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Poverty in the United States

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_the_United_States

Proportion of Americans living below the poverty line in each county of the fifty states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico according to the 2016 - 2020 American Community Survey

Number in Poverty and Poverty Rate: 1959 to 2017. The US.

In the United States, poverty has both social and political implications. In 2020, there were 37.2 million people in poverty. Some of the many causes include income inequality, inflation, unemployment, debt traps and poor education. The vast majority of people living in poverty are less educated and end up in a state of unemployment; higher incarceration rates have also been observed. Although the US is a relatively wealthy country by international standards, poverty has consistently been present throughout the United States, along with efforts to alleviate it, from New Deal-era legislation during the Great Depression, to the national war on poverty in the 1960s and poverty alleviation efforts during the 2008 Great Recession.

The U.S. federal government uses two measures to measure poverty: the poverty thresholds set by the U.S. Census Bureau, used for statistical purposes, and the poverty guidelines issued by the Department of Health and Human Services, which are used for administrative purposes. Poverty thresholds, which recognize poverty as a lack of those goods and services which are commonly taken for granted by members of mainstream society, consist of income levels. On the other hand, poverty guidelines are simpler guidelines that are used to determine eligibility for federal programs such as Head Start and food stamps.

The 2020 assessment by the U.S. Census Bureau showed the percentage of Americans living in poverty for 2019 (before the COVID-19 pandemic) had fallen to some of lowest levels ever recorded due to the record-long period of economic growth. However, between May and October 2020, some eight million people were put into poverty due to the economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and the ending of funds from the CARES Act.

Historical background

Progressive era

Neighborhoods in Chicago color-coded by income, published in Hull House Maps and Papers.

Catalyzed by Henry George's 1873 book Progress and Poverty, public interest in how poverty could arise even in a time of economic progress arose in the 19th century with the rise of the Progressive movement. The Progressive American social survey began with the publication of Hull House Maps and Papers in 1895. This study included essays and maps collected by Florence Kelley and her colleagues working at Hull House and staff of the United States Bureau of Labor. It focused on studying the conditions of the slums in Chicago, including four maps color-coded by nationality and income level, which were based on Charles Booth's earlier pioneering work, Life and Labour of the People in London.

Another social reformer, Jacob Riis, documented the living conditions of New York tenements and slums in his 1890 work How the Other Half Lives.

Great Depression

A group especially vulnerable to poverty consisted of poor sharecroppers and tenant farmers in the South. These farmers consisted of around a fourth of the South's population, and over a third of these people were African Americans. Historian James T. Patterson refers to these people as the "old poverty," as opposed to the "new poverty" that emerged after the onset of the Great Depression.

During the Depression, the government did not provide any unemployment insurance, so people who lost jobs easily became impoverished. People who lost their jobs or homes lived in shantytowns or Hoovervilles. Many New Deal programs were designed to increase employment and reduce poverty. The Federal Emergency Relief Administration specifically focused on creating jobs for alleviating poverty. Jobs were more expensive than direct cash payments (called "the dole"), but were psychologically more beneficial to the unemployed, who wanted any sort of job for morale. Other New Deal initiatives that aimed at job creation and wellbeing included the Civilian Conservation Corps and Public Works Administration. Additionally, the institution of Social Security was one of the largest factors that helped to reduce poverty.

War on Poverty

A number of factors helped start the national War on Poverty in the 1960s. In 1962, Michael Harrington's book The Other America helped increase public debate and awareness of the poverty issue. The War on Poverty embraced expanding the federal government's roles in education and health care as poverty reduction strategies, and many of its programs were administered by the newly established Office of Economic Opportunity. The War on Poverty coincided with more methodological and precise statistical versions of studying poverty; the "official" U.S. statistical measure of poverty was only adopted in 1969.

21st century

Tents of the homeless in San Francisco, California, May 2020

In the 21st century, the Great Recession helped to increase poverty levels again. As of 2009, the number of people who were in poverty was approaching 1960s levels that led to the national War on Poverty. The 2010 census data shows that half the population qualifies as poor or low income, with one in five millennials living in poverty. Academic contributors to The Routledge Handbook of Poverty in the United States postulate that new and extreme forms of poverty have emerged in the U.S. as a result of neoliberal structural adjustment policies and globalization, which have rendered economically marginalized communities as destitute "surplus populations" in need of control and punishment.

Many international bodies have emphasized the issues of poverty that the United States faces. A 2013 UNICEF report ranked the U.S. as having the second-highest relative child poverty rates in the developed world. As of June 2016, the IMF warned the United States that its high poverty rate needs to be tackled urgently by raising the minimum wage and offering paid maternity leave to women to encourage them to enter the labor force. In December 2017, the United Nations special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Philip Alston, undertook a two-week investigation on the effects of systemic poverty in the United States, and sharply condemned "private wealth and public squalor," declaring the state of Alabama to have the "worst poverty in the developed world." Alston's report was issued in May 2018 and highlights that 40 million people live in poverty and over five million live "in 'Third World' conditions."

According to a 2020 assessment by the U.S. Census Bureau, the percentage of Americans living in poverty for 2019 (before the COVID-19 pandemic) had fallen to some of lowest levels ever recorded due to the record-long economic growth period and stood at 11.1% (adjusted for smaller response during the pandemic). However, between May and October 2020, the economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the exhaustion of the funding provided by the CARES Act, dragged some eight million people into poverty.

Measuring poverty

There are several measures used by the U.S. federal government to measure poverty. The Census Bureau issues the poverty thresholds, which are generally used for statistical purposes—for example, to estimate the number of people in poverty nationwide each year and classify them by type of residence, race, and other social, economic, and demographic characteristics. The Department of Health and Human Services issues the poverty guidelines for administrative purposes—for instance, to determine whether a person or family is eligible for assistance through various federal programs. Both the poverty thresholds and poverty guidelines are updated yearly. More recently, the Census Bureau has begun using the Supplemental Poverty Measure as an additional statistic to measure poverty and supplement the existing measures.

Poverty income thresholds

The poverty income thresholds originate from work done by Mollie Orshansky, an American economist working for the Social Security Administration. Orshansky introduced the poverty thresholds in a 1963 Social Security Bulletin article, "Children of the Poor."

The "Basic Seven", a food plan developed by the United States Department of Agriculture.

Orshansky based her thresholds on work she had done with the economy food plan while at the USDA. According to the USDA's 1955 Household Food Consumption Survey, families of three or more people spent one-third of their after-tax income on food. For these families, poverty thresholds were set at three times the cost of the economy food plan. Different procedures were used for calculating poverty thresholds for two-person households and persons living alone.

Her work appeared at an opportune moment, as President Johnson declared the War on Poverty just six months later—and Orshanky's work offered a numerical way to measure progress in this effort. The newly formed Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO) adopted the Orshansky poverty thresholds for statistical, planning, and budgetary purposes in May 1965. Officials at the OEO were enthusiastic; as research director Joseph Kershaw remarked, "Mollie Orshansky says that when you have more people in the family, you need more money. Isn't that sensible?"

Officials at the Social Security Administration began to plan on how to adjust poverty thresholds for changes in the standard of living. The Bureau of the Budget resisted these changes, but formed an interagency committee that, in 1969, decided that poverty thresholds would be adjusted for inflation by being tied to the Consumer Price Index, rather than changes in the standard of living. In August 1969, the Bureau of the Budget designated these revised thresholds as the federal government's official definition of poverty.

Apart from minor changes in 1981 that changed the number of thresholds from 124 to 48, poverty thresholds have remained static for the past fifty years despite criticism that the thresholds may not be completely accurate. Although the poverty thresholds assumes that the average household of three spends one-third of its budget on food, more recent surveys have shown that that number has decreased to one-fifth in the 1980s and one-sixth by the 1990s. If the poverty thresholds were recalculated based on food costs as of 2008, the economy food budget multiplier would have been 7.8 rather than 3, greatly increasing the thresholds.

Poverty income guidelines

2022 poverty income guidelines provided by United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)
Persons in Family Unit	48 Contiguous States and D.C.	Alaska	Hawaii
1	$13,590	$16,990	$15,630
2	$18,310	$22,890	$21,060
3	$23,030	$28,790	$26,490
4	$27,750	$34,690	$31,920
5	$32,470	$40,590	$37,350
6	$37,190	$46,490	$42,780
7	$41,910	$52,390	$48,210
8	$46,630	$58,290	$53,640
Each additional person adds	$4,720	$5,900	$5,430

The poverty guidelines are a version of the poverty thresholds used by federal agencies for administrative purposes, such as determining eligibility for federal assistance programs. They are useful because poverty thresholds for one calendar year are not published until the summer of the next calendar year; poverty guidelines, on the other hand, allow agencies to work with more timely data.

Poverty guidelines were initially issued by the OEO starting in December 1965. After the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1981, responsibility for issuing the guidelines was transferred to the Department of Health and Human Services. Poverty guidelines are also referred to as the "federal poverty level" (FPL), but the HHS discourages that term as ambiguous.

