Poverty in Australia Essay

The current poverty rate in America is 13.5 percent (US Census Bureau). That measures out to roughly 43.1 million Americans. What exactly is poverty? Poverty means not having enough money to meet basic needs including food, clothing and shelter. However, poverty is so much more than just not having enough money. Poverty is not having access to a doctor or medications you may need, poverty is not having access to a good education. Poverty can be the people who are barely able to pay for food and shelter and simply can’t afford other expenses such as car repairs, field trips with their children and any other extracurricular activity.

Poverty is a big problem in the United States. According to Charles Zastrow, “in 2012 over forty-six million people, about fifteen percent of our population was living below the poverty line” (p. 117). In other words, there were a great amount of people living below the poverty line the poverty line. The poverty line is the minimum level of income needed for secured needs of life according to the government. Poverty causes malnutrition, homelessness, School dropout’s drug abuse, and much more.

Poverty, in economic terms, is typically based on a poverty line, which measures the minimum amount of income deemed sufficient for livelihood. Although, poverty can also connotate the deprivation of capability.

In the book, Poverty and Inequality, it is noted that many people look at the economy and poverty status in the 60s to gauge how to solve poverty today (1997). The sixties saw the longest and strongest economic growth in US history. The unemployment rates went from twenty two percent to thirteen percent. The economy grew 4.3 % every year. This leads many economic analyses to tie the bustling economy with the declining poverty level. The eighties saw two short recessions before the second longest and strongest growth in US history. The unemployment rate went from just over ten percent to just over eight percent. It is important to note that the poverty rate only fell slightly during this period. By 1990, the poverty rate

Poverty is growing rapidly in our community, more and more people are becoming homeless due to the lack of employment. More than 2.5 million Australians are living below the poverty line, including 603,000 children. It is unsettling to know that the people of our community are experiencing hardship. We want to confront poverty and make it a thing of the past. The Australian Government is sending money abroad, helping other countries when there are people right in front of our door steps that are in need. Our approach is to stop wasting millions and millions of dollars on events, such as the 100 year Anzac commemoration (Costing over 300 million) and instead, use that money to lower the rate of uneployment and to reduce the number of people

Can you imagine not having your phone for a day? A week? A month? Even a year?

This paper will cover on the changes in the poverty rate from 1959-2013 and also the wages that you need to be over to not be consider poor. Shown in the chart above is the poverty rate from 1959-2013. As it is shown in the chart over the past 54 the poverty rate has significantly has gone down. It has gone down because education in the world has gotten about one hundred percent better than what it was back then. In the years 1970, 1974, and 1980’s the poverty rate spikes back up a little bit. The rate spikes because during those years our country went through a recession. A recession is a period of economic decline in which trade and industrial activity are reduced. This usually happens when there is a fall in GDP. The most recent recession happened in 2008, where we saw a decline in the real-estate business that the country still has not fully recovered from. During a recession the poverty rate would be higher because less people have jobs so they are not making an income like they used

As of 2012, one in eight Australians lives below the poverty (Leading Welfare Group). Those at risk were the singles over 65 years of age, the unemployed, single parent families and households that rely on welfare funds.

Within Australia there are many conflicting views on what poverty means and this is reflected in most of the literature. Absolute poverty occurs when families do not have sufficient income to pay for such basic necessities as food and housing. However, the World Bank (1990) defines poverty as, the inability to attain a minimal standard of living. This definition of poverty reflects the more relative nature of poverty within Australia and this view is largely accepted and utilised within current research (ABS, 1998; Henderson, 1975; Australian Bureau of Statistics, 1998; Saunders, 1998; Harding and Szukalska, 2000; Harding et al., 2001b; Saunders et al., 2007). For Saunders, relative poverty is the depravation of resources required to participate in the maintenance of everyday lifestyle and

Do any of you wake up one morning and not know if you’re going to be able to have a decent meal for the whole day? or not being able to have a shower and brush your teeth? What even being able to drink clean water? These questions may seem extreme or over the top, but it is a complete reality to those living under extreme poverty. According to research of the oxford dictionary , poverty is the state of being extremely poor. My goal here is to inform you about the main causes of poverty and what we can do here in Australia to help those in need. What are the causes of poverty? There is no one cause for poverty across the world. However, there are many components that contribute to poverty.

Therefore, the economic definition of poverty include two categories: absolute and relative definition of poverty. Relative defines poverty in relation to the economic status of other members of the society: people are poor if they fall below prevailing standards of living in a given societal context. For example, someone who lives in an expensive subdivision yet rents a run-down house and does not own luxurious things could be considered poor compared to the rest of the neighborhood. For the most part, poverty is relative and socially defined. The absolute definition measures poverty in relation to the amount of money necessary to meet basic needs such as food, clothing, shelter, and transportation. Where relative poverty sees inequality of income, absolute poverty sees families go hungry, live in inadequate housing, suffer from lack of health care, and possibly not have access to safe drinking water. An important criticism of both concepts is that they are largely concerned with income and consumption.

The table shows the proportion of people from each household type living that was living in poverty in Australia in 1999. Six family types are being reported.

The second indicator that gauged current living standards under the current income support standards was income poverty (Healey, 2007, pp. 8, 10). According to the estimated percentages provided in Table 2, proportions of Australians in 2006 that are living below 50% of the median income, and in fact below the poverty line represent an estimated 11.1% of all

The poverty line is set at between fifty to sixty percent of the median household income in Australia. The Australian Council of Social Services (ACOSS), found that poverty in 2011 to 2012 was considered to be a single adult with an income of less than four hundred dollars per week and a couple with two children earning less than eight-hundred and forty-one dollars per week. This constitutes in over two and a half million Australians and nearly fourteen percent of the national population having an income that is below the necessary standard of living. It is evident that poverty is a persistent problem for low income people in Australia. For instance, according to the ACOSS approximately twenty five percent of those who overcame the low

One of the largest areas of concern around the globe is the poverty levels. Over the last 40 years governments have been influenced by neoliberal ideologies and poverty has increased on a