http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Mo1V4XAni8&feature=youtu.be

Children living under the Poverty Line

Children Under 18 Living in Poverty, 2010
Category	Number (in thousands)	Percent
All children under 18	16, 401	22.0
White only, non-Hispanic	5,002	12.4
Black	4,817	38.2
Hispanic	6,110	35.0
Asian	547	13.6

SOURCE: U.S. Bureau of the Census, Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2010, Report P60, n. 238, Table B-2, pp. 68-73

I choice this graph, because it shows the number of children living under the poverty line in America. It also shows that number of children under the poverty line is different for each race.  Different groups are affected by poverty in different ways. The Hispanic group has the highest number of kinds living in poverty, yet the Asian group has the lowest risk of poverty.  This information raises a big question. Why is the poverty rate different for each race? This could be because a various  reasons.

Annotated Bibliography:

Poverty in the United States

In the article “Poverty in the United States” the U.S. Census Bureau compare the poverty rate in 2009 to other years in United States history; give the statistics of the poverty rate in 2009. The U.S. Census Bureau showed the official poverty rate in 2009 an astonishing 14.3 percent; rising 1.2 percent from 2008. The U.S. Census Bureau stated that in 2009 43.6 million people lived in poverty vs. in 2008 when 39.8 million people lived in poverty.  The U.S. Census Bureau showed between 2008 and 2009 the poverty rate increased for non-Hispanic whites, African Americans, Hispanics, and Asians.  The U.S. Census Bureau also stated that the poverty rate increased for children under the age of 18 to 20.7 percent and people from age 18 to 64 to 11.7. Yet the poverty rate for people age 65 and older had decreased to 8.9 percent the lowest percentage of them all.

"Poverty in the United States." Census Population Report 89.10 10. EBSCOhost. Web. 30 Mar 2012. <http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/results?sid=00075f29-d9d8-4311-b254-b69c828545cc@sessionmgr13&vid=3&hid=9&bquery=Poverty AND "in" AND United AND States&bdata=JmRiPWFxaCZkYj10dGgmZGI9aHhoJmRiPW5maCZkYj1nc2gmZGI9cHJoJmRiPWNjeCZ0eXBlPTAmc2l0ZT1laG9zdC1saXZl

Poverty in Rural America: 2009. 2010. Photograph. Daily Yonder Keep It Rural
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Tim Boyle/Getty. Poverty rate rises in America. 2011. Photograph. CNN Money, New York.

Research Memo

Hypothesis:

Around the world 21,000 children die every day from poverty. 1 child dies every 4 seconds, 14 children die every minute. 20% of United States child population lives in poverty! (Foundation, 2012, p. 1) I believe that poverty is a Nation issue that should be viewed as a matter of extreme importance. People do not think that poverty is an issue in the United States because they are blind of the truth. How many children in the United States live in poverty? 16.4 million Children live in poor families, and 7.4 million of them children live in extreme poverty. (Poverty, 2004, p. 1)

Context:

My survey was directed to teens and adults. I choice teens and adults because they are more experienced and understand thing that happens in life more than children. They were able to answer the questions openly; knowing something about the topic. The information is reliable because it is their honest opinion and past experiences. My questions are information based, personal experience, and personal believes. I did have to change my survey. I had to add some answer choices for one question, and reword some of the other questions because they were confusing. I will keep some of the old surveys because it has the answers I was looking for when I made the survey.

Results:

	Male	Female
How old are you?	32% was 15 52% was 16 16% was 18	48% was 15 23% was 16 23% was 17
Do you know what poverty is?	100% yes	100% yes
How many kids in the U.S. live in poverty?	25% Did Not Know 75% Did know	55 % Did Not Know 45 % Did Know
How many children in the United States do you think die from poverty each year? (Guess a number	25% Did Not Know 75% Did know	55 % Did Not Know 45 % Did Know
Why do you believe people do not take poverty Seriously?	95% They Never Deal With It 5% I Don't Know	95% They Never Deal With It 5% I Don't Know
Which category do you believe poverty falls in?	80% said Issue 20% said Minor	50% said Issue 50% said Epidemic
Rank these items with 1 the most important.	74% said Food 26% said Phone	64% said Food is Most important 35% Said Phone is most important 1% said Game is most important
Do you think communities should do more to help kids suffering with poverty?	95% Agree 5% Disagree	100% Agree
Do you think government should do more to help kids in poverty?	100% Agree	100% Agree
Is poverty and Issue valued in extreme importance?	59% Agree 41% Disagree	56% Agree 44% Disagree

Data Analysis:

In my surveys I noticed a very surprising trend. I asked “How many kids in the U.S. live in poverty?” I gave some answer choice to choose from. When I looked at my survey data I noticed only 16% of the people who took my survey knew the correct answer to this question. These were people who live in the United States! People who live here walk around every day; are unaware of how many children actually live in poverty. There are 16.4 million children who do not eat at nights, children who are helpless to do anything about their starvation. 84% is a large number of people who do not know how many children do not live in poverty. This shows that people are unaware and that poverty is not viewed as a matter of extreme importance.