Supplemental Poverty Measure

In 1990, a Congressional committee requested the National Research Council (NRC) to conduct a study on revising the poverty measure. The NRC convened a panel, which published a 1995 report Measuring Poverty: A New Approach that concluded that the official poverty measure in the United States is flawed. The panel noted that the thresholds are the same irrespective of geography and stated that due to "rising living standards in the United States, most approaches for developing poverty thresholds (including the original one) would produce higher thresholds today than the current ones."

Additionally, the report suggested an alternative measure of poverty, which uses actual expenditure data to develop a threshold value for a family of four—and then update this threshold every year and according to geographic location. This alternative measure of poverty would also change the income calculation for a family, including certain non-cash benefits that satisfied "basic needs" such as food stamps and public housing while excluding "non-basic needs" such as medical costs and child care.

The work of the panel led to the development of Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM), which was intended to address some of the weaknesses of the existing poverty guidelines. In October 2014, the Census Bureau released a report describing the SPM and stated its intention to publish SPM measures every year. However, SPM is intended to "supplement" the existing poverty thresholds, not "replace" them, as poverty thresholds will remain the "official" Census Bureau measure and poverty guidelines will be derived only from the "official" poverty measures.

Unlike the poverty thresholds, and in line with the NRC recommendations, the SPM both includes certain non-cash benefits in a family's income and adjusts thresholds for differences in housing costs by geographic area. Additionally, the SPM thresholds are based on how much a "reference" family with two children spends on food, clothing, shelter, and utilities (FCSU).

Criticism

Understating poverty

Many sociologists and government officials have argued that poverty in the United States is understated, meaning that there are more households living in actual poverty than there are households below the poverty threshold. A recent NPR report states that as many as 30% of Americans have trouble making ends meet and other advocates have made supporting claims that the rate of actual poverty in the US is far higher than that calculated by using the poverty threshold. A study taken in 2012 estimated that roughly 38% of Americans live "paycheck to paycheck."

In 1969, the Bureau of Labor Statistics put forward suggested budgets for adequate family living. 60% of working-class Americans lived below the "intermediate" budget, which allowed for the following:

It assumes, for example, that the family will own:
... A toaster that will last for 33 years.
... A vacuum cleaner that will last 14 years.
The budget assumes that a family will buy a two-year-old car and keep it for four years...
Finally, the budget allows nothing whatever for savings.

Given that the "intermediate" budget was fairly modest, observers questioned whether poverty levels were really capturing the full extent of prosperity, challenging the long-established view that most Americans had attained an affluent standard of living in the two decades following the end of the Second World War.

A neighborhood of poor white people, Chicago, 1974

There have also been criticism of the methodology used to develop the U.S. poverty thresholds in the first place. As noted above, the poverty thresholds used by the US government were originally developed during the Johnson administration's War on Poverty initiative in the early 1960s. The thresholds were based on the cost of a food basket at the time, multiplied by three, under the assumption that the average family spent one third of its income on food.

However, the current poverty line only takes into account food purchases that were common more than 50 years ago. Additionally, it assumes that Americans spend one third of their income on food; in fact, Americans typically spent less than one tenth of their after-tax income on food in 2000. For many families, the costs of housing, health insurance and medical care, transportation, and access to basic telecommunications take a much larger bite out of the family's income today than a half century ago, yet none of these costs are considered in determining the official poverty thresholds.

According to John Schwarz, a political scientist at the University of Arizona:

The official poverty line today is essentially what it takes in today's dollars, adjusted for inflation, to purchase the same poverty-line level of living that was appropriate to a half century ago, in 1955 .... Updated thereafter only for inflation, the poverty line lost all connection over time with current consumption patterns of the average family. Quite a few families then didn't have their own private telephone, or a car, or even a mixer in their kitchen... The official poverty line has thus been allowed to fall substantially below a socially decent minimum, even though its intention was to measure such a minimum.

Homeless man in Boston

The issue of understating poverty is especially pressing in states with both a high cost of living and a high poverty rate such as California where the median home price in 2006 was $564,430. In the Monterey area, where the low-pay industry of agriculture is the largest sector in the economy and the majority of the population lacks a college education, the median home price was $723,790, requiring an upper middle class income only earned by roughly 20% of all households in the county. Such fluctuations in local markets are, however, not considered in the federal poverty threshold and may leave many who live in poverty-like conditions out of the total number of households classified as poor.

The Supplemental Poverty Measure, introduced in 2011, aims at providing a more accurate picture of the true extent of poverty in the United States by taking account of non-cash benefits and geographic variations. According to this new measure, 16% of Americans lived in poverty in 2011, compared with the official figure of 15.2%. With the new measure, one study estimated that nearly half of all Americans lived within 200% of the federal poverty line.

According to American economist Sandy Darity, Jr., "There is no exact way of measuring poverty. The measures are contingent on how we conceive of and define poverty. Efforts to develop more refined measures have been dominated by researchers who intentionally want to provide estimates that reduce the magnitude of poverty."

Overstating poverty

Youth play in Chicago's Stateway Gardens high-rise housing project in 1973.

Some critics assert that the official U.S. poverty definition is inconsistent with how it is defined by its own citizens and the rest of the world, because the U.S. government considers many citizens statistically impoverished despite their ability to sufficiently meet their basic needs. According to a 2011 paper by research fellow Robert Rector from the conservative Heritage Foundation, of the 43.6 million Americans deemed by the U.S. Census Bureau to be below the poverty level in 2009, the majority had adequate shelter, food, clothing and medical care. Left-leaning sources disputed the report's findings. In addition, the paper stated that those assessed as below the poverty line in 2011 have a much higher quality of living than those who were identified by the census 40 years ago as being in poverty. For example, in 2005, 63.7% of those living in poverty had cable or satellite television. In some cases the report even said that people currently living in poverty were actually better off than middle class people of the recent past. For example, in 2005, 78.3% of households living in poverty had air conditioning, whereas in 1970, 36.0% of all households had air conditioning.

According to The Heritage Foundation, the federal poverty line also excludes income other than cash income, especially welfare benefits. Thus, if food stamps and public housing were successfully raising the standard of living for poverty stricken individuals, then the poverty line figures would not shift, since they do not consider the income equivalents of such entitlements.

Steven Pinker, writing in an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal, claims that the poverty rate, as measured by consumption, has fallen from 11% in 1988 to 3% in 2018. Burkhauser et al. find that accounting for cash income, taxes, and major in-kind transfers and updating poverty thresholds for inflation show that a Full-income Poverty Rate based on President Johnson's standards fell from 19.5 percent to 2.3 percent over the 1963–2017 period.

Geography

Poverty in U.S. territories

View of Ofu-Olosega in the Manu'a District, American Samoa

Camden, New Jersey is one of the poorest cities in the United States.

The highest poverty rates in the United States are in the U.S. territories (American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands). American Samoa has the lowest per capita income in the United States — it has a per capita income comparable to that of Botswana. In 2010, American Samoa had a per capita income of $6,311. The county or county-equivalent with the lowest per capita income in the United States is the Manu'a District in American Samoa (per capita income of $5,441). In 2018, Puerto Rico had the lowest median household income of any state / territory in the United States ($20,166). Also in 2018, Comerío, Puerto Rico had a median household income of $12,812 — the lowest median household income of any county or county-equivalent in the United States.

In the 2010 U.S. Census, Guam had a poverty rate of 22.9%, the Northern Mariana Islands had a poverty rate of 52.3%, and the U.S. Virgin Islands had a poverty rate of 22.4% (all higher than any U.S. state). In 2018, Puerto Rico had a poverty rate of 43.1%. In 2017, American Samoa had a poverty rate of 65% — the highest poverty rate of any state or territory in the United States.

Poverty in U.S. states

As of 2018, the state with the lowest poverty rate was New Hampshire (7.6% poverty rate). Other states with low poverty rates in 2018 include Hawaii (8.8% poverty rate), Maryland (9.0% poverty rate), and Minnesota (9.6% poverty rate). Among U.S. states, Mississippi had the highest poverty rate in 2018 (19.7% poverty rate), followed by Louisiana (18.65%), New Mexico (18.55%) and West Virginia (17.10%).

Poverty and demographics

Poverty and family status

Among married couple families: 5.8% lived in poverty. This number varied by race and ethnicity as follows:

5.4% of all white persons (which includes white Hispanics),
10.7% of all black persons (which includes black Hispanics),
14.9% of all Hispanic persons (of any race) living in poverty.

Among single parent (male or female) families: 26.6% lived in poverty. This number varied by race and ethnicity as follows:

22.5% of all white persons (which includes white Hispanics),
44.0% of all black persons (which includes black Hispanics),
33.4% of all Hispanic persons (of any race) living in poverty.

Among individuals living alone: 19.1% lived in poverty. This number varied by race and ethnicity as follows:

18% of white persons (which includes white Hispanics)
28.9% of black persons (which includes black Hispanics)
27% of Hispanic persons (of any race) are living in poverty.

