The Working Poor in America Essay example -- Exploratory Essays Resear

The Working piteous in AmericaThe concept of the on the job(p) poor has gained prominence in the post-welfare reform era. As welfare rolls shrunk, the focus shifted from the dependent poor to the working poor. It was obvious that without substantial outside support, even families with full-time low-wage workers were still earning less(prenominal) than the official want line. And while American society purports that any peerless can expand if they work hard enough, it became apparent that with inadequate opportunity or detrimental luck, a growing number of families could not attain the American dream, or even break the cycle of poerty. The new challenge for American favorable policy is to help the working poor lift themselves out of poverty. Thats wherefore progressives who supported ending welfare as we know it have destiny a new goal -- the government should come across work collapse so that no one who works full time is poor. after substantial decreases in the 1990s, pove rty rates stopped their decline in 2000 and have actually started to again creep upward. The great conundrum of how one simultaneously alleviates the multiple causes of poverty has become a central parapet to poverty reduction. Into this debate comes author David Shipler, a former New York propagation Pulitzer Prize winner, with an aptly titled look at the state of poverty in America today, The Working Poor. Shiplers book is more anecdotal and descriptive than analytical and prescriptive. Yet it is a valuable portrait of poverty in America, just as Michael Harringtons landmark book, The Other America, was in 1962. While he does not offer many concrete solutions, Shipler provides readers with an intimate glimpse of the wassail of the working poor, whose lives are in sharp contrast to the images of excess w... ... support and direction, including those of local government and philanthropy, are critical to tailoring programs to the specific necessitate of local communities, and sh ould be leveraged through federal funding. The final ingredient is responsibility, both(prenominal) personal and collective. Individuals must be empowered to improve their own lives, and the association must support the effort rather than look the other way, or looking past the working poor, who can so easily give way into the background. Shipler concludes the book with these thoughts Workers at the edge of poverty are essential to Americas prosperity, scarce their well-being is not treated as an integral part of the whole. Instead, the forgotten wage a daily struggle to keep themselves from falling over the cliff. It is time to be ashamed. No, it is time to move past the ideology and make work pay for all Americans.