I also asked “Rank these items form most importance to least importance with 1 being the most important." I had five items to be ranked phone, game, name brand clothing, I Pods, and food. Also 16% of the people who took my survey did not rank food as the most important thing to them.

This shows me that these people do not know what they have. They take what they got for granted. What if they lived in a house without food for a few days? Would they change their minds? I believe so!

In my survey my final question was “Is poverty and issue valued in extreme importance?"

An astonishing 24% of the people who took my survey said "No" it was not an issue valued in extreme importance. This did not come to much of a surprise to me. This is because most people intend not to see things that do not affect them directly or indirectly as an issue. Only when things are affecting them or someone close to them do the notice something as an issue.

Conclusion:

I believe that poverty is a Nation issue that should be viewed as a matter of extreme importance. People do not think that poverty is an issue in the United States because they are blind of the truth. When I took my survey I intended to prove this to be true. When I looked at my data from the survey's this was proven to be true. Not all people see poverty as a issue because it does not affect them directly or indirectly. The number of people who knew how many children to live in poverty was differently than I expected, I thought that it would have been lower than that. I can conclude that my questions gave me the information that I need and wanted, over all my survey was helpful and proved my hypothesis.

Follow Up:

From here I play to educated and inform people about the effects and issue of poverty. I want to show people who do not think poverty is an issue that they should re think their answer because I does not have to affect you directly to be seen as an issue. Out of my five essential questions i think the one that should be researched next is “What can we do to help those living in poverty?" I did not have to change my research questions because my survey data proved my hypothesis and did not show that there were in flaws in my research questions.

Survey Questions

1. Are you a male or female?
2. How old are you?
3. Do you know what poverty is?
4. How many kids in the U.S. live in poverty?
1. 1,000
2. 25,000
3. 1,000,000
4. 16,000,000
5. How many children in the United States do you thing die from poverty each year? (guess a number)
6. Why do you believe people do not take poverty seriously?
7. Which category do you believe poverty falls in?

__ Issue           __ Epidemic    __ Minor         __ Does not exist

8. Rank these items with 1 the meaning most important.

__ Phone         __Game           __Name Brand Clothing

__IPods           __Food

9. Do you think communities should do more to help kids suffering with poverty?     Agree or Disagree
10. Do you think government should do more to help kids in poverty?              Agree or Disagree
11. Is poverty and Issue valued in extreme importance?                          Yes or No

Essential Questions

I choice this topic to educate the American people about poverty; many Americans do not know about the severity of poverty in the United States. I choice these question because it helped get the information that I wanted to provided for the readers.

1.      How many children in the United States are affected by poverty?

2.      How does poverty affect America?

3.      Does the government help people living in poverty?

4.      What should the community do to help people living in poverty?

5.      Do Americans know what poverty is?

6.      What would make people aware of poverty?

7.      Is there anything raising awareness of poverty?

8.      How many children die each year from poverty?

9.      What is poverty classified as? (Ex: issue, epidemic)

10.  Does poverty affect children physically or mentally?

11.  Does poverty affect different races differently?

12.  Does poverty affect people of different races differently? 

Everyday a child collapses in tears because they’re starving, living in a house without anything to eat. They lay there silently crying to themselves, wondering why this is happening to them. What have they done to deserve this? Poverty not only creates physical problems; it goes deeper and scars in places that are not seen. Poverty can affect a kid physically and mentally. Living with this is hard for a young child to deal with because it’s harder for them to understand. They don’t understand why this is happening to them. They do not understand that their mother or father cannot feed them tonight, or could not go out and get them something to eat. I know this because when I was younger I had to go to sleep many nights without eating. I was a child who lived in poverty. It is something that is hard to deal with; there are scars that cannot be seen because it’s not physical, but mental. The scar of living in poverty as a young child still affects me now as a young adult.

The Story behind My Topic