Poverty and race/ethnicity

Poverty rates by sex and work status for Americans aged 65 and over

The US Census declared that in 2014 14.8% of the general population lived in poverty:

As of 2010 about half of those living in poverty are non-Hispanic white (19.6 million). Non-Hispanic white children comprised 57% of all poor rural children.

In FY 2009, African American families comprised 33.3% of TANF families, non-Hispanic white families comprised 31.2%, and 28.8% were Hispanic.

Poverty among Native Americans

Poverty is also notoriously high on Native American reservations (see Reservation poverty). 7 of the 11 poorest counties in per capita income (in the 50 states), including the 2 poorest in the 50 states, encompass Lakota Sioux reservations in South Dakota. This fact has been cited by some critics as a mechanism that enables the "kidnapping" of Lakota children by the state of South Dakota's Department of Social Services. The Lakota People's Law Project, among other critics, allege that South Dakota "inappropriately equates economic poverty with neglect ... South Dakota's rate of identifying "neglect" is 18% higher than the national average ... In 2010, the national average of state discernment of neglect, as a percent of total maltreatment of foster children prior to their being taken into custody by the state, was 78.3%. In South Dakota the rate was 95.8%."

Poverty in the Pine Ridge Reservation in particular has had unprecedented effects on its residents' longevity. "Recent reports state the average life expectancy is 45 years old while others state that it is 48 years old for men and 52 years old for women. With either set of figures, that's the shortest life expectancy for any community in the Western Hemisphere outside Haiti, according to The Wall Street Journal."

In the 2013—2017 American Community Survey, Wounded Knee, South Dakota (located in the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation) had the 7th-lowest median household income out of all places in the 50 states/D.C./Puerto Rico.

Poverty and LGBTQ+ status

With data collected from 35 states from 2014-2017, the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) survey shows that 21.6% of the LGBTQ+ population is living in poverty. The number varies depending on identity:

12.1% of cis-gay men
17.9% of cis-lesbian women
19.5% of cis-bisexual men
29.4% of cis-bisexual women
33.7% of transgender men
29.6% of transgender women, and
23.8% of gender nonconforming people.

For comparison, 13.4% of cis-straight men and 17.8% of cis-straight women are living in poverty.

Transgender Poverty

The rate of poverty for the transgender community is larger than any other LGBTQ+ population. The 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey shows that this percentage varies depending on racial identity:

41% American Indian
32% Asian
38% Black
43% Latinx
34% Middle Eastern
40% Multiracial

For comparison, 24% of White transgender people are living in poverty.

The percentage of those living in poverty also increases for transgender people with HIV (51%) and disabilities (45%).

Poverty and age

Poverty Rates by Age 1959 to 2015. United States.

As of 2010, the US Census declared that 15.1% of the general population of the United States lived in poverty:

22% of all people under the age of 18
13.7% of those between the ages of 19-21
9% of all people either 65 or older

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) uses a different measure for poverty and declared in 2008 that child poverty in the US is 20% and poverty among the elderly is 23%.

Homeless children in the United States. The number of homeless children reached record highs in 2011, 2012, and 2013 at about three times their number in 1983.

Child poverty

In May 2009, the non-profit advocacy group Feeding America released a study based on 2005–2007 data from the U.S. Census Bureau and the Agriculture Department, which claims that 3.5 million children under the age of 5 are at risk of hunger in the United States. The study claims that in 11 states, Louisiana, which has the highest rate, followed by North Carolina, Ohio, Kentucky, Texas, New Mexico, Kansas, South Carolina, Tennessee, Idaho and Arkansas, more than 20 percent of children under 5 are allegedly at risk of going hungry. (receiving fewer than 1,800 calories per day).

In 2012, 16.1 million American children were living in poverty. Outside of the 49 million Americans living in food insecure homes, 15.9 million of them were children. In 2013, child poverty reached record high levels in the U.S., with 16.7 million children living in food insecure households. Many of the neighborhoods these children live in lack basic produce and nutritious food. 47 million Americans depend on food banks, more than 30% above 2007 levels. Households headed by single mothers are most likely to be affected. 30 percent of low-income single mothers cannot afford diapers. Inability to afford this necessity can cause a chain reaction, including mental, health, and behavioral problems. Some women are forced to make use of one or two diapers, using them more than once. This causes rashes and sanitation problems as well as health problems. Without diapers, children are unable to enter into daycare. The lack of childcare can be detrimental to single mothers, hindering their ability to obtain employment. Worst affected are Oregon, Arizona, New Mexico, Florida, and the District of Columbia, while North Dakota, New Hampshire, Virginia, Minnesota and Massachusetts are the least affected. 31 million low-income children received free or reduced-price meals daily through the National School lunch program during the 2012 federal fiscal year. Nearly 14 million children are estimated to be served by Feeding America with over 3 million being of the ages of 5 and under.

A 2014 report by the National Center on Family Homelessness states the number of homeless children in the U.S. has reached record levels, calculating that 2.5 million children, or one child in every 30, experienced homelessness in 2013. High levels of poverty, lack of affordable housing and domestic violence were cited as the primary causes. A 2017 peer-reviewed study published in Health Affairs found that the U.S. has the highest levels of child mortality among 20 OECD countries.

Racial inequality is also visible when it comes to discerning poverty among children in America. In 2021, Children's Defense Fund estimated that 71% of children living in poverty are children of color.

Poverty is also associated with expanded adverse childhood experiences, such as witnessing violence, feeling discrimination, and experiencing bullying. According to a 2016 study by the Urban Institute, teenagers in low income communities are often forced to join gangs, save school lunches, sell drugs or exchange sexual favors because they cannot afford food.

According to the Save the Children fund, food insecurity among families with children as increased by two thirds since March 2020. The fund further states that "the U.S. continues to lag behind most peer countries in meeting the needs of children and families during the pandemic".

Children living in poverty may also experience many health and developmental problems due to food insecurity and malnutrition. Children in low socioeconomic statuses are shown to have more gray matter which affects educational and life outcomes. They may have a lower immune systems due to malnutrition, and they are more likely to have chronic disease like asthma.

Effects of poverty

Access to selected courses in US public schools by poverty level in the 2015–16 school year.

Education

Poverty affects individual access to quality education. The U.S. education system is often funded by local communities; therefore the quality of materials and teachers can reflect the affluence of community. That said, many communities address this by supplementing these areas with funds from other districts. Low income communities are often not able to afford the quality education that high income communities do which results in a cycle of poverty.

Factors in poverty

Rust Belt ruins of former factory, Detroit, Michigan

There are numerous factors related to poverty in the United States.

Income has a high correlation with educational levels. In 2007, the median earnings of household headed by individuals with less than a 9th grade education was $20,805 while households headed by high school graduates earned $40,456, households headed by holders of bachelor's degrees earned $77,605, and families headed by individuals with professional degrees earned $100,000. Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen stated in 2014: "Public funding of education is another way that governments can help offset the advantages some households have in resources available for children. One of the most consequential examples is early childhood education. Research shows that children from lower-income households who get good-quality pre-Kindergarten education are more likely to graduate from high school and attend college as well as hold a job and have higher earnings, and they are less likely to be incarcerated or receive public assistance."
In many cases poverty is caused by job loss. In 2007, the poverty rate was 21.5% for individuals who were unemployed, but only 2.5% for individuals who were employed full-time.
Children growing up in female-headed families with no spouse present have a poverty rate over four times that of children in married-couple families.
Income levels vary with age. For example, the median 2009 income for households headed by individuals age 15–24 was only $30,750, but increased to $50,188 for household headed by individuals age 25–34 and $61,083 for household headed by individuals 35–44. Work experience and additional education may be factors.

Wealth inequality in the United States increased from 1989 to 2013.

Income levels vary along racial/ethnic lines: 21% of all children in the United States live in poverty, about 46% of black children and 40% of Latino children. The poverty rate is 9.9% for black married couples, and only 30% of black children are born to married couples (see Marriage below). The poverty rate for native born and naturalized whites is identical (9.6%). On the other hand, the poverty rate for naturalized blacks is 11.8% compared to 25.1% for native born blacks, suggesting race alone does not explain income disparity. Not all minorities have low incomes. Asian families have higher incomes than all other ethnic groups. For example, the 2005 median income of Asian families was $68,957 compared to the median income of white families of $59,124. Asians, however, report discrimination occurrences more frequently than blacks. Specifically, 31% of Asians reported employment discrimination compared to 26% of blacks in 2005.

Policies that address income and wealth inequality (i.e., policies that transfer money from higher-income and more wealthy families to less wealthy families) bear significantly on poverty. Economist Jared Bernstein and Elise Gould of the Economic Policy Institute suggest that poverty could have decreased significantly if inequality had not increased over the last few decades. Economist Larry Summers estimated that at 1979 levels of income inequality, the bottom 80% of families would have an average of $11,000 more per year in income in 2014.

