Poverty and Social Exclusion

Abstract

This article explores poverty and social exclusion and their impact on the lives of Americans. It also discusses the ways that sociologists and other social scientists have defined the concepts and what those definitions have meant to the poor and to the development of public policy. Additionally, the article compares the ways that American policymakers handle the issue of poverty and social exclusion in comparison with efforts in other countries.

Overview

As of 2022, the United States had the largest and most powerful economy in the world as measured by GDP. Followed by China at $17.7 trillion, the US totaled $23 trillion. In early 2023, 11.6 percent of the population, or 37.9 million people, were living in poverty despite a median household income of more than $70,000 (Lee, 2023). In many countries, much of the focus on poverty in the twenty-first century has been on the relationship between poverty and social exclusion, and decision-makers have launched policy initiatives designed to narrow the gap between those who have access to the benefits of belonging to middle-and upper-classes and those who do not.

While researchers have continued to study poverty and its impacts, particularly social exclusion, the tendency of policymakers has been to place poverty high on the political agenda only at designated points in history. One of those points was the Great Depression, which led to the election of President Franklin Roosevelt, the launching of the New Deal initiative, and the transformation of the United States into a social welfare state. During the civil rights movement, the discussion on poverty was seen as a way to address some of the inequities that were inherent in a segregated system. As a result, President Lyndon Johnson introduced the War on Poverty and instituted Medicare and Medicaid in 1965. Between 1964 and 1969, the poverty level in the United States dropped from 19.09 percent to 12.1 percent.

Twenty-first century policymakers continue to be reluctant to identify social exclusion as a national priority, but they frequently deal with poverty issues directly, such as the welfare reform measures of the 1990s, and indirectly, such as the debate over minimum wage and equal pay. Partisan wrangling and disagreements over the prioritization of issues has meant that bills designed to increase the minimum wage and ensure equal pay have repeatedly failed to pass Congress.

In its simplest terms, poverty is defined as lacking access to the basic necessities of life. Individuals who lack that access are often excluded from society because they lack the ability to participate in the popular culture of those around them. A single mother working two or more jobs to care for her family and a high school boy who cannot afford to go to the movies with his friends are both examples of social exclusion. Both the single mother and the teenage boy may suffer physical and psychological effects from being socially excluded from their peer groups. Arguing that social exclusion should be identified as the major disease of the modern world, American and European researchers from the fields of sociology, political science, and anthropology have documented links between social exclusion and economic poverty. They have also demonstrated a strong link between social exclusion and poverty of knowledge, skills, and citizenship (Shaaban, 2011).

Melissa Skearney (2013), the Director of the Hamilton Project, a Brookings Institution policy initiative in which academicians, business leaders, and former political leaders create policy recommendations on issues of national importance, notes that since 1975 economic growth in the United States has not always translated into wealth shared across the economic spectrum. Between 1947 and 1975, family income grew by 90 percent among the 20 percent of Americans with the lowest incomes and by 86 percent for those in the top 20 percent. Skearney points out that between 1975 and 2010, growth for the lowest 20 percent was only 3.7 percent as compared to 57 percent for the top 20 percent. However, between 2015 and 2018, the annual average rate of income growth increased by 2.1 percent, a significantly increased rate compared to that of 1970 to 2000. Despite this figure, it is important to note the share of aggregate income amongst middle-income families decreased over this time, while upper-income families experienced a significant increase, indicating a widening gap between upper- and middle-income households (Horowitz et al., 2020).

During the last quarter of the twentieth century, a new emphasis was placed on technology as the demand for highly skilled professionals continued to increase. The demand for employees with college degrees also rose, shutting out those who could not afford to attend college. A final factor in increased inequalities in the United States is derived from the link between social exclusion and poverty that has led to the perpetuation of poverty among the poorest segment of the population. Factors associated with increased likelihood of social inclusion include low income, lack of skills, poor health, immigrant status, low educational levels, failure to complete high school, being a woman or minority, old age, divorce, drug and alcohol abuse, and residency in problem neighborhoods (Shaaban, 2011).

