â€Å"I thought we'd be friends forever,† he said. â€Å"But we went in different directions in the end.† â€Å"Why?† Elena asked. â€Å"Did something happen?† His bright eyes shifted away from hers. â€Å"Of course not,† he said dismissively. â€Å"Just life, I suppose. But whenever I walk down the third-floor corridor, I can't help stopping to look at the photograph of us.† He gave a self-conscious laugh, patting his stomach. â€Å"Mostly vanity, I suppose. I recognize my young self more easily than I do the fat old man I see in the mirror now.† â€Å"What are you talking about?† Elena asked, confused. â€Å"The third-floor corridor?† James's mouth made a round O of surprise. â€Å"Of course, you don't know al the col ege traditions yet. The long corridor on the third floor of this building has pictures from al the different periods of Dalcrest's history. Including a nice photo of your parents and yours truly.† â€Å"I'l have to check it out,† Elena said, feeling a little excited. She hadn't seen many pictures of her parents from before they were married. There was a tap on the door, and a smal girl with glasses peeked in. â€Å"Oh, I'm sorry,† she said, and started to withdraw. â€Å"No, no, my dear,† James said jovial y, getting to his feet. â€Å"Elena and I were just chatting about old friends. You and I need to have a serious talk about your senior thesis as soon as possible. Come in, come in.† He gave Elena an absurd little half bow. â€Å"Elena, we'l have to continue this conversation later.† â€Å"Of course,† Elena said, and rose, shaking James's offered hand. â€Å"Speaking of old friends,† he said casual y as she turned to go, â€Å"I met a friend of yours, Dr. Celia Connor, just before the semester started. She mentioned that you were coming here.† Elena whipped back around, staring at him. He had met Celia? Images fil ed Elena's mind: Celia held in Stefan's arms as he traveled faster than any human, desperate to save her life; Celia fending off the phantom in a room ful of flames. How much did James know? What had Celia told him? James smiled blandly back at her. â€Å"But we'l talk later,† he said. After a moment, Elena nodded and stumbled out of his office, her mind racing. The girl who was waiting held the door open for her. In the hal outside, Elena leaned against the wal and took stock for a moment. Would Celia have told James about Stefan and Damon being vampires, or anything about Elena herself? Probably not. Celia had become a friend by the end of their battle with the phantom. She would have kept their secrets. Plus, Celia was a very savvy academic. She wouldn't have told her col eagues anything that might make them think she was crazy, including that she had met actual vampires. Elena shook off the unease she felt from the end of her conversation with James and thought instead of the picture he'd told her about. She climbed the stairs to the third floor to see if she could find it now. It turned out that the â€Å"third-floor corridor† was no problem to find. While the second floor was a maze of turning passageways and faculty offices subdivided from one another, when she stepped out of the stairWellon the third floor she discovered it was a long hal that ran from one end of the building to the other. In contrast to the chatter of people at work on the second floor, the third floor seemed abandoned, silent and dim. Closed doors sat at regular intervals along the hal . Elena peered through the glass on one door, only to see an empty room. Al down the hal , between the doors, hung large photographs. Near the stairWell, where she began looking, they seemed like they were from maybe the turn of the century: young men in side-combed hair and suits, smiling stiffly; girls in high-necked white blouses and long skirts with their hair pul ed up on top of their heads. In one, a row of girls carried garlands of flowers for some forgotten campus occasion. There were photos of boat races and picnics, couples dressed up for dances, team pictures. In one photo, the cast of some student play – maybe from the 1920s or '30s, the girls with shingled flapper cuts, the guys with funny covers over their shoes – laughed hilariously on stage, their mouths frozen open, their hands in the air. A little farther on, a group of young men in army uniforms gazed back at her seriously, jaws firmly set, eyes determined. As she moved on down the hal , the photos changed from black-and-white to color; the clothes got less formal; the hairstyles grew longer, then shorter; messier, then sleeker. Even though most of the people in the photographs looked happy, something about them made Elena feel sad. Maybe it was how fast time seemed to pass in them: al these people had been Elena's age, students like her, with their own fears and joys and heartbreaks, and now they were gone, grown older or even dead. She thought briefly of a bottle tucked deep in her closet at home, containing the water of eternal life she'd accidental y stolen