The relationship between tax rates and poverty is disputed. A study comparing high tax Scandinavian countries with the U. S. suggests high tax rates are inversely correlated with poverty rates. The poverty rate, however, is low in some low tax countries like Switzerland. A comparison of poverty rates between states reveals that some low tax states have low poverty rates. For example, New Hampshire has the lowest poverty rate of any state in the U. S., and has very low taxes (46th among all states). It is true however that both Switzerland and New Hampshire have a very high household income and other measures offsetting the lack of taxation. For example, Switzerland has Universal Healthcare and a free system of education for children as young as four years old. New Hampshire has no state income tax or sales tax, but does have the nation's highest property taxes.

Total incarceration in the United States by year
The poor in the United States are incarcerated at a much higher rate than their counterparts in other developed nations, with penal confinement being, according to sociologist Bruce Western, "commonplace for poor men of working age." A 2015 study by the Vera Institute of Justice contends that jails in the U.S. have become "massive warehouses" of the impoverished since the 1980s. Scholars assert that the transformation of the already anemic U.S. welfare state to a post-welfare punitive state, along with neoliberal structural adjustment policies, the globalization of the U.S. economy and the dominance of global financial institutions, have created more extreme forms of "destitute poverty" in the U.S. which must be contained by expanding the criminal justice system and the carceral state into every aspect of the lives of the poor, which, according to Reuben Jonathan Miller and Emily Shayman, has resulted in "transforming what it means to be poor in America."
According to the American Enterprise Institute, research has shown that income and intelligence are related. In a 1998 study, Charles Murray compared the earnings of 733 full sibling pairs with differing intelligence quotients (IQs). He referred to the sample as utopian in that the sampled pairs were raised in families with virtually no illegitimacy, divorce or poverty. The average earnings of sampled individuals with an IQ of under 75 was $11,000, compared to $16,000 for those with an IQ between 75 and 90, $23,000 for those with an IQ between 90 and 110, $27,000 for those with an IQ between 110 and 125, and $38,000 for those with an IQ above 125.Murray's work on IQ has been criticized by Stephen Jay Gould, Loïc Wacquant and others, including the Southern Poverty Law Center.
According to a 2017 academic study by MIT economist Peter Temin, Americans trapped in poverty live in conditions rivaling the developing world, and are forced to contend with substandard education, dilapidated housing, and few stable employment opportunities. A 2017 study published in The American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene found that hookworm, a parasite that thrives on extreme poverty, is flourishing in the Deep South. A report on the study in The Guardian stated:
- Scientists in Houston, Texas, have lifted the lid on one of America’s darkest and deepest secrets: that hidden beneath fabulous wealth, the US tolerates poverty-related illness at levels comparable to the world’s poorest countries. More than one in three people sampled in a poor area of Alabama tested positive for traces of hookworm, a gastrointestinal parasite that was thought to have been eradicated from the US decades ago.
Some 12 million Americans live with diseases associated with extreme poverty.
Poverty may be fueling the Obesity epidemic, with the poorest states, counties and neighborhoods having the highest death rates from heart disease, stroke, diabetes and other diseases related to obesity. For every $10,000 poorer a neighborhood is, the death rate of heart disease increases by 10%

Fighting poverty

In the age of inequality, such anti-poverty policies are more important than ever, as higher inequality creates both more poverty along with steeper barriers to getting ahead, whether through the lack of early education, nutrition, adequate housing, and a host of other poverty-related conditions that dampen one's chances in life.
— Jared Bernstein

There have been governmental and nongovernmental efforts to reduce poverty and its effects. These range in scope from neighborhood efforts to campaigns with a national focus. They target specific groups affected by poverty such as children, people who are autistic, immigrants, or people who are homeless. Efforts to alleviate poverty use a disparate set of methods, such as advocacy, education, social work, legislation, direct service or charity, and community organizing.

Recent debates have centered on the need for policies that focus on both "income poverty" and "asset poverty." Advocates for the approach argue that traditional governmental poverty policies focus solely on supplementing the income of the poor through programs such as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF, formerly Aid to Families with Dependent Children, AFDC) and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly the Food Stamp Program). According to the CFED 2012 Assets & Opportunity Scorecard, 27 percent of households – nearly double the percentage that are income poor – are living in "asset poverty." These families do not have the savings or other assets to cover basic expenses (equivalent to what could be purchased with a poverty level income) for three months if a layoff or other emergency leads to loss of income. Since 2009, the number of asset poor families has increased by 21 percent from about one in five families to one in four families. In order to provide assistance to such asset poor families, Congress appropriated $24 million to administer the Assets for Independence Program under the supervision of the US Department for Health and Human Services. The program enables community-based nonprofits and government agencies to implement Individual Development Account or IDA programs, which are an asset-based development initiative. Every dollar accumulated in IDA savings is matched by federal and non-federal funds to enable households to add to their assets portfolio by buying their first home, acquiring a post-secondary education, or starting or expanding a small business.

Additionally, the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC or EIC) is a credit for people who earn low-to-moderate incomes. This credit allows them to get money from the government if their total tax outlay is less than the total credit earned, meaning it is not just a reduction in total tax paid but can also bring new income to the household. The Earned Income Tax Credit is viewed as the largest poverty reduction program in the United States. There is an ongoing debate in the U.S. about what the most effective way to fight poverty is, through the tax code with the EITC, or through the minimum wage laws.

Government safety-net programs put in place since the War on Poverty have helped reduce the poverty rate from 26% in 1967 to 16% in 2012, according to a Supplemental Poverty Model (SPM) created by Columbia University, while the official U.S. Poverty Rate has not changed, as the economy by itself has done little to reduce poverty. According to the 2013 Columbia University study which created the (SPM) method of measuring poverty, without such programs the poverty rate would be 29% today. An analysis of the study by Kevin Drum suggests the American welfare state effectively reduces poverty among the elderly but provides relatively little assistance to the working-age poor. A 2014 study by Pew Charitable Trusts shows that without social programs like food stamps, social security and the federal EITC, the poverty rate in the U.S. would be much higher. Nevertheless, the U.S. has the weakest social safety net of all developed nations. Sociologist Monica Prasad of Northwestern University argues that this developed because of government intervention rather than lack of it, which pushed consumer credit for meeting citizens' needs rather than applying social welfare policies as in Europe.

Social skills

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_skills

Providing oral explanation about a tree for another person; a communication method

A social skill is any competence facilitating interaction and communication with others where social rules and relations are created, communicated, and changed in verbal and nonverbal ways. The process of learning these skills is called socialization. Lack of such skills can cause social awkwardness.

Interpersonal skills are actions used to effectively interact with others. Interpersonal skills relate to categories of dominance vs. submission, love vs. hate, affiliation vs. aggression, and control vs. autonomy (Leary, 1957). Positive interpersonal skills include persuasion, active listening, delegation, and stewardship, among others. Social psychology, an academic discipline focused on research relating to social functioning, studies how interpersonal skills are learned through societal-based changes in attitude, thinking, and behavior.

Enumeration and categorization

Social skills are the tools that enable people to communicate, learn, ask for help, get needs met in appropriate ways, get along with others, make friends, develop healthy relationships, protect themselves, and in general, be able to interact with the society harmoniously. Social skills build essential character traits like trustworthiness, respectfulness, responsibility, fairness, caring, and citizenship. These traits help build an internal moral compass, allowing individuals to make good choices in thinking and behavior, resulting in social competence.

Students working with a teacher at Albany Senior High School, New Zealand.

The important social skills identified by the Employment and Training Administration are:

Coordination – Adjusting actions in relation to others' actions.
Mentoring – Teaching and helping others how to do something (e.g. a study partner).
Negotiation – Discussion aimed at reaching an agreement.
Persuasion – The action or fact of persuading someone or of being persuaded to do or believe something.
Service orientation – Actively looking for ways to evolve compassionately and grow psycho-socially with people.
Social perceptiveness – Being aware of others' reactions and able to respond in an understanding manner.

Social skills are goal oriented with both main goals and sub-goals. For example, a workplace interaction initiated by a new employee with a senior employee will first contain a main goal. This will be to gather information, and then the sub-goal will be to establish a rapport in order to obtain the main goal. Takeo Doi in his study of consciousness distinguished this as tatemae, meaning conventions and verbal expressions and honne, meaning true motive behind the conventions.

Causes of deficits

Deficits in social skills were categorized by Gresham in 1998, as failure to recognize and reflect social skills, a failure to model appropriate models, and failure to perform acceptable behavior in particular situations in relation to developmental and transitional stages. Social skill deficits are also a discouragement for children with behavioral challenges when it comes to adult adjustment.

Alcohol misuse

Social skills are often significantly impaired in people suffering from alcoholism. This is due to the neurotoxic long-term effects of alcohol misuse on the brain, especially the prefrontal cortex area of the brain. The social skills that are typically impaired by alcohol abuse, include impairments in perceiving facial emotions, prosody perception problems, and theory of mind deficits. The ability to understand humor is also often impaired in alcohol abusers. Impairments in social skills can also occur in individuals who have fetal alcohol spectrum disorders. These deficits persist throughout the affected people's lives, and may worsen over time due to the effects of aging on the brain.