In the 1970s, sociologists, including Lee Rainwater of Harvard University, began discussing the tendency of Americans to view the poor as being outside of society. This tendency is evident in any large city where most people walk past homeless persons without considering how they feel about being homeless. Sociologists have also begun to talk about the "criminalization of poverty." In some cities, officials have passed laws that make it illegal to share food with the homeless or to sit or sleep in any public space. When the homeless are driven out of the places they have made for themselves, they may lose the things that define them, including identification papers and personal property (Smith, 2013). The 1970s also saw the emergence of studies on the impact of poverty on the mental health of the poor, and researchers identified such factors as depression, low self-esteem, and social anxiety as factors contributing to social exclusion.

Since the late twentieth century, social scientists have been discussing social, physical, and civil networks that shut out the poor, preventing them from taking part in informal networks, experiencing physical and mental well-being, taking on community leadership roles, and receiving equal treatment before the courts (Smith, 2013). Exclusion from these networks may lead to the inability to find permanent employment and may result in lower earning capacities, reduced chances of owning property and obtaining credit, and being forced to settle for inferior housing (Smith 2013). The fact that the poor may be shut out of labor unions has meant that they are also excluded from bargaining negotiations and are more likely to experience job insecurity. Choosing between putting groceries on the table and taking a family vacation may mean not only that poor wage-earners are less rested than other workers, but also that members of families not taking vacations are excluded from peer discussions about those subjects, leading to increased levels of isolation from their peers. Neighborhoods tend to be segregated by class, and poor families forced to live in neighborhoods with high crime rates and historical patterns of poverty may establish an environment where poverty continues to be perpetuated over generations (Smith, 2013).

Applications

Since the 1990s, researchers examining the relationship between poverty and social exclusion have been addressing the issue of how children in low-income families feel about being socially excluded. Single-parent families are on the increase in much of the developed world as a result of divorce and increased numbers of children born outside marriage. In a comparative study of single-parent families in Cyprus, Greece, and the United Kingdom, children between the ages of six and sixteen living in single-parent families were interviewed (Spyrou, 2013). These children generally believed that family was a result of relationships that existed among individuals rather than a biological occurrence. The most common problems they identified concerned the ongoing lack of money and the lack of time spent with parents who were sole wage-earners for their families.

The fact that children in low-income families often lived in substandard housing and lacked money for sports, lessons, and leisure pursuits led to feelings of being socially excluded from their friends. Recommendations for bringing socially excluded children into the mainstream included flexible working hours for single-parents and paying acceptable salaries and benefits to improve the quality of life for them and their families (Spyrou, 2013). With adequate wages, single parents might no longer feel the need to work at more than one job at a time. Free access to public places such as community playgrounds, gymnasiums, and swimming pools is seen as a means of enhancing social inclusion by providing gathering places where children and youth can interact with their peers.

In the United States, discussions on poverty are prone to breaking down along ideological lines, with liberals blaming social and political structures and conservatives insisting that individuals are poor because they do not want to work or because they lack ambition. Thus, partisan battles frequently interfere with the institution of anti-poverty measures. In 2022, the World Bank estimated that 648 million people, or 8 percent of the world's population, subsisted on less than US$2.15 a day. Further, more than half the world's population lived on less than US$6.85 (World Bank, 2022). Poverty, to that extent, is unknown in most of the developed world, but in relation to other residents of the same country, poverty may be very real.

Global poverty tends to be highest in rural areas. While rural Americans do not usually suffer from lack of access to pure drinking water, inadequate sanitation, or experience high incidences of potentially fatal diseases, they do tend to be more socially excluded than their urban counterparts. Persistent levels of poverty in the United States are generally associated with areas in the South, such as Appalachia and the Mississippi Delta, and with many Native American reservations.

