Poverty in American Cities - Essay Example

? Poverty in American cities Number Poverty in American cities Poverty is a term used to refer to the condition of an individual who does not have a normal or socially adequate amount of cash or property. The problem of poverty was a significant issue that affected American cities in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Lack of adequate food, housing, infrastructure and employment opportunities was rampant in the major American urban areas in the late 1800s and 1900s. The dearth of such basic amenities resulted in much hunger and homelessness among most American urban residents. During the late nineteenth century, white Democrats in the urban areas had established legal infrastructures that were not favorable for industrial development and business ventures, especially by the private sector. The banking industry was still at its infancy, while credit facilities and services had not taken foot. Significance of the nineteenth century poverty in American cities The late nineteenth century poverty in the cities was significant, because it would define the long-standing policies that various urban planners were to set up to mitigate the problem or any recurrence in future; these include housing projects, sanitation, sewers, garbage dumps and structured construction of buildings in the urban areas. Meanwhile, Tardanico (2008) indicates the towns concentrated more on agricultural businesses. Additionally, the period witnessed a high population influx in the urban areas, following the industrialization efforts. Law-making bodies were opposed to business and the building of a contemporary society. For instance, Alabama upheld a seven decade refusal to engage in redistrict measures, long after it had experienced major demographic transformations and economic drifts to towns. For a long period of time Birmingham city generated the bulk of the state’s revenue, but received a meager infrastructural development and services, thus leading to poverty (Lassonde, 1996). In the sunset years of nineteenth century, Texas swiftly increased its railroad coverage, building a link of major urban areas through a radial program and extended to the Galveston harbor (Riis, 2011). According to Bolland et al (2007), in an effort to improve the industrial sector was met with apparent job boycotts and labor instability among the town residents, who took home peanuts, despite their heavy toil. In 1885 Texas was among the top ten of the 40 states in which employee unrest took the toll on major industries in the town; within half a decade, it occupied the fifteenth position. More than 70 percent of labor unrest cases, mainly interstate instabilities such as telegraph workers and railway employees, took place in 1886. By 1890 Dallas developed to the biggest township in Texas (Bolland et al, 2007). The 1900 witnessed the town having a population exceeding 42,000; but by 1910, the population had immensely increased to 92,000 (Tardanico, 2008). Dallas transformed into world’s harness-making centre and a region of other manufacturing industries. As an illustration of the town’s ambitions, in late 1800s, Dallas set up the Praetorian Building, a fifteen storey edifice, the tallest on the western side of the Mississippi. Subsequently, others were soon built. Texas was completely changed by a rail transport line network connecting five significant cities, including Houston and Galveston, a nearby harbor; others include Dallas, San Antonio, El Paso, and Fort Worth. It is notable that each experienced a remarkable increase in population with more than 50,000 within less than two decades (Riis, 2011). In the five decades from 1870, the population of Americans residing in the country’s major towns increased to 54 million, up five times. Into the late nineteenth century, American townships developed in terms of demographics and extended in area by encompassing nearby villages. For instance, New York City consumed Brooklyn, Bronx and Queens, regions that appeared as politically carved regions, due to rapid population increase. Chicago experienced substantial population growth from an estimated 300,000 people in 1870 to over one million residents by late 1800s (Lassonde, 1996). Statistics indicate that about 75 percent of the town’s residents were immigrants born elsewhere across the world, and whereas a number were leading a normal life, poverty took toll on many of them (Spano, Rivera, & Bolland, 2006). That poverty, nonetheless, was largely imperceptible to the affluent residing in the city’s suburban area, since the lower-end population segment was mesmerized with the activities in far-flung neighborhoods (Lassonde, 1996). Congestion due to unprecedented growth of population Sanchez-Jankowski (1999) suggests this unprecedented population growth resulted in abject poverty for the majority of the residents, whom planners did not anticipate would reside in the places within such a short period of time. Business opportunities were left unexploited by the population who had the resources needed to uplift the economy through employment creation (Riis, 2011). Nonetheless, though significant new industries began springing up in townships such as Atlanta, Birmingham, and Dallas, Houston, Fort Worth and Texas, the welfare of the workers who worked in the industries was hardly taken care of, hence resulting in the deterioration of the living conditions of the people and the degeneration of the society into poverty life (Spano, Rivera, & Bolland, 2006). As a result, the remarkable growth only benefitted a few privileged individuals. Birmingham transformed into imperative steel manufacturing centre and mining urban area, with substantial population increase in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century recorded. The poor erected structures on lands with tentative ownerships, around American cities. These often were used by middle class individuals who were absorbed into the economic developments. Notably, the houses faced major transport lines and increasingly had some space for compound. New apartments were not congested inside and usually had other necessary