ADHD and hyperkinetic disorder

People with ADHD and hyperkinetic disorder often have difficulties with social skills, such as social interaction. Approximately half of children and adolescents with ADHD will experience peer rejection, compared to 10–15 percent of non-ADHD youth. Adolescents with ADHD are less likely to develop close friendships and romantic relationships; they are usually regarded by their peers as immature or as social outcasts, with an exception for peers that have ADHD or related conditions themselves, or a high level of tolerance for such symptoms. As they begin to mature, however, it becomes easier to make such relationships. Training in social skills, behavioral modification, and medication have some beneficial effects. It is important for youth with ADHD to form friendships with people who are not involved in deviant or delinquent activities, people who do not have significant mental illnesses or developmental disabilities, in order to reduce emergence of later psychopathology. Poor peer relationships can contribute to major depression, criminality, school failure, and substance use disorders.

Autistic spectrum disorders

Individuals with autistic spectrum disorders including autism and Asperger syndrome are often characterized by their deficiency in social functioning. The concept of social skills has been questioned in terms of the autistic spectrum. In response for the needs of children with autism, Romanczyk has suggested for adapting comprehensive model of social acquisitions with behavioral modification rather than specific responses tailored for social contexts.

Anxiety and depression

Individuals with few opportunities to socialize with others often struggle with social skills. This can often create a downward spiral effect for people with mental illnesses like anxiety or depression. Due to anxiety experienced from concerns with interpersonal evaluation and fear of negative reaction by others, surfeit expectations of failure or social rejection in socialization leads to avoiding or shutting down from social interactions. Individuals who experience significant levels of social anxiety often struggle when communicating with others, and may have impaired abilities to demonstrate social cues and behaviors appropriately. The use of social media can also cause anxiety and depression. The Internet is causing many problems, according to a study from the National library of Medicine, National institute of health, with a sample size of 3,560 students. Problematic internet use may be present in about 4% of high school students in the United States, it may be associated with depression. About one fourth of respondents (28.51%) reported spending fifteen or more hours per week on the internet. Although other studies show positive effects from internet use.

Depression can also cause people to avoid opportunities to socialize, which impairs their social skills, and makes socialization unattractive.

Anti-social behaviors

The authors of the book Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go to Work explore psychopathy in workplace. The FBI consultants describe a five phase model of how a typical psychopath climbs to and maintains power. Many traits exhibited by these individuals include: superficial charm, insincerity, egocentricity, manipulativeness, grandiosity, lack of empathy, low agreeableness, exploitativeness, independence, rigidity, stubbornness and dictatorial tendencies. Babiak and Hare say for corporate psychopaths, success is defined as the best revenge and their problem behaviors are repeated "ad infinitum" due to little insight and their proto-emotions such as "anger, frustration, and rage" is refracted as irresistible charm. The authors note that lack of emotional literacy and moral conscience is often confused with toughness, the ability to make hard decisions, and effective crisis management. Babiak and Hare also emphasizes a reality they identified with psychopaths from studies that psychopaths are not able to be influenced by any sort of therapy.

At the University at Buffalo in New York, Emily Grijalva has investigated narcissism in business; she found there are two forms of narcissism: "vulnerable" and "grandiose". It is her finding that "moderate" level of grandiose narcissism is linked to becoming an effective manager. Grandiose narcissists are characterized as confident; they possess unshakable belief that they are superior, even when it's unwarranted. They can be charming, pompous show-offs, and can also be selfish, exploitative and entitled. Jens Lange and Jan Crusius at the University of Cologne, Germany associates "malicious-benign" envy within narcissistic social climbers in workplace. It is their finding that grandiose narcissists are less prone to low self-esteem and neuroticism and are less susceptible to the anxiety and depression that can affect vulnerable narcissists when coupled with envy. They characterize vulnerable narcissists as those who "believe they are special, and want to be seen that way–but are just not that competent, or charming." As a result, their self-esteem fluctuates a lot. They tend to be self-conscious and passive, but also prone to outbursts of potentially violent aggression if their inflated self-image is threatened." Richard Boyatzis says this is an unproductive form of expression of emotions that the person cannot share constructively, which reflects lack of appropriate skills. Eddie Brummelman, a social and behavioral scientist at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands and Brad Bushman at Ohio State University in Columbus says studies show that in western culture narcissism is on the rise from shifting focus on the self rather than on relationships and concludes all narcissism to be socially undesirable ("unhealthy feelings of superiority"). David Kealy at the University of British Columbia in Canada states that narcissism might aid temporarily but in the long run it is better to be true to oneself, have personal integrity, and be kind to others.

Management

Behavioral therapy

Behaviorism interprets social skills as learned behaviors that function to facilitate social reinforcement. According to Schneider & Byrne (1985), operant conditioning procedures for training social skills had the largest effect size, followed by modeling, coaching, and social cognitive techniques. Behavior analysts prefer to use the term behavioral skills to social skills. Behavioral skills training to build social and other skills is used with a variety of populations including in packages to treat addictions as in the community reinforcement approach and family training (CRAFT).

Behavioral skills training is also used for people with borderline personality disorder, depression, and developmental disabilities. Typically, behaviorists try to develop what are considered cusp skills, which are critical skills to open access to a variety of environments. The rationale for this type of approach to treatment is that people meet a variety of social problems and can reduce the stress and punishment from the encounter in a safe environment. It also addresses how they can increase reinforcement by having the correct skills.

Nerd

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nerd

A nerd is a person seen as overly intellectual, obsessive, introverted or lacking social skills. Such a person may spend inordinate amounts of time on unpopular, little known, or non-mainstream activities, which are generally either highly technical, abstract, or relating to topics of science fiction or fantasy, to the exclusion of more mainstream activities. Additionally, many so-called nerds are described as being shy, quirky, pedantic, and unattractive.

Originally derogatory, the term "nerd" was a stereotype, but as with other pejoratives, it has been reclaimed and redefined by some as a term of pride and group identity.

Etymology

The first documented appearance of the word nerd is as the name of a creature in Dr. Seuss's book If I Ran the Zoo (1950), in which the narrator Gerald McGrew claims that he would collect "a Nerkle, a Nerd, and a Seersucker too" for his imaginary zoo. The slang meaning of the term dates to 1951. That year, Newsweek magazine reported on its popular use as a synonym for drip or square in Detroit, Michigan. By the early 1960s, usage of the term had spread throughout the United States, and even as far as Scotland. At some point, the word took on connotations of bookishness and social ineptitude.

An alternate spelling, as nurd or gnurd, also began to appear in the mid-1960s, or early 1970s. Author Philip K. Dick claimed to have coined the "nurd" spelling in 1973, but its first recorded use appeared in a 1965 student publication at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI). Oral tradition there holds that the word is derived from knurd (drunk spelled backwards), which was used to describe people who studied rather than partied. The term gnurd (spelled with the "g") was in use at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) by the year 1965. The term "nurd" was also in use at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as early as 1971.

According to Online Etymology Dictionary, the word is an alteration of the 1940s term "nert " (meaning "stupid or crazy person"), which is in itself an alteration of "nut" (nutcase).

The term was popularized in the 1970s by its heavy use in the sitcom Happy Days.

Culture

Stereotype

Because of the nerd stereotype, many smart people are often thought of as nerdy. This belief can be harmful, as it can cause high-school students to "switch off their lights" out of fear of being branded as a nerd, and cause otherwise appealing people to be considered nerdy simply for their intellect. It was once thought that intellectuals were nerdy because they were envied. However, Paul Graham stated in his essay, "Why Nerds are Unpopular", that intellect is neutral, meaning that you are neither loved nor despised for it. He also states that it is only the correlation that makes smart teens automatically seem nerdy, and that a nerd is someone that is not socially adept enough. Additionally, he says that the reason why many smart kids are unpopular is that they "don't have time for the activities required for popularity."

Stereotypical nerd appearance, often lampooned in caricatures, can include very large glasses, braces, buck teeth, severe acne and pants worn high at the waist. Following suit of popular use in emoticons, Unicode released in 2015 its "Nerd Face" character, featuring some of those stereotypes: 🤓 (code point U+1F913). In the media, many nerds are males, portrayed as being physically unfit, either overweight or skinny due to lack of physical exercise. It has been suggested by some, such as linguist Mary Bucholtz, that being a nerd may be a state of being "hyperwhite" and rejecting African-American culture and slang that "cool" white children use. However, after the Revenge of the Nerds movie franchise (with multicultural nerds), and the introduction of the Steve Urkel character on the television series Family Matters, nerds have been seen in all races and colors as well as more recently being a frequent young East Asian or Indian male stereotype in North America. Portrayal of "nerd girls", in films such as She's Out of Control, Welcome to the Dollhouse and She's All That depicts that smart but nerdy women might suffer later in life if they do not focus on improving their physical attractiveness.

In the United States, a 2010 study published in the Journal of International and Intercultural Communication indicated that Asian Americans are perceived as most likely to be nerds, followed by White Americans, while non-White Hispanics and African Americans were perceived as least likely to be nerds. These stereotypes stem from concepts of Orientalism and Primitivism, as discussed in Ron Eglash's essay "Race, Sex, and Nerds: From Black Geeks to Asian American Hipsters".

