The student opens the paper with a long series of statements of fact related to this question of the pandemic's effect on income and poverty, mostly taken from just a couple sources. This is just a reaction essay, so this is okay for this assignment. Students are just given an hour to write whatever they can about some issue related to policy or social welfare services, and they can do whatever they want in their papers; it's a free writing exercise.
One thing I have been interested in researching and understanding this semester is the effect COVID-19 has had on poverty levels. For the first time since 1997 (actually, since 2010), the poverty rate increased in 2020 (the Great Recession caused increases in poverty in 2008, 2009, and 2010). On a long-term scale, numbers predict that by 2030, 588 million people could still be living in extreme poverty, 50 million more than the pre-COVID-19 estimate (Kharas & Dooley, 2021). Since the beginning of the pandemic, it has been reported that at least 74.7 million people have lost work at one point in time (Root & Simet) (HRW). Among households making less than $35,000 a year 57.3 percent experienced income or employment loss. Additionally, 24 million of those adults reported experiencing hunger and more than 6 million feared being evicted or foreclosed on within the next few months (Root & Simet) (HRW). The number of adults who had reported not having enough to eat in the last 7 days had increased by 5 million since 2020. Many families have already used their stimulus money and are living day to day off government food programs. In March of 2020, approximately 49 million people filed for unemployment insurance. President Biden’s American Rescue Plan, which encompassed 1.9 trillion of relief funds, has helped but is only temporary.
The CARES Act has created many programs such as the Pandemic Unemployment Compensation to help relieve those who are unemployed due to the pandemic. While these programs have made strived to assist those in need during hard times, the question is often have they done enough to offset the lost earnings and rise in unemployment. Interestingly, poverty rates fell in all age categories. The greatest range being for individuals aged 18-64. The largest race group to fall in poverty levels was the “Other” group which includes Hispanic and other non-white or African American individuals. The resource provided by the University of Chicago entails many facts and statistics regarding the effect COVID-19 has had on our economy both at a state and country level.
Resources
The report was by Homi Kharas (https://www.brookings.edu/blog/future-development/2020/10/21/the-impact-of-covid-19-on-global-extreme-poverty/ )
The follow up from June of 2021 was from Homi Kharas and Meagan Dooley (https://www.brookings.edu/blog/future-development/2021/06/02/long-run-impacts-of-covid-19-on-extreme-poverty/)
https://www.hrw.org/news/2021/03/02/united-states-pandemic-impact-people-poverty#
Brian Root and Lena Simet
https://www.hrw.org/news/2021/03/02/united-states-pandemic-impact-people-poverty
https://bfi.uchicago.edu/wp-content/uploads/BFI_WP_202084.pdf
I like your attention to facts and figures. You’re evidently quite the quantitative and empirical thinker. If that’s how you roll, okay, good. The assignment is supposed to let people explore their feelings and emotional reactions to situations in policy and services, but I can definitely relate to kindred spirits who, like I do, express our feelings about issues by citing facts that should elicit in our audience the same outrage or alarm or joy that these figures provoke in our own hearts and spirits.
What I get from this paper is that you are concerned that we haven’t done enough to correct for the harms inflicted by the pandemic and the necessary (or perhaps sometimes unnecessary, better to err on the side of caution, eh?) steps that have been taken to thwart the spread of the virus. You are also concerned that the persons most vulnerable to the harms, who have had the greatest harm inflicted, where those who were already living more precarious lives in poverty or near poverty. Those are good social work instincts.
Consider why it is controversial to shift money from the wealthy to the poor to ameliorate the suffering caused by the pandemic. Consider why many people wanted to reduce the efforts to support persons who were harmed by the pandemic recession. Consider why many people thought it would be better to just not try to contain the virus and let the economy go on the way it had been, despite the predictable high levels of death that would have caused (probably 2-3 million as opposed to the 700,000-800,000 we will actually have). What were the priorities these opinions imply? Why is it considered “mainstream” and rational to prefer the continuing accumulation of wealth by capitalists over the actual lives of persons who would perish in an unconstrained pandemic? Why is it considered part of normal debate to suggest that low-income persons should be allowed to risk their lives at work to avoid loss of income, but extreme and “radical” to propose a temporary shift of tax and wealth-redistribution policies to protect the most vulnerable by limiting the wealth growth of the wealthiest during the pandemic?
The numbers you cite are pointing to something going on deep in the American state of mind, and you have to ask whether that state of mind is ethical, and what has shaped the thinking of so many to accept proposals that would have consequences of mass death as “good” because they “preserve the economy”.
No comments:
Post a Comment