Poverty In Philadelphia

Jamison Turner

11-20-12       Orange Stream

Poverty In Philadelphia

Hi My name is Jamison Turner.  I am a freshman at Science Leadership Academy.  For english class we have been assigned a project called “You and The World” the aim of this project is to make a change in our world today.  We could pick any subject we wanted so I picked poverty in Philadelphia.  I think part of the problem maybe the amount of people that lost their jobs last year.  During this project I will  find try to answer a lot of questions.

One of the questions I had was how much has the poverty level gone up.  In 2010 about 15.3 % of The United States’ population was living in poverty.  In 2011 that number rose to 15.9%.  So the number of people living in poverty rose about .6%.  If the poverty number rose .6 % every year than in about 1/4 of our population would be living in poverty in about 16 years.  I think that is absolutely unbelievable. That will lead me into my next question.

My next question is what percent of people are living in poverty in Philadelphia.

The answer is 26.7%.  Since i am a Philadelphia resident I didn’t think that more than 1/4 of our population is living in poverty.  This is very depressing to hear because I didn’t think we had that high of a poverty rate in Philadelphia.  That is like saying that 1 out of four people in Philadelphia are living in poverty.  This topic will also lead me to my next Question

My third question is what are some reasons for this many people living in poverty.  I think it may be the unemployment rate in Philadelphia because in 2011 the unemployment rate was 11.5% in Philadelphia.  This could be the biggest reason because you can’t provide for your family if you don’t have a job.  the government could help these people out with financial aid but instead they give billions of dollars to oil companies.  The government and economy definately have something to do with the poverty and unemployment rate.

Those are the general things I wanted to know about poverty in Philadelphia.  Know I am going to try to help people out who are living in poverty.  I want to make their life easier and set a good role model for younger people in the world.  I would also like to spread awareness to the government that a lot of people are living in poverty because of the amount of layoffs in the last few years.  

Bibliography here.  Click here to see a chart of unemployment in Philadelphia.  Here is a link to see a chart comparing the poverty levels in Philadelphia and the Suburbs.