amenities such as balconies, and porches (Spano, Rivera, & Bolland, 2006). As the working class population avoided the noisy and smoky urban neighborhoods, poorer individual who were the majority; including new rural-urban migrants, joined the deserted houses. Landlords cashed in on the problem of housing shortage by partitioning city rooms into apartments (Riis, 2011). They also set up tenements, apartment buildings for the lower-end population and were not normally in good condition in terms of drainage and hygiene. Immigrants moved with speed to occupy affordable shelter and because of the anticipation to dedicate their efforts in or close to the downtown cities or around major industries, which they depended on for employment (Bolland et al, 2007). Now the wealthy resided in the suburban regions and the underprivileged close to the noisy cities. The development of the American urban areas outpaced the capacity of local authorities to cater for tap water, rubbish collection, and drainage and sewer systems in places inhabited by poor populations. As a result, the hygienic condition of cities worsened. According to Murphy (2007), city life experienced the impact of thick population, and unfriendly places drove the economy. Not surprisingly, graft was rife in local government offices and city operations, in the building sector, and among land owners and employment agencies. Inflated rents, meager earnings, and inadequate services resulted in depression in the wake of remarkable economic growth. Poverty in the late twentieth century poverty In the late twentieth-century American cities, the chronology of dearth of resources began with majority of working class living in the precipice of destitution, intermittently short of what to eat; how to fuel, clothe, and shelter. Unlike the poverty status in American cities in the late 19th century, Bolland et al (2007) suggests the contemporary story encompassed both impressionability and stoicism of city residents, as the scarcity of resources was made different by immense economic, social, and political underpinnings, and of dearth that stubbornly withstood development of wealth and economy. It covers the period when the pangs of beliefs soiled by the culture of scarcity in the likelihood of general comfort and development with the influence of utopian dream and a period when the sustained existence of resource deprivation amid unmatched abundance appeared unnecessary, actually, a national humiliation. The twentieth-century scarcity was pertinent to the broader story of socio-economic transformation not just because it touches issues that were inexorably linked to the bone of survival (Tardanico, 2008). Additionally, poverty’s fluid magnitude and composition revolve around the remarkable change in occupation, income, ethnicity, gender, household, and the state through local authorities in charge of the municipalities (Riis, 2011). Impacts of contemporary socio-economic variables The economic factors in America’s major cities before the mid twentieth century substantially culminated into the poverty status that rocked the places between the closing stages of the Great Depression and the 1990s (Spano, Rivera, & Bolland, 2006). The poverty status in American cities during the sunset years of the twentieth century was greatly influenced by varied demographics: poverty levels among age, sex, ethnicity, and other population segments residing in the townships, and suburban regions all changed over time. Eventually, succeeding cohorts of city residents in the country experienced different forms of poverty (Riis, 2011). These variations were not accidental. Instead, they mirrored the tremendous transformations in work, relations, and government policy that pigeonholed the chronology of America in the late twentieth century (Rankin, & Quane, 2000). Even though American cities experienced a remarkable reduction in poverty rates during the period and compared to the previous century, many city residents always would lead poverty life, and they opted for both permanent and innovative mechanisms for survival. Novel poverty reduction programs were initiated by the government, the most significant being massive job creation initiatives and the regulation of immigration into the United States to ease the unemployment challenge within major cities. Contrary to a single prominent way of policy history based on the status quo, poverty remained high largely due to soaring levels of real wages (Riis, 2011). Growth of immigrant population According to Murphy (2007), the occupational Black American communities residing in different American citizens, and their association with increasing poverty levels, arguably presents the deindustrialization suggestion indefensible for most cities in the country. Nonetheless, in the long run, the most significant fact is that the poverty situation in most American cities during the sunset years of the last century indicates that the situation was neither irreversible nor unavoidable. Rather, it was flexible, responsive not just in regard to immense macroeconomic variables in the urban areas, but to intelligent and appropriate government regulations at the local levels. For instance, in the 1890s and 1900s upright single parents assumed universally to be lacking husbands, were the typical deserving underprivileged society members, but by the end o the twentieth-century, the comparable segment in need of aid dominated the population of the better placed, economically. These changing notions of social responsibility and moral essence only served to convolute efforts to achieve conformity on a description of poverty (Ananat, 2011). Disparity of poverty levels across city families The substantial social and economic transformation which came as result of World War II changed the ancient lines of poverty. For instance, the reduction in poverty within households was unusual (Murphy, 2007). As the twentieth century came to an end, the almost half of the city residents whose earnings were higher than the poverty mark in 1930s had their earnings limited by almost 75 percent. This remarkable development achievement, nonetheless, did