Home  About  In the News  Publications  Blog  Join  Donate  Each year, the incoming leaders of Roosevelt Institution chapters gather at the FDR Estate in Hyde Park, New York. Photos by Nick Bradley. Announcements National Expo: July 11th Hyde Park Summit: August 14-17 Essay Winners Announced in The Nation On Campus Iowa Chapter Holds Forum Zach Hindin in the GW Hatchet Coverage of the Johns Hopkins Chapter Launch > More "You must do the things you think you cannot do." — Eleanor Roosevelt    The Cycle of Poverty: Fact or Fiction? Posted by Brian Levy on Wed, 11 Apr 2007 19:13 PST We’ve heard a lot about antipoverty policy from the current Congress.  In fact, you can read quite a few pieces on the issue throughout this blog.  Thankfully, we don’t have mention of the ‘cycle of poverty.’  A lot of people talk about the ‘cycle,’ but what do they really mean?  Typically, it refers to a social system whereby poor individuals are unable to escape poverty due to a lack of social skills, resources, and contacts.  Thus, the impoverished remain in poverty for life, and they often bequeath this burden to their children.  In the ‘cycle,’ poverty is intergenerational. Except this isn’t quite true.  In his book, Politics and the Professors, Henry Aaron first pointed out that the poverty population is largely transitory.  From 1967 to 1972 only 3 percent of Americans were poor for all six years, and in any given year one-third of individuals in poverty were not in poverty the year before or in poverty the year after.  But the total number of individuals in poverty remains the same from year to year.  How does this happen?  There is actually a large group of individuals – much larger than is in poverty at any one time – cycling above and below the poverty line.  A graphical representation of this phenomenon might look something like the image below. Clearly, there is a small group of individuals that tends to remain in extreme poverty.  However, this ‘cycle’ does not apply to the majority of individuals.  In fact, in 2000 more than half of the impoverished actually held jobs.  It is also worth noting that over 40% of those in poverty are white Americans. Therefore, poverty affects a wide variety of Americans.  It is not a minority issue, it is not a jobless issue, and it is not an issue affecting some small ‘different’ group of people.  Our policies to combat poverty must be designed accordingly.  Raising the minimum wage is a good start, but there is more to be done.  Policymakers need to combat the problems that cause these brief stints of poverty through initiatives like national health insurance and unemployment insurance.  Moreover, the network of job training and placement programs should be strengthened. Ultimately, the ‘cycle of poverty’ approach leads to misconceptions about what policies are actually useful.  By correcting our conception of poverty, we can more adequately create programs to combat it. Permanent link: http://rooseveltinstitution.org/blog/post/110/the_cycle_of_poverty_fact_or_fiction   The Roosevelt Institution is a nonpartisan, nonprofit national think tank devoted to bringing students' policy ideas to the policy process. The opinions expressed on this site are exclusively those of its members. DC Headquarters: Roosevelt Institution / 2100 M St NW Suite 610 / Washington, DC 20037 || (202) 833-1359