Blog #9

In the Official Story of “Who are America’s Poor Children” the authors explain many statistics related to the families that are considered poor. The article starts off with a good point- that the number of children living gin poverty has increased by over 11 percent between 2000 and 2005, despite the positive changes in the economy (Fass and Cauthen). It raises an important question, why are more children living in poverty if the economy improved between 2002 and 2005? One can look at the conditions of poor working women and how the federal poverty level does not accurately represent how much a family needs to live off of. Poor working women have a hard time getting off food stamps because of conditions in the work place. Most of the time these women are working minimum wage jobs and do not have any other options. They do not move vertically at the their job because of they can only work limited hours due to their children. Also, if a child gets sick or childcare falls through they will have to miss work. The term ‘glass ceiling” is usually applied to work in the corporate realm; when we women cannot go past a certain level of management because the upper management jobs are only for men. Its seems like there is also a glass floor, women cannot get out of their minimum wage jobs and obtain a good paying, full time position. It seems like the poor women are stuck in the basement of jobs and the glass floor is keeping them in the low paying job. The article also mentions how many of low income families are minorities. The major races mentioned were Asian, Mexican, and Black- this also applies to the children. Overall, the conditions that are keeping women in low income jobs are part of the reason children are in poverty.