Some of the stereotypical behaviors associated with the "nerd" stereotype have correlations with the traits of Asperger syndrome or other autism spectrum conditions.

Pride

The rise of Silicon Valley and the American computer industry at large has allowed many so-called "nerdy people" to accumulate large fortunes and influence media culture. Many stereotypically nerdy interests, such as superhero, fantasy and science fiction works, are now international popular culture hits. Some measures of nerdiness are now allegedly considered desirable, as, to some, it suggests a person who is intelligent, respectful, interesting, and able to earn a large salary. Stereotypical nerd qualities are evolving, going from awkwardness and social ostracism to an allegedly more widespread acceptance and sometimes even celebration of their differences.

Johannes Grenzfurthner, researcher, self-proclaimed nerd and director of nerd documentary Traceroute, reflects on the emergence of nerds and nerd culture:

I think that the figure of the nerd provides a beautiful template for analyzing the transformation of the disciplinary society into the control society. The nerd, in his cliche form, first stepped out upon the world stage in the mid-1970s, when we were beginning to hear the first rumblings of what would become the Cambrian explosion of the information society. The nerd must serve as comic relief for the future-anxieties of Western society. ...The germ cell of burgeoning nerdism is difference. The yearning to be understood, to find opportunities to share experiences, to not be left alone with one's bizarre interest. At the same time one derives an almost perverse pleasure from wallowing in this deficit. Nerds love deficiency: that of the other, but also their own. Nerds are eager explorers, who enjoy measuring themselves against one another and also compete aggressively. And yet the nerd's existence also comprises an element of the occult, of mystery. The way in which this power is expressed or focused is very important.
— Johannes Grenzfurthner, interviewed by Thomas Kaestle, Boing Boing, 14 April 2016

In the 1984 film Revenge of the Nerds, Robert Carradine worked to embody the nerd stereotype; in doing so, he helped create a definitive image of nerds. Additionally, the storyline presaged, and may have helped inspire, the "nerd pride" that emerged in the late 1990s. American Splendor regular Toby Radloff claims this was the movie that inspired him to become "The Genuine Nerd from Cleveland, Ohio." In the American Splendor film, Toby's friend, American Splendor author Harvey Pekar, was less receptive to the movie, believing it to be hopelessly idealistic, explaining that Toby, an adult low income file clerk, had nothing in common with the middle class kids in the film who would eventually attain college degrees, success, and cease being perceived as nerds. Many, however, seem to share Radloff's view, as "nerd pride" has become more widespread in the years since. MIT professor Gerald Sussman, for example, seeks to instill pride in nerds:

My idea is to present an image to children that it is good to be intellectual, and not to care about the peer pressures to be anti-intellectual. I want every child to turn into a nerd – where that means someone who prefers studying and learning to competing for social dominance, which can unfortunately cause the downward spiral into social rejection.
— Gerald Sussman, quoted by Katie Hafner, The New York Times, 29 August 1993

Bullying

Individuals who are labeled as "nerds" are often the target of bullying due to a range of reasons that may include physical appearance or social background. Paul Graham has suggested that the reason nerds are frequently singled out for bullying is their indifference to popularity or social context, in the face of a youth culture that views popularity as paramount. However, research findings suggest that bullies are often as socially inept as their academically better-performing victims, and that popularity fails to confer protection from bullying. Other commentators have pointed out that pervasive harassment of intellectually-oriented youth began only in the mid-twentieth century and some have suggested that its cause involves jealousy over future employment opportunities and earning potential.

In popular culture

Several memorable nerdy characters appear in old media, including Anthony Michael Hall's character of Brian Johnson in The Breakfast Club and Lewis Skolnick and Gilbert Lowe from Revenge of the Nerds.
The parody song and music video "White & Nerdy" by "Weird Al" Yankovic also prominently features and celebrates aspects of nerd culture.
Slashdot uses the tagline "News for nerds. Stuff that matters." The Charles J. Sykes quote "Be nice to nerds. Chances are you'll end up working for one" has been popularized on the Internet and incorrectly attributed to Bill Gates. In Spain, Nerd Pride Day has been observed on May 25 since 2006, the same day as Towel Day, another somewhat nerdy holiday. The date was picked as it is the anniversary of the release of Star Wars.
An episode from the animated series Freakazoid!, titled "Nerdator", includes the use of nerds to power the mind of a Predator-like enemy. Towards the middle of the show, he gave this speech:

...most nerds are shy, ordinary-looking types with no interest in physical activity. But, what they lack in physical prowess they make up in brains. Tell me, who writes all the best selling books? Nerds. Who makes all the top grossing movies? Nerds. Who designs computer programs so complex that only they can use them? Nerds. And who is running for high public office? No one but nerds. ... Without nerds to lead the way, the governments of the world will stumble, they'll be forced to seek guidance from good-looking, but vapid airheads.

The Danish reality TV show FC Zulu, known in the internationally franchised format as FC Nerds, established a format wherein a team of nerds, after two or three months of training, competes with a professional soccer team.

Australian events such as Oz Comic-Con (a large comic book and Cosplay convention, similar to San Diego Comic-Con International) and Supernova, are incredibly popular events among the culture of people who identify themselves as nerds. In 2016, Oz Comic-Con in Perth saw almost 20,000 cos-players and comic book fans meet to celebrate the event, hence being named a "professionally organised Woodstock for geeks".
Fans of the Vlogbrothers (a YouTube channel starring John and Hank Green) call themselves "nerdfighters" and refer to the fan base as a whole as "Nerdfighteria".
Mathew Klickstein produces and hosts an interview-based, nerd-focused podcast called NERTZ that first debuted in February 2016 via Wired before being picked up by Heavy Metal in June 2020.

White Anglo-Saxon Protestants

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Anglo-Saxon_Protestants

Trinity Church in Manhattan; it has been seen as embodying the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant culture in the United States.

In the United States, White Anglo-Saxon Protestants or WASPs are an ethnoreligious group who are the white, upper-class, American Protestant historical elite, typically of British descent. WASPs dominated American society, culture, and politics for most of the history of the United States. From the 1950s, the New Left criticized the WASP hegemony and disparaged them as part of "The Establishment". Although the social influence of wealthy WASPs has declined since the 1940s, the group continues to play a central role in American finance, politics and philanthropy.

Anglo-Saxon refers to people of British ancestry, but WASP is sometimes used more broadly by sociologists and others to include all Protestant Americans of Northern European or Northwestern European ancestry. WASP is also used for elites in Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. The 1998 Random House Unabridged Dictionary says the term is "sometimes disparaging and offensive".

Naming

The Angles and Saxons were Germanic tribes that migrated to Great Britain near the end of antiquity and the beginning of the Middle Ages. Anglian and Saxon kingdoms were established over most of what is present-day England, and collectively they came to identify themselves as "English", after England ('land of the Angles'), while the indigenous Celtic people were called British. Later, the name Anglo-Saxon was also applied to these people, reflecting their Germanic tribal origins; and, after the Norman conquest in 1066, Anglo-Saxon has been used to refer to the pre-invasion English people. Since the 19th century, Anglo-Saxon has been in common use in the English-speaking world, but not in Britain itself, to refer to Protestants of principally English descent. The W and P were added in the 1950s to form a humorous epithet to imply "waspishness" or someone likely to make sharp, slightly cruel remarks.

Political scientist Andrew Hacker used the term WASP in 1957, with W standing for 'wealthy' rather than 'white'. Describing the class of Americans that held "national power in its economic, political, and social aspects", Hacker wrote:

These 'old' Americans possess, for the most part, some common characteristics. First of all, they are 'WASPs'—in the cocktail party jargon of the sociologists. That is, they are wealthy, they are Anglo-Saxon in origin, and they are Protestants (and disproportionately Episcopalian).

An earlier usage appeared in the African-American newspaper The New York Amsterdam News in 1948, when author Stetson Kennedy wrote:

In America, we find the WASPs (White Anglo-Saxon Protestants) ganging up to take their frustrations out on whatever minority group happens to be handy — whether Negro, Catholic, Jewish, Japanese or whatnot.

The term was later popularized by sociologist and University of Pennsylvania professor E. Digby Baltzell, himself a WASP, in his 1964 book The Protestant Establishment: Aristocracy and Caste in America. Baltzell stressed the closed or caste-like characteristic of the group by arguing that "There is a crisis in American leadership in the middle of the twentieth century that is partly due, I think, to the declining authority of an establishment which is now based on an increasingly castelike White-Anglo Saxon-Protestant (WASP) upper class."

Citing Gallup polling data from 1976, Kit and Frederica Konolige wrote in their 1978 book The Power of Their Glory, "As befits a church that belongs to the worldwide Anglican Communion, Episcopalianism has the United Kingdom to thank for the ancestors of fully 49 percent of its members. ... The stereotype of the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) finds its fullest expression in the Episcopal Church."

WASP is also used in Australia and Canada for similar elites. WASPs traditionally have been associated with Episcopal (or Anglican), Presbyterian, United Methodist, Congregationalist, and other mainline Protestant denominations; however, the term has expanded to include other Protestant denominations as well.