not take the projected line, instead it ushered in irregular outcomes across the period, and toward the late twentieth century it stalled (Ananat, 2011). For urban whites, the reduction of poverty levels hit a snag among workers, in the 1970s. This highlighted declining earnings and increasing unevenness in incomes. For individuals who dedicated their efforts to the urban industries in less than twelve months, the condition worsened while for African Americans, the antipoverty campaigns of consistent, full time employment continued to enhance, but at a slower rate, and most of the population segment remained underprivileged (Tardanico, 2008; Riis, 2011). Impact of poverty in American cities Rankin and Quane (2000), avers poverty is a widespread disaster whose impact can be far-reaching if proper mitigation efforts are not put in place. In this respect, American cities experienced high rate of criminal activity such as theft, and more open prostitution. This resulted in philanthropic agencies donating shelter and food to poor urban residents. This prompted the setting up of professional law-enforcement agencies in the late nineteenth century to maintain order and to offer security to property owners and their premises (Spano, Rivera, & Bolland, 2006). The late twentieth century witnessed the re-equipment of major metropolis police officers to check high rates of criminal activity in the major towns. Riis (2011) indicates the Prohibition period, in which the sale of alcoholic drinks was banned, resulted in the unintended consequence of soaring organized crime rate in the country, as production, importation, and trade of illicit alcohol offered a monetary windfall for criminals in the urban areas. The returns were injected into gambling, immorality, narcotics trade, and a number of legitimate businesses. Law enforcers and juries were sometimes compromised (Ananat, 2011). Federal courts in the mid-twentieth century helped root out organized crime. Additionally, the increase in drug use toward the end of the twentieth century increased the cases of robbery cases, most common in cities. Contributions of various organizations At the end of the century, the poor who were in employment positions served as a worrying reflection of stalled development in growth of earnings and parity. In spite of increasing real wages, in case households had depended exclusively on the incomes of breadwinners, scarcity among the population would have reduced much less. By 1990, it was just a paltry one percentage point more than the mid-20th century figures. In view of these trends, various organizations helped to alleviate poverty in the various cities, though in a complementary manner (Riis, 2011). The Progressive organizations and effective policies of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries resulted in limiting the soaring levels of the graft and in setting up housing regulations, public health infrastructures, and civil service vetting processes in local governments. Nevertheless, from the beginning of the major reduction of poverty levels shortly after the World War II, both the federal and local governments contributed immensely toward the improvement of the people’s welfare by passing housing and proper planning legislations (Tardanico, 2008). The courts tried criminals arraigned before them by the better trained and well equipped metropolitan police, even as aid organizations pressed forward with their distribution of alms (Riis, 2011). Conclusion Although, Americans were hopeful of economic emancipation during the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the rapid development of towns resulted in poverty among residents. Better employment opportunities expectations and infrastructure in different American cities resulted in substantial growth of population. Despite the Industrial Revolution changing urban life and offering town residents by providing hope for bettering their living conditions, unprecedented population growth led to shortage of basic amenities in American cities. But with better planning initiatives, American cities remarkably strived to contain the poverty situation into the twenty first century. Generally, though the development industries often result in better economic life, especially in terms of providing employment opportunities, improper measures can result in undue congestion of the urban areas by people seeking employment, eventually escalating poverty levels as it was witnessed during the late nineteenth century. References Ananat, E.O. (2011). The Wrong Side(s) of the Tracks: The Causal Effects of Racial Segregation on Urban Poverty and Inequality. American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 3(2), 34-66. Bolland et al (2007). Development and Risk Behavior Among African American, Caucasian, and Mixed-race Adolescents Living in High Poverty Inner-city Neighborhoods. American Journal of Community Psychology, 40(3/4), 230-249. Lassonde, S. (1996). Learning and earning: Schooling, juvenile employment, and the early life course in late. Journal of Social History, 29(4), 839. Murphy, A.K. (2007). The Suburban Ghetto: The Legacy of Herbert Gans in Understanding the Experience of Poverty in Recently Impoverished American Suburbs. City & Community, 6(1), 21-37. Rankin, B.H., & Quane, J.M. (2000). Neighborhood Poverty and the Social Isolation of Inner-City African American Families. Social Forces, 79(1), 139-170. Riis, J. (2011). How the Other Half Lives. New York: Applewood Books. Sanchez-Jankowski, M. (1999). The Concentration of African-American Poverty and the Dispersal of the Working Class: An Ethnographic Study of Three Inner-City Areas. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 23(4), 619-37. Spano, R., Rivera, C., & Bolland, J. (2006). The Impact of Timing of Exposure to Violence on Violent Behavior in a High Poverty Sample of Inner City African American Youth. Journal of Youth & Adolescence, 35(5), 681-692. Tardanico, R. (2008). Post-Civil War San Salvador: Social Inequalities of Household and Basic Infrastructure in a Central American City. Journal of Development Studies, 44(1), 127-52. Read More