Poverty Misconceptions-Annotated Bibliography

Lalasz, Robert. “Full-Time Work No Guarantee of Livelihood for Many U.S. Families”. Population Reference Bureau. Web. 4 Mar. 2011.

In his article Lalasz uncovers some of the facts and myths surrounding low income families.  The Public  Reference Bureau is working with a program called Working Poor Families Project. It is a fairly new national program that helps take care of the needs of working adults and determines whether individual states policies made to aid those adults are necessary and effective. PRB has gathered this information in working with this program. These facts might surprise most people as Lalasz says that “More than 25 percent of U.S. working families-9.2 million households with 39 million people-earn such low income that they are struggling financially.” It makes stereotypes such as these:  that the poor “don’t work, that they aren’t married, and that they are overwhelmingly minorities or immigrants,” seem rather small and ridiculous simply because it’s clear poverty is affecting more than just a small percentage of this nation. PRB has found these statistics to help exploit these types of misconceptions with these facts: “71% of low-income families work, 72% of low-income working families have American-born parents only, and 47% have white, non-Hispanic parents only, 53% of low-income working families are headed by a married couple.” With over 25% of the U.S. population struggling financially I think it’s safe to say that poverty is a community problem rather than a problem for “those people who live on that side of town.” Stereotypes are words that get thrown around when people want to blame others and don’t want to put in the time or effort to help fix a community wide problem.