After looking over the options that Professor Wang gave us for this blog, I was drawn to the topic of poverty. Many people will go to lengths to talk about poverty around the world, specifically Africa when it’s imperative that we look at our own country’s homeless and struggling Americans. Poverty USA is a website that informs its readers about the percentage of people in the United States who live in poverty. According to this website, in 2016 27.6% of Native Americans lived in poverty. Other ethnicity percentages of those who lived in poverty are as followed: 26.2% Black, 23.4% Hispanic, 12.4% White, 12.3% Asian. In order to make my chart, I rounded the number to the nearest digit so that it was easy to imagine how many people were homeless out of 100 people. We speak a lot in class about ways in which we can interpret numbers, and it is difficult to imagine a percentage of Americas population when there are millions of people who reside in the country. Below is my pie chart.
I completely agree with your statement that as a country we must look directly at the poverty within our own country and figure out how we can fix that issue sooner rather than later. It is alarming to see that a quarter of the Native American, Black, and Hispanic population live in poverty. One interesting thing that could be expanded on further would be what regions of the country these ethnic groups primarily reside in to get an understanding of how we can improve their economic standing. We as a country should research as to how and where we can find these citizens jobs to increase their wealth.
I think the way that you ended your argument was sharp. I think you made a strong point of looking at the rates of poverty among our own domestic communities before we try focusing on other countries. What is one way that you think the US can work to decrease poverty and increase the conditions of living?
I agree with your point that people discuss global poverty levels, which are still important, before discussing the poverty levels experienced in our own country. I also agree with Nick that it would be interesting to investigate whether there is a concentration of poverty in a specific area, and looking into way of revitalizing those communities.
I think a pie chart was definitely the way to go for this data, it does a great job of showing which ethnic groups have more people living in poverty effectively. I think your comment about Africa made me think of something about American society. The U.S. is one of the richest countries in the world, and we have an incredibly high standard of living. Because this is true, we often don’t like to acknowledge that a good amount of poverty exists in the U.S., moreso than we’d ever like to admit. I think it’s a “out of sight-out of mind” mentality.