Blacks are more likely than members of any other group to be poor. In 2014, according to the Census Bureau, Blacks represented 26.2 percent of the population that was below poverty level, while Whites represented 12.7 percent (DeNavas-Walt & Proctor, 2015). Before the northern migration that began in 1900, nine out of every ten Blacks lived in the South. At the end of the twentieth century, five out of ten Blacks still lived in the South. Economic differences between Blacks and Whites persist in part because of continued discrimination, but differences are also due to lower educational and skill levels. In 2019, poverty rates among Asians, Hispanics, and Blacks were some of the lowest ever recorded. For Blacks, poverty estimates totaled 18.8 percent, the lowest on record, which began in 1959. Hispanic poverty rates totaled 15.7 percent, the lowest since 1972, and Asian poverty rates totaled 7.3 percent. Despite this improvement, Non-Hispanic Whites still maintained a significantly lower rate of poverty, at 7.3 percent (Creamer, 2020).

Educational levels continue to have a major impact on opportunities for jobs, promotions, and pay raises. The feminization of poverty that persists throughout the world also has a major impact on the number of single-parent families living below the poverty line and contributing to social exclusion. In 2014, according to the Census Bureau, 30.6 percent of female-headed families lived in poverty (DeNavas-Walt & Proctor, 2015). This trend continued in the early 2020s, as female-headed households were found to experience a wide range of challenges more often than other types of households, which served as a large threat to or an opportunity for them (Lebni et al., 2020).

In the 1990s, richer Americans expanded their wealth through stock market ownership, and an 8.3 percent real growth rate between 1995 and 2001. In the early twenty-first century, however, a short recession in 2001 and a longer one in 2007–2009 hit middle- and low-income Americans particularly hard. Unemployment reached 8.96 percent in 2008 and rose to 10 percent in 2009 before starting to decline. Household debt that had started rising in the 1980s skyrocketed in the 2000s, placing a heavy burden on the middle class (Wolff, 2013). In 2011, a global protest against poverty and its impact on social well-being surfaced with the Occupy Wall Street movement. Starting on social media sites in the United States, the movement spread to eighty countries that included Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Israel, Italy, New Zealand, Norway, South Korea, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. Critics of the movement complain that it was fueled more by emotion than by facts (Rycroft, 2013).

Discourse

While new policies on poverty and social exclusion often fall victim to partisan battling in the United States, several other countries have made significant progress in leveling out inequalities between the haves and the have-nots. The concept first became part of the European agenda in France in the 1960s. Two decades later, the National Assistance Law was introduced to end social exclusion. In 1997, the European Union identified combating social exclusion as a priority by ratification of the Treaty of Amsterdam. That same year, the concept of social exclusion became a major issue in Britain as decision-makers turned their attention to issues of social class, educational status, living standards, and the freedom of opportunity that defined such access (Saaban, 2011). Politicians also reexamined policies on the impact of social exclusion on groups such as the disabled, racial minorities, women, the unemployed, single-parent households, and the elderly. The Social Exclusion Unit was created in 1998. Ireland established the National Anti-Poverty Strategy in 1997 and instituted the National Action Plan for Social Inclusion 2007–2016 in 2007. Scotland announced that it had instituted the Social Inclusion Strategy: Opening the Door to a Better Scotland in 1999. In Sweden, social exclusion policies focused on universal welfare and improving participation in the labor market.

Australia has also been at the forefront of efforts to enact poverty and social exclusion policies. In the 1990s, as numbers of welfare-dependent Australians grew, the government established the Reference Group on Welfare Reform, which proposed making the social service system more responsive to individual needs, establishing a system of mutual obligations, and promoting the formation of partnerships designed to reduce dependency (Saunders, 2013). In 2007, the Australian Labour Party instituted new measures designed to monitor inequities and develop new programs capable of increasing social inclusion. The measures focused on the problems of homelessness, mental health, disability, and joblessness. Prime Minister Kevin Rudd created the Social Inclusion Unit to supplement the work of the Australian Social Inclusion Board. Improvements have been reported in the areas of improved life expectancies for the poor, higher employment rates, higher Internet access for lower-income families, decreased levels of long-term unemployment, lower levels of family joblessness, and improved child protection notifications (Saunders, 2013).

