Why is there still poverty in America?

whatever you think poverty today looks like it probably doesn't look much like this in one of the most affluent counties in America people are queuing for handouts of diapers morning do you have your ID thank you we've had clients come to us that have said I've rinsed out a diaper and I've reused it I've turned a diaper inside out and I've reused it sometimes I've left my child in a diaper for far longer than I should have there is no government support in America to help pay for diapers and many poor families struggle to afford them America is the richest big country in the world its unemployment rate couldn't be much lower so why does it have so many people living in poverty [Music] in America almost 40 million people are living in poverty that's nearly 1/8 of the population living on less than $26,000 a year for a family of four here's the thing though poverty and absolute terms has actually decreased in recent years but the nature of poverty is changing and that change is making it much harder to fight poverty used to be more of an inner-city phenomenon but as housing costs rocketed poverty exploded in the suburbs now there are 3 million more poor people in suburbs than cities yet suburban counties spend one-tenth as much to support poor residents as urban counties which is why some residents of Lake County Illinois depend on charity handouts for diapers our schedule for the rest of the year so you can come twice a month just not twice in the same week anne-marie mattis is a local mom she set up the charity nine years ago in her basement initially she distributed secondhand children's clothes to poor families but soon she found there was an overwhelming need for diapers diapers cost seventy to eighty dollars a month per child so that's an expense that many many families struggle to afford you're welcome people are faced with you know not only diaper need bought but hunger homelessness it's very prevalent even here in what's considered a a wealthier community all right you're outside have a good day [Music] Xavier has been using the diaper pantry for the last few months for her it's a lifeline our budget goes on rent and food anything that's not covered by health insurance let me take this shirt off you got another one off clothing is a big thing for five kids yes program they help out a lot with healthy food then you can get some vouchers with them beans cheese milk poverty in America is becoming more concentrated we know that the effect of being poor and living in a poor neighborhood is much worse than being poor and living in an integrated neighborhood especially for children in terms of the kind of school that they go to or their exposure to crime and it's children who are affected the most one child in every six in America is poor I see other families in there around and joined us and there at the mall or there at these events my kids acts enough I have to keep saying I can't we can't how did it come to this to understand you need to go back to the 1960s [Music] President Lyndon Johnson went on a poverty tour of America and he was so shocked by what he saw he launched an ambitious plan and this administration today here and now declares unconditional war on poverty in America that war involving an array of programs designed to create a safety net many of which still exist in some form today these included expanding both the cash benefit for the elderly called Social Security as well as food stamps which help poor families buy food and largely they were successful if we look at the data without the safety net programs roughly the same number of Americans would be as poor today as they were in the 1960s but if you include the effect of the safety net programs that number comes right down Eldar poverty in the 1950s was a huge problem but along the way Social Security hugely reduce the amount of poverty among the elderly sounds good but not if you compare America's efforts with other wealthier countries before the benefit of safety nets is applied America's poverty rate is comparatively low but with it included it's one of the worst performing only slightly above Costa Rica in part that's because America's safety net programs have tended to benefit the elderly more than other groups like working age adults and children those programs are not doing as much as they might in a country like Finland for example Finland has a child poverty rate before taxes and transfers that are on par with America and after its safety net kicks in you cut that down to about 3% I'm in America you don't do that at all child poverty in America is remarkably high for an advanced developed democracy and you have to ask yourself what is the future of a society that doesn't invest in it [Music] the problem is food stamps for example can only be spent on specific things which doesn't always include the most obvious items unlike Social Security for the elderly whose recipients are handed cash to do as they please it's lunchtime and back at the pantry it's been a very busy daddy we've given out five thousand nine hundred and twenty five diapers so far with an hour and a half left to go since Anne Marie started the charity she says they've given out 1.2 million diapers and every week more and more families are registering the safety net programs that exist in the United States in general do not cover diapers and that's a common misconception in the community the problem is safety net programs are targeted so that many people don't qualify they are restrictive there are behavioral conditions increasingly attached to them and all of this can lead to a bureaucratic nightmare of red tape from which it's almost impossible to escape in America there is an ongoing debate about whether giving poor people cash leads to dependency yet the evidence from other countries shows that cash benefits can really help dent poverty since Canada implemented a child benefit of a few hundred dollars a month they have seen their child poverty numbers declined by about a third it's reasonable to expect that a program of similar magnitude in America would also generate the exact same effect one candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination has even made this a central part of his campaign [Applause] Colorado Senator Michael Bennett has proposed monthly cash transfers of 300 dollars for each American child as part of wider proposals to help poor people school kids all over this country they're living at a time when we've got the worst income inequality that we've had in a hundred years you've probably never heard of it which tells you a lot about America's political appetite for reducing poverty poor people are much less likely to vote so their issues are rarely vote winners if you're working two jobs and trying to make sure your kids are walking safely to school in a gang-infested neighborhood are you going to the block party for your member of Congress and making a campaign donation so that he or she will listen to you the pantries closing for the day for the families who use it poverty does not need to be inevitable there is a way out other countries around the world have done it it's really possible presuming you're a wealthy country with the resources and you have a reasonably strong economy the choice is a political one I know that it's something better coming and then we'll look back on in like we got through it we're strong we're gonna be stronger because of it I'm Anna the director of this film if you'd like to see more and the journey that brought us to the diaper pantry you can watch the story behind American poverty by clicking on the link opposite the other link will take you to some of the resources that we use when we were researching this film including other exclusive material don't forget to subscribe so you can see all of our latest releases and if you hit the bell button it will notify you whenever we post a new film thanks for watching you

Channel: The Economist

Views: 1,123,421

Keywords: the economist, economist, economist films, economist video, news, politics, short-documentary, poverty, poverty in america, poverty in us, us poverty, why is there poverty in america, why is there poverty, what is poverty, wealth, income inequality, equality, how poor people survive in the us, how poor people survive in the usa, poor people

Id: 5i45h76ioHY

Length: 10min 7sec (607 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 01 2019