Research Paper on:
Poverty Crisis

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
still in dire need. Unfortunately poverty seems to be a vicious cycle that keeps the poverty stricken in poverty. THE POVERTY LEVEL The commonly accepted poverty line is  determined by the United States Department of Health and Human Services with information from the Census Bureau. This information is calculated as being three times a familys annual food  budget, based on the assumption that families spend eleven percent of their income on food. "For a family of four today, the line is $16,660. That means an annual  food budget of $5,566, which breaks down to $3.82 per person per day. This is a beans and rice diet, no fast food," Russell points out. "Youre hard-pressed  to buy lunch on $3.82 a day" (Bettendorf 2000, 4). If we are to accept the current federal poverty level, then that leaves a family with $7.62 a day  per person to cover rent, utilities, car payments, clothes and health care. This is clearly inadequate, and further complicating the equation is the cost variation, particularly for housing, depending  on the metropolitan area. "Our goal is to define a self-sufficiency standard in every state," says Linda Frescas Dobbs, executive director of Wide Opportunities for Women, a national advocacy  group that has so far studied the cost of living in metropolitan and rural areas in ten states" (Bettendorf 2000, 4). All indications are that the poor are  getting poorer, and that poverty lines need to be re-drawn. The problem of the situation is that while overall poverty levels have declined, the facts remain that the situation  is worsening for those people who remain poor. "For the kids were leaving behind, were leaving them deeper in poverty," said Primus, who described a poverty gap that he