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Eliminating American poverty tied to homeland security, says poverty expert
By Jessica Martin
May 4, 2004 ? Although the focus of homeland security has been on reducing
the threat of terrorism, the growing threat of poverty is rapidly
undermining the nation's economic vitality and has fueled rising
disillusionment, says one of the nation's leading scholars of poverty
issues.
"We need to wake up in America and realize that our homeland security is
tied as much if not more to the fact that huge numbers of Americans are
being left behind economically, and that as a result, the American Dream is
quickly turning into an American nightmare," says Mark R. Rank, Ph.D., the
Herbert S. Hadley Professor of Social Welfare at Washington University in
St. Louis.
"We currently have the highest rates of poverty in the industrialized
world," says Rank. "It's no coincidence that we also have the highest rates
of incarceration, poor health, unequal education and low paying jobs among
the developed countries. This undermines and threatens us all."
In his recently released book from Oxford University Press, One Nation,
Underprivileged: Why American Poverty Affects Us All, Rank argues that
we've completely misunderstood the nature and meaning of poverty, leading
to an institutional structure that leaves millions of Americans
economically vulnerable.
He offers a new platform for thinking about American poverty and some
strategies to eradicate the problem.
"The myth that poverty is simply the result of individual inadequacies such
as a lack of education, skills or being a single parent family is flat out
wrong," says Rank.
"These characteristics only explain who is more likely to lose out at the
economic game, rather than why the game produces losers in the first
place," he says.
"We are playing a large-scale version of musical chairs in this country
where there are 10 players but only 8 chairs. With the rising number of
low-paying jobs, substantial unemployment, and a lack of affordable housing
and health care, the game is structured in a way that ensures a significant
percentage of the population is going to lose out, no matter what their
characteristics may be."
Poverty is "mainstream"now
In his new book, Rank offers several plans for reducing poverty in America.
They include designing policies to ensure the existence of enough jobs that
pay a living wage to support a family above the poverty line; investing in
vital social goods such as health care, education and affordable housing;
developing policies that build and strengthen the assets of both
individuals and communities; and making sure that there is a reasonable
safety net in place for those who fall through the cracks.
"These policies have the real potential to make America a more productive,
livable and economically secure society," says Rank, who also authored the
groundbreaking book Living on the Edge: The Realities of Welfare in
America, which explored the circumstances of surviving on public
assistance.
"Right now roughly three quarters of all Americans between the ages of 20
and 75 will at some point experience a year in poverty or near poverty,"
says Rank. "Perhaps even more shocking is the fact that two thirds of
Americans between the ages of 20 and 65 will at some point use a welfare
program, such as food stamps, and that 40 percent of Americans will use a
welfare program in five or more separate years during their working-age
adulthood.
"Poverty is actually a mainstream event experienced by the dominant racial
group and not something that can be easily dismissed as a condition of
marginalized groups," adds Rank.
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