from the Guardians. Was that the answer? She pushed the thought away. It wasn't the answer yet – she knew that – and she'd made the very clear choice not to think about that bottle, not to decide anything, not now. She had time, she had more life to live natural y before she'd want to ask herself that question. The picture James talked about was close to the far end of the hal . In it, her father, her mother, and James were sitting on the grass under a tree in the quad. Her parents were leaning forward in eager conversation, and James – a much thinner version, his face almost unrecognizable beneath a straggly beard – was sitting back and watching them, his expression sharp and amused. Her mother looked amazingly young, her face soft, her eyes wide, her smile big and bright, but she was also somehow exactly the mother Elena remembered. Elena's heart gave a painful but happy throb at the sight of her. Her father was gawkier than the distinguished dad Elena had known – and his pastel-patterned shirt was a fashion disaster of epic proportions – but there was an essential dadness to him that made Elena smile. She noticed the pin on his horrific pastel shirt first. She thought it was a smudge, but then, leaning forward, she made out the shape of a smal , dark blue V. Looking at the other figures, she realized her mother and James were wearing the same pins, her mother's half-obscured by a long golden curl fal ing across it. Weird. She tapped her finger slowly against the glass over the photograph, touching one V and then the others. She would ask James about the pins. Hadn't he mentioned that he and her dad had been in a fraternity? Maybe it had something to do with that. Didn't frat boys â€Å"pin† their girlfriends? Something nudged at the edges of her mind. She'd seen one of these pins somewhere. But she couldn't remember where, so she shrugged it off. Whatever it stood for, it was something she didn't know about her parents, another facet of their lives to be discovered here. She couldn't wait to learn more.

Should Sex Education Be Mandatory - 876 Words

I think sex education should be mandatory in the U.S. public school system because it is my young male experience that our youth is having sex younger than we think and need to know more about their bodies. A lot of explaining is needed in America today with all the increase in diversity of the families. It needs to an open conversation at home and school. It need to be explained and re-explained in each stage of education and become a requirement. Even when I was a child in school it was not taking serious and there was rallies even then about the potential harm it may do if our youth is not educated about their bodies. In my opinion I believe that is why we have an increase rate of single parents. In my community most pregnancies are not planned and as a result they parents are struggling and uneducated and resort to some type of public assistance. We live in a day and age where diversity is obvious and there many types of families and how can you know where you fit in the world if you don’t even understand yourself. According to Chapter 7, â€Å"†¦there has been a serious decline in the structure and function of the family since 190s. Families are not meeting society’s needs they as they once did and have all lost most of their â€Å"functions, social, power, and authority over members† †¦the weakening of family function to high divorce rates, declining family size, and growing of absence of fathers and mothers in their lives†¦Ã¢â‚¬  (pg.187) In addition, â€Å"†¦increase in cohabitationShow MoreRelatedShould Sex Education Be Mandatory?1364 Words   |  6 Pagespeople debate whether young adults should receive sex education in their school curriculum. Statistics show that one-third of girls become pregnant before the age of 20. An increase in teen pregnancy could be due to the age of which females reach puberty. 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Sexual education teaches all of the following, and kids in the curriculum are more likely to defend themselves in a plot when they were approached by a stranger (â€Å"TeachingRead MoreGraduation Speech : School For Twelve Years And Not Learning Basic Lessons Essay1290 Words   |  6 Pagesto and apply when in middle school. High school should be where every student learns complex lessons and strategies that they will apply to real life situations as they grow older. Teachers give lessons on math equations, encoding poems, and mixing music. As the students soon graduate, they take these lessons with them with and use them in life. Even though we learn most of these necessary lessons, there are many high schoo l students that should be learning what they need to know in life. AfterRead MoreThe Unspeakable Word: Censorship in Schools Essay725 Words   |  3 Pagesday. Parents act like talking about sex in school is absurd or unheard of. 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