Anglo-Saxon in modern usage

The concept of Anglo-Saxonism, and especially Anglo-Saxon Protestantism, evolved in the late 19th century, especially among American Protestant missionaries eager to transform the world. Historian Richard Kyle says:

Protestantism had not yet split into two mutually hostile camps – the liberals and fundamentalists. Of great importance, evangelical Protestantism still dominated the cultural scene. American values bore the stamp of this Anglo-Saxon Protestant ascendancy. The political, cultural, religious, and intellectual leaders of the nation were largely of a Northern European Protestant stock, and they propagated public morals compatible with their background.

Before WASP came into use in the 1960s, the term Anglo-Saxon served some of the same purposes. Like the newer term WASP, the older term Anglo-Saxon was used derisively by writers hostile to an informal alliance between Britain and the U.S. The negative connotation was especially common among Irish Americans and writers in France. Anglo-Saxon, meaning in effect the whole Anglosphere, remains a term favored by the French, used disapprovingly in contexts such as criticism of the Special Relationship of close diplomatic relations between the U.S. and the UK and complaints about perceived "Anglo-Saxon" cultural or political dominance. In December 1918, after victory in the World War, President Woodrow Wilson told a British official in London: “You must not speak of us who come over here as cousins, still less as brothers; we are neither. Neither must you think of us as Anglo-Saxons, for that term can no longer be rightly applied to the people of the United States....There are only two things which can establish and maintain closer relations between your country and mine: they are community of ideals and of interests." The term remains in use in Ireland as a term for the British or English, and sometimes in Scottish Nationalist discourse. Irish-American humorist Finley Peter Dunne popularized the ridicule of "Anglo-Saxons", even calling President Theodore Roosevelt one. Roosevelt insisted he was Dutch. "To be genuinely Irish is to challenge WASP dominance", argues California politician Tom Hayden. The depiction of the Irish in the films of John Ford was a counterpoint to WASP standards of rectitude. "The procession of rambunctious and feckless Celts through Ford's films, Irish and otherwise, was meant to cock a snoot at WASP or 'lace-curtain Irish' ideas of respectability."

In Australia, Anglo or Anglo-Saxon refers to people of English descent, while Anglo-Celtic includes people of Irish, Welsh, and Scottish descent.

In France, Anglo-Saxon refers to the combined impact of Britain and the United States on European affairs. Charles de Gaulle repeatedly sought to "rid France of Anglo-Saxon influence". The term is used with more nuance in discussions by French writers on French decline, especially as an alternative model to which France should aspire, how France should adjust to its two most prominent global competitors, and how it should deal with social and economic modernization.

Outside of Anglophone countries, the term Anglo-Saxon and its translations are used to refer to the Anglophone peoples and societies of Britain, the United States, and countries such as Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. Variations include the German Angelsachsen, French le modèle anglo-saxon, Spanish anglosajón, Dutch Angelsaksisch model [nl] and Italian Paesi anglosassoni [it].

19th-century Anglo-Saxonism

In the nineteenth century, Anglo-Saxons was often used as a synonym for all people of English descent and sometimes more generally, for all the English-speaking peoples of the world. It was often used in implying superiority, much to the annoyance of outsiders. For example, American clergyman Josiah Strong boasted in 1890:

In 1700 this race numbered less than 6,000,000 souls. In 1800, Anglo-Saxons (I use the term somewhat broadly to include all English-speaking peoples) had increased to about 20,500,000, and now, in 1890, they number more than 120,000,000.

In 1893, Strong envisioned a future "new era" of triumphant Anglo-Saxonism:

Is it not reasonable to believe that this race is destined to dispossess many weaker ones, assimilate others, and mould the remainder until... it has Anglo-Saxonized mankind?

Other European ethnicities

A 1969 Time article stated, "purists like to confine Wasps to descendants of the British Isles; less exacting analysts are willing to throw in Scandinavians, Netherlanders and Germans." The popular usage of the term has sometimes expanded to include not just Anglo-Saxon or English-American elites but also to people of other Protestant Northwestern European origin, including Protestant Dutch Americans, Scottish Americans, Welsh Americans, German Americans, and Scandinavian Americans. The sociologist Charles H. Anderson writes, "Scandinavians are second-class WASPs" but know it is "better to be a second-class WASP than a non-WASP".

Sociologists William Thompson and Joseph Hickey described a further expansion of the term's meaning:

The term WASP has many meanings. In sociology it reflects that segment of the U.S. population that founded the nation and traced their heritages to...Northwestern Europe. The term...has become more inclusive. To many people, WASP now includes most 'white' people who are not ... members of any minority group.

Apart from Protestant English, German, Dutch, and Scandinavian Americans, other ethnic groups frequently included under the label WASP include Americans of French Huguenot descent, Scotch-Irish Americans, Scottish Americans, Welsh Americans, Protestant Americans of Germanic Northwestern European descent in general, and established Protestant American families of "vague" or "mixed" Germanic Northwestern European heritage.

Culture

Historically, the early Anglo-Protestant settlers in the seventeenth century were the most successful group, culturally, economically, and politically, and they maintained their dominance till the early twentieth century. Numbers of the most wealthy and affluent American families, such as Boston Brahmin, First Families of Virginia, Old Philadelphians, Tidewater, and Lowcountry Gentry or old money, were WASPs. Commitment to the ideals of the Enlightenment meant that they sought to assimilate newcomers from outside of the British Isles, but few were interested in adopting a Pan-European identity for the nation, much less turning it into a global melting pot. However, in the early 1900s, liberal progressives and modernists began promoting more inclusive ideals for what the national identity of the United States should be. While the more traditionalist segments of society continued to maintain their Anglo-Protestant ethnocultural traditions, universalism and cosmopolitanism started gaining favor among the elites. These ideals became institutionalized after the Second World War, and ethnic minorities started moving towards institutional parity with the once dominant Anglo-Protestants.

Education

Harvard College was primarily white and Protestant into the 20th century.

Some of the first colleges and universities in America, including Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Dartmouth, Pennsylvania, Duke, Boston, Williams, Bowdoin, Middlebury, and Amherst, all were founded by mainline Protestant denominations.

Expensive, private prep schools and universities have historically been associated with WASPs. Colleges such as the Ivy League, the Little Ivies, and the Seven Sisters colleges are particularly intertwined with the culture. Until roughly World War II, Ivy League universities were composed largely of white Protestants. While admission to these schools is generally based upon merit, many of these universities give a legacy preference for the children of alumni in order to link elite families (and their wealth) with the school. These legacy admissions allowed for the continuation of WASP influence on important sectors of the US.

Members of Protestant denominations associated with WASPs have some of the highest proportions of advanced degrees. Examples include the Episcopal Church, with 76% of those polled having some college education, and the Presbyterian Church, with 64%.

According to Scientific Elite: Nobel Laureates in the United States by Harriet Zuckerman, between 1901 and 1972, 72% of American Nobel Prize laureates have come from a Protestant background, mostly from Episcopalian, Presbyterian or Lutheran background, while Protestants made up roughly 67% of the US population during that period. Of Nobel prizes awarded to Americans between 1901 and 1972, 84.2% of those in Chemistry, 60% in Medicine, and 58.6% in Physics were awarded to Protestants.

Religion

Washington National Cathedral, the Episcopal cathedral in Washington, D.C.

The White Anglo-Saxon Protestant upper class has largely held church membership in the mainline Protestant denominations of Christianity, chiefly the Presbyterian, Episcopalian, and Congregationalist traditions.

Politics

From 1854 until about 1964, white Protestants were predominantly Republicans. More recently, the group is split more evenly between the Republican and Democratic parties.

Wealth

Episcopalians and Presbyterians are among the wealthiest religious groups and were formerly disproportionately represented in American business, law, and politics. Old money in the United States was typically associated with White Anglo-Saxon Protestant ("WASP") status, particularly with the Episcopal and Presbyterian Church. Some of the wealthiest and most affluent American families such as the Vanderbilts, Astors, Rockefellers, Du Ponts, Roosevelts, Forbes, Fords, Mellons, Whitneys, Morgans, and Harrimans are white primarily mainline Protestant families.

According to a 2014 study by the Pew Research Center, Episcopalians ranked as the third wealthiest religious group in the United States, with 35% of Episcopalians living in households with incomes of at least $100,000. While Presbyterians ranked as the fourth most financially successful religious group in the United States, with 32% of Presbyterians living in households with incomes of at least $100,000.

Location

Beacon Hill, Boston: a preeminent Boston Brahmin neighborhood.

View of Manhattan's Upper East Side, which has traditionally been dominated by WASP families.

The Boston Brahmins, who were regarded as the nation's social and cultural elites, were often associated with the American upper class, Harvard University, and the Episcopal Church.

