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Welfare Is The Cause Of Poverty In America

891 Words4 Pages

The war on poverty has been established by president Lyndon B Johnson more than fifty years ago and yet according to the census Bureau it has changed very little. The taxpayers has spent almost twenty-two trillion dollars on this program. The program was created to help the poor and to bring poverty rates down. A family would be considered “poor” if their income falls below specific thresholds, but while counting “income,” the Census disregards almost all of government spending on the poor. It ignores almost all welfare state when it calculates poverty.
This means that welfare programs could increase while “poverty” remained unaffected. The Census Bureau undercount the economic resources available to low-income households. Liberals argue that …show more content…

When president Johnson started the War on Poverty, only seven percent of children in America were born outside of marriage. However, today the number is over forty percent. More people are now single parents raising children on their own while working and carrying on with their everyday life. Unmarried childbearing and the resulting increase of single-parents is a major cause of child poverty. The article concludes that the program lacks building self-sufficiency. It claims that welfare disrupts social capital, preventing habits and norms that lead to self-reliance, especially relating to marriage and work. It also claims that welfare increases dependence. The article strongly states that anti-marriage penalties should be removed from welfare programs, and long-term programs should be placed to restructure the family in lower-income …show more content…

I also agree with the article when it states that anti-marriage penalties should be removed from welfare programs. When a parent raises children on their own it is much more difficult to make ends meet. The price of daycare is very expensive and the parent can not stay home with the child because he or she needs to work. This is also a problem when a child is sick and must stay home from school. The single parent must be able to balance work, children, and financial expenses. This is very hard for people who needs to constantly spend and they can not afford to miss work. This child also may not grow up with the amount of attention and care that he or she should. The child might not even know who their mother or father is. This parent might not even be able to provide for them financially. The child is then brought up in an unstable household with very little guidance. I think that one of the most important investments that should be made is funding public education and programs to make it much more affordable for

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