Unit B: Blog 5 Identifying the Working Poor

In 1996 there was a shift of welfare requirements from the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act which called for stricter work requirements for families who want help from social services. This change in requirements forced some mother to go to work. This policy is was drove a new work based society in the United States (Chaudry, 13). The United States moved into a work based society and strive for citizens that could support themselves; the legislature wanted people to be “self sufficient”, work for themselves, and support themselves standing on their own two feet (Chaudry, 14). This is why they “were asking the less fortunate to strive to work harder and deeply discounting our public responsibility for the children born in poor families and disadvantaged communities.” The working poor is a public problem and not a personal problem because it is a nation wide phenomenon affected thousands of people who are trying to work, but can not make ends meet because of the welfare conditions. This people work for anything they can, make minimum wage, live paycheck to paycheck, live on food stamps, and yet when they need food stamps the most the government cuts them according to the plan (Living with a hole video). In American there are 37 million poor under the poverty line, but there are 53 million American that are living just right above the poverty line which makes it even harder for them to get help or benefits (Prof. Newman video). The poverty problem in the United States is a public one and not a personal because millions of people are suffering. There would not be that many people living in poverty if it was just a personal issue, but because there are millions upon millions in poverty it shows you that there is a problem in government’s system for assistance, welfare, and help problems.