Like other ethnic groups, WASPs tend to concentrate within close proximity of each other. These areas are often exclusive and associated with top schools, high incomes, well-established church communities, and high real-estate values. For example, in the Detroit area, WASPs predominantly possessed the wealth that came from the new automotive industry. After the 1967 Detroit riot, they tended to congregate in the Grosse Pointe suburbs. In Chicagoland, white Protestants primarily reside in the North Shore suburbs, the Barrington area in the northwest suburbs, and in Oak Park and DuPage County in the western suburbs. Traditionally, the Upper East Side in Manhattan has been dominated by wealthy White Anglo-Saxon Protestant families.

Social values

David Brooks, a columnist for The New York Times who attended an Episcopal prep school, writes that WASPs took pride in "good posture, genteel manners, personal hygiene, pointless discipline, the ability to sit still for long periods of time." According to the essayist Joseph Epstein, WASPs developed a style of understated quiet leadership.

A common practice of WASP families is presenting their daughters of marriageable age (traditionally at the age of 17 or 18 years old) at a débutante ball, such as the International Debutante Ball at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York City.

Social Register

America's social elite was a small, closed group. The leadership was well-known to the readers of newspaper society pages, but in larger cities it was hard to remember everyone, or to keep track of the new debutantes and marriages. The solution was the Social Register, which listed the names and addresses of about 1 percent of the population. Most were WASPs, and they included families who mingled at the same private clubs, attended the right teas and cotillions, worshipped together at prestige churches, funded the proper charities, lived in exclusive neighborhoods, and sent their daughters to finishing schools and their sons away to prep schools. In the heyday of WASP dominance, the Social Register delineated high society. According to The New York Times, its influence had faded by the late 20th century:

Once, the Social Register was a juggernaut in New York social circles... Nowadays, however, with the waning of the WASP elite as a social and political force, the register's role as an arbiter of who counts and who doesn't is almost an anachronism. In Manhattan, where charity galas are at the center of the social season, the organizing committees are studded with luminaries from publishing, Hollywood and Wall Street and family lineage is almost irrelevant.

Fashion

In 2007, The New York Times reported that there was a rising interest in the WASP culture. In their review of Susanna Salk's A Privileged Life: Celebrating WASP Style, they stated that Salk "is serious about defending the virtues of WASP values, and their contribution to American culture."

By the 1980s, brands such as Lacoste and Ralph Lauren and their logos became associated with the preppy fashion style which was associated with WASP culture.

Social and political influence

1957 Royal Visit at National Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C., L to R: Queen Elizabeth II, Senior Minister Edward L. R. Elson, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, Mamie Eisenhower, Associate Minister John Edwards and Prince Philip

The term WASP became associated with an upper class in the United States due to over-representation of WASPs in the upper echelons of society. Until the mid–20th century, industries such as banks, insurance, railroads, utilities, and manufacturing were dominated by WASPs.

The Founding Fathers of the United States were mostly educated, well-to-do, of British ancestry, and Protestants. According to a study of the biographies of signers of the Declaration of Independence by Caroline Robbins:

The Signers came for the most part from an educated elite, were residents of older settlements, and belonged with a few exceptions to a moderately well-to-do class representing only a fraction of the population. Native or born overseas, they were of British stock and of the Protestant faith.

Catholics in the Northeast and the Midwest—mostly immigrants and their descendants from Ireland and Germany as well as southern and eastern Europe—came to dominate Democratic Party politics in big cities through the ward boss system. Catholic politicians were often the target of WASP political hostility.

Political scientist Eric Kaufmann argues that "the 1920s marked the high tide of WASP control". In 1965, Canadian sociologist John Porter, in The Vertical Mosaic, argued that British origins were disproportionately represented in the higher echelons of Canadian class, income, political power, the clergy, the media, etc. However, more recently, Canadian scholars have traced the decline of the WASP elite.

Post–World War II

According to Ralph E. Pyle:

A number of analysts have suggested that WASP dominance of the institutional order has become a thing of the past. The accepted wisdom is that after World War II, the selection of individuals for leadership positions was increasingly based on factors such as motivation and training rather than ethnicity and social lineage.

Many reasons have been given for the decline of WASP power, and books have been written detailing it. Self-imposed diversity incentives opened the country's most elite schools. The GI Bill brought higher education to new ethnic arrivals, who found middle class jobs in the postwar economic expansion. Nevertheless, white Protestants remain influential in the country's cultural, political, and economic elite. Scholars typically agree that the group's influence has waned since 1945, with the growing influence of other ethnic groups.

After 1945, Catholics and Jews made strong inroads in getting jobs in the federal civil service, which was once dominated by those from Protestant backgrounds, especially the Department of State. Georgetown University, a Catholic school, made a systematic effort to place graduates in diplomatic career tracks. By the 1990s, there were "roughly the same proportion of WASPs, Catholics, and Jews at the elite levels of the federal civil service, and a greater proportion of Jewish and Catholic elites among corporate lawyers." The political scientist Theodore P. Wright, Jr., argues that while the Anglo ethnicity of the U.S. presidents from Richard Nixon through George W. Bush is evidence for the continued cultural dominance of WASPs, assimilation and social mobility, along with the ambiguity of the term, has led the WASP class to survive only by "incorporating other groups [so] that it is no longer the same group" that existed in the mid-20th century.

Very few Jewish lawyers were hired by White Anglo-Saxon Protestant ("WASP") upscale white-shoe law firms, but they started their own. The WASP dominance in law ended when a number of major Jewish law firms attained elite status in dealing with top-ranked corporations. Most white-shoe firms also excluded Roman Catholics. As late as 1950 there was not a single large Jewish law firm in New York City. However, by 1965 six of the 20 largest firms were Jewish; by 1980 four of the ten largest were Jewish.

Two famous confrontations signifying a decline in WASP dominance were the 1952 Senate election in Massachusetts, in which John F. Kennedy, a Catholic of Irish descent, defeated WASP Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., and the 1964 challenge by Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater—an Episcopalian who had solid WASP credentials through his mother, but whose father was Jewish, and was seen by some as part of the Jewish community—to Nelson Rockefeller and the Eastern Republican establishment, which led to the liberal Rockefeller Republican wing of the party being marginalized by the 1980s, overwhelmed by the dominance of Southern and Western conservatives. However, asking "Is the WASP leader a dying breed?", journalist Nina Strochlic in 2012 pointed to eleven WASP top politicians, ending with Republicans G.H.W. Bush, elected in 1988, his son George W. Bush, elected in 2000 and 2004, and John McCain, who was nominated but defeated in 2008. Mary Kenny argues that Barack Obama, although famous as the first Black president, exemplifies highly controlled "unemotional delivery" and "rational detachment" characteristic of WASP personality traits. Indeed, he attended upper class schools such as Harvard, and was raised by his WASP mother Ann Dunham and the Dunham grandparents in a family that dates to Jonathan Singletary Dunham, born in Massachusetts in 1640. Inderjeet Parmar and Mark Ledwidge argue that Obama pursued a typically WASP-inspired foreign policy of liberal internationalism.

In the 1970s, a Fortune magazine study found one-in-five of the country's largest businesses and one-in-three of its largest banks was run by an Episcopalian. More recent studies indicate a still-disproportionate, though somewhat reduced, influence of WASPs among economic elites.

The reversal of WASP fortune was exemplified by the Supreme Court. Historically, almost all its justices were of WASP or Protestant Germanic heritage. The exceptions included seven Catholics and two Jews. Since the 1960s, an increasing number of non-WASP justices have been appointed to the Court. From 2010 to 2017, the Court had no Protestant members, until the appointment of Neil Gorsuch in 2017.

The University of California, Berkeley, once a WASP stronghold, has changed radically: only 30% of its undergraduates in 2007 were of European origin (including WASPs and all other Europeans), and 63% of undergraduates at the University were from immigrant families (where at least one parent was an immigrant), especially Asian. Once also a WASP bastion, as of 2010 Harvard University enrolled 9,289 non-Hispanic white students (44%, of which approximately 30% were Jewish), 2,658 Asian American students (13%), 1,239 Hispanic students (6%), and 1,198 African American students (6%).

A significant shift of American economic activity toward the Sun Belt during the latter part of the 20th century and an increasingly globalized economy have also contributed to the decline in power held by Northeastern WASPs. James D. Davidson et al. argued in 1995 that while WASPs were no longer solitary among the American elite, members of the Patrician class remained markedly prevalent within the current power structure.

Other analysts have argued that the extent of the decrease in WASP dominance has been overstated. In response to increasing claims of fading WASP dominance, Davidson, using data on American elites in political and economic spheres, concluded in 1994 that, while the WASP and Protestant establishment had lost some of its earlier prominence, WASPs and Protestants were still vastly overrepresented among America's elite.

In August 2012 the New York Times, reviewed the religion of the nine top national leaders: the presidential and vice-presidential nominees, the Supreme Court justices, the House Speaker, and the Senate majority leader. There were nine Catholics (six justices, both vice-presidential candidates, and the Speaker), three Jews (all from the Supreme Court), two Mormons (including the Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney) and one African-American Protestant (incumbent President Barack Obama). There were no white Protestants.

Hostile epithet

Sociologist John W. Dykstra in 1958 described