Asian countries also experience poverty and social exclusion. In Japan, a study of six hundred households identified income poverty, material deprivation, exclusion from public service, the lack of social relations, inadequate housing, the lack of activities, and subjective poverty as major dimensions of poverty and social exclusion (Aya, 2010). Childhood poverty was seen to have a direct impact on whether poverty would be a factor as an adult. Officially, the Japanese do not acknowledge the existence of poverty, but 16 percent of the population was considered to be poor in 2010. While the young were the most likely group to be socially excluded as the result of being deprived of material goods and adequate housing, the elderly were the most likely to be socially excluded because of income (Aya, 2010).

Canadian policymakers, like those in the United States, have failed to agree on poverty and social exclusion measures, but some provinces have acted on their own. The Quebec Act to Combat Poverty and Social Exclusion was passed in 2004, and $3.3 billion was committed to increasing the minimum wage, improving access to housing, and establishing work premiums for low-income earners. Likewise, in 2006, An Action Plan for Newfoundland and Labrador was introduced, establishing goals for reducing social exclusion. Poverty and social exclusion measures are also being undertaken in Nova Scotia, Ontario, and Prince Edward Island.

At the foundation of the issue of reducing social exclusion lies a lack of empirical research concerning statistically valid and reliable methods of assessing and tracking comparable results. In 2022, the United Nations reported the establishment of the Conference of European Statisticians, a task force consisting of thirty statistical experts from twelve United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) member countries. This group intends to aid the collection of data on social exclusion to align with the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The 2022 Approaches to Measuring Social Exclusion report prepared by the UNECE task force includes an explanation of what social exclusion is and why it is important to measure and track this data, as well as information regarding their approach to collecting global data on the topic and their future plans.

Terms & Concepts

Medicaid: A health insurance program initiated in 1965 to provide healthcare for poor Americans who could not afford private insurance.

Medicare: Health insurance program for the elderly and the disabled that ensures that those who can no longer work are not forced to go without healthcare.

New Deal: Program of reforms instituted by President Franklin Roosevelt after his election in 1932 that was designed to restore the economy during the Great Depression.

Occupy Wall Street: Social movement that began in 2011 on social media sites and spread to eighty countries as protestors objected to increasing economic inequalities and barriers to social mobility in the twenty-first century.

Poverty: The lack of access to basic necessities such as food, shelter, clean water, improved sanitation, and healthcare. Within each country, poverty levels are established based on a country's relevant standard of living.

Social Inclusion: Access to factors that define quality of life, including access to the economic, social, civil, and political systems of a given society.

War on Poverty: Social welfare program launched by President Lyndon Johnson during the 1960s to level out economic and social differences based on race, ethnicity, and income.

Bibliography

Approaches to Measuring Social Exclusion. (2022). UNECE. Retrieved June 4, 2023, from https://unece.org/sites/default/files/2022-05/ECECESSTAT20221.pdf

Aya K, A. (2010). Social exclusion and earlier disadvantages: An empirical study of poverty and social exclusion in Japan. Social Science Japan Journal 13, 5–30. Retrieved December 17, 2014, from EBSCO Online Database SocINDEX with Full Text: http://search.ebsco-host.com/loginaspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=50986538&site=ehost-live

Carpenter-Song, E., Ferron, J., & Kobylenski, S. (2016). Social exclusion and survival for families facing homelessness in rural New England. Journal of Social Distress & the Homeless, 25(1), 41–52. Retrieved December 20, 2016, from EBSCO Online Database Sociology Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sxi&AN=118193077&site=ehost-live&scope=site

Creamer, John. (2020). Inequalities persist despite decline in poverty for all major race and hispanic origin groups. US Census Bureau. Retrieved June 20, 2023, from https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2020/09/poverty-rates-for-blacks-and-hispanics-reached-historic-lows-in-2019.html

