Poverty Myths Busted: Low Wage Jobs Fastest Growing. Why Families Need Government Programs

• In Event: 420 - Research Poster Session. Communicating Sociology

Abstract

Much dialogue on the nightly news attributes problems of inequality, poverty and lack of social mobility to individual failings.

This poster session highlights the connection between wages and poverty. Charts, pictures and interviews with workers make real the effect on families of the wages in those jobs likely to grow the fastest, such as retail salesperson and health aides.

Using the most current data, charts will show how many people can be supported by the growth jobs at a poverty level and at the self-sufficiency level. They will tie wages to the need for food stamps and housing assistance.

Pictures and interviews will portray the workers in jobs that do not provide a family living. Others will show the businesses that would shut down if all the people making less than an adequate wage quit or got promoted tomorrow: stores, hospitals, nursing homes and many offices. Pictures and charts highlight the fact that many of the occupations that will provide the most new jobs do not require advance education and do not provide significant opportunities for advancement.

Myths countered by the charts:
1. All will be well if we could just grow the economy.
2. People use food stamps because they have become dependent upon the Federal government.
3. Poverty will be solved by better education.
4. Minimum wage jobs are starter jobs that provide experience for teenagers.
5. Homelessness problem would be solved if the homeless would work.

Author

• Peggy Wireman, Wireman and Associates