Monday, June 21, 2010
The High Price of Poverty
It is expensive to be poor. This article does a great job of describing what many middle-class people simply don’t understand - there are hidden costs to being poor, and hidden privileges to living in middle-class neighborhoods.
I can get in my car and drive to the grocery store. Actually, I could bike or walk to two or three, which are within a mile of my house. I can even comparison shop and get the best deal among them, if I want to. I can pop open my laptop, use my wifi internet connection, and comparison shop between stores before I ever leave my house. If my car breaks down, I have a number of friends who will actually hand me their keys while my car is in the shop. Being middle-class has its privileges.
Bryant Myers, former VP of WorldVision, in his book Walking with the Poor, observes that there are many kinds of poverty. You can be dollar-poor, which means you don’t have much income, savings, or material resources. You can be relationship-poor, meaning you don’t have access to friends and family who can help you. You can be politically poor, meaning you don’t have a voice or a way of changing your community. You can be spiritually poor.
He also observes that a person tends to be rich or poor in more than one area. People who are wealthy tend to also have wealthy contacts. People who are dollar poor tend to be poor in other ways. They may be alienated from their family. They may not know how to navigate the systems of funding available for poor people.
He also makes an observation that sounds at first like a cliche - people can be non-poor in wealth, but be devastatingly poor spiritually. These non-poor (in terms of wealth) tend to have non-poor friends, and do not typically hang out with poor people. Therefore they tend to be blind to poverty and ignorant both of their own privilege and of the poverty that may be next door.
To those of you who have been dialogue partners on this blog about social justice and poverty, I sincerely ask: how many people do you know who are actually in poverty? You don’t have to share. Just make a list. Folks who use food stamps (SNAP), public transportation because they can’t afford a car, or who are homeless? Because when someone suggests to me that hunger shouldn’t be a problem because there are food stamps, and that removing sales taxes on groceries won’t help because food stamps are tax free, I’m wondering what planet you live on. If hunger isn’t a problem, why are nonprofits struggling to keep up with increased demand for food pantries and hot meals? Why are people who are eligible for food stamps not applying for or receiving them? (I recommend this recent Talk of the Nation piece on food stamps).
When people argue that the church should not be involved in social justice, they often take one of three approaches: either poverty is not a problem (i.e., “people in America are better off than anywhere else” and Americans aren’t really poor) or it’s an intractable problem (i.e., “he who does not work does not eat”, as if most poverty is caused by laziness) or it’s simply part of the game (i.e., “the freedom to fail”). I honestly do not think that anyone who is actively involved in ministry with poor people can offer these arguments with any integrity. Nor do I think that anyone who has regular contact with poor people can argue that inequality does not play a huge role in poverty.
I think one way to break down the barriers that keep people poor is to work on making poverty less expensive. Provide public transportaion, public parks and libraries, funding for the arts in schools so kids are motivated to stay in school, safe and affordable housing. Address inequality in lending and the stagnation of real wages. Develop a single-payer health care system, or simply let people buy into Medicare. Create economic incentives to save for education and housing (these programs already exist), as well as incentives for preventative health care.
In reality, I already enjoy many of those incentives because I live a privileged life. I live in a great part of town, with great parks and libraries, a town that is pedestrian-friendly. Being middle-class has its privileges. But being poor is expensive.