DeNavas-Walt, C., & Proctor, B. D. (2015). Income and poverty in the United States: 2014. US Census Bureau. Retrieved December 20, 2016, from https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2015/demo/p60-252.pdf

Horowitz, J. M., Kochhar, R., & Igielnik, R. (2020, January 9). Trends in income and wealth inequality. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/01/09/trends-in-income-and-wealth-inequality

Kearney, M. (2014, January 5). Income inequality in the United States. Retrieved January 5, 2015, from http://www.brookings.edu/research/testimony/2014/01/16-income-inequality-in-the-united-states-kearney

Lebni, J., Mohammadi Gharehghani, M. A., Soofizad, G., khosravi, B., Ziapour, A., & Irandoost, S. F. (2020). Challenges and opportunities confronting female-headed households in Iran: A qualitative study. BMC Women’s Health, 20(183). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12905-020-01046-x

Lee, J. (2023, March 7). 37.9 million Americans are living in poverty, according to the U.S. Census. but the problem could be far worse. CNBC. Retrieved June 8, 2023, from https://www.cnbc.com/2023/03/07/why-poverty-might-be-far-worse-in-the-us-than-its-reported.html

Notten, Geranda & Guio, Anne-Catherine. (2023). Reducing poverty and social exclusion in Europe: Estimating the marginal effect of income on material deprivation. Socio-Economic Review. https://doi.org/10.1093/ser/mwad001

Rycroft, R. (2013). The economics of inequality, poverty, and discrimination in the 21st century (Volumes 1 and 2). ABC-CLIO.

Saunders, P. (2013). Reflections on the concept of social exclusion and the australian social inclusion agenda. Social Policy Administration, 47, 692–708. Retrieved December 16, 2014, from EBSCO Online Database SocINDEX with Full Text: http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=90576317&site=ehost-live

Shaaban, S. (2011). A conceptual framework review of social exclusion and its relation with social cohesion and poverty in Europe. International Journal of Diversity in Organisations, Communities, and Nations 11, 117–131. Retrieved December 17, 2014, from EBSCO Online Database SocINDEX with Full Text. http://search.ebsco-host.com/loginaspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=74292290&site=ehost-live

Smith, L. (2010). Psychology, poverty, and the end of social exclusion: Putting our practice to work. Teachers College Press.

Smith, L. (2013). So close and yet so far away: Social class, social exclusion, and mental health. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 83, 11–16. Retrieved March 22, 2015, from EBSCO Online Database Academic Search Complete. http://searchebscohost.com/loginaspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=84943523&site=ehost-live

Spyrou, S. (2013). How single-parent children speak about poverty and social exclusion: Policy implications from a comparative, qualitative cross-national project. Child and Youth Services, 34, 64–84. Retrieved December 17, 2014, from EBSCO Online Database SocINDEX with Full Test. http://searchebscohost.com/loginaspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=86009654&site=ehost-live

Wolff, E. (2013). The distribution of wealth in the United States at the start of the 21st century. In The economics of inequality, poverty, and discrimination in the 21st century. ABC-CLIO.

World Bank. (2022, December 8). Half of the global population lives on less than US$6.85 per person per day. Retrieved June 20, 2023, from https://blogs.worldbank.org/developmenttalk/half-global-population-lives-less-us685-person-day

Suggested Reading

Doob, C. (2019). Social inequality and social stratification in US society (2nd ed.). Pearson.

Keister, L., & Southgate, D. (2022). Inequality: A contemporary approach to race, class, and gender (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press.

Pierson, J. (2016). Tackling poverty and social exclusion: Promoting social justice in social work (3rd ed.). Routledge.

Pittinger, M. (2016). Class unknown: Undercover investigations of American work and poverty from the progressive era to the present. New York University Press.

Wilson, G. (Ed.). (2007). Race, ethnicity, and inequality in the U.S. labor market: Critical issues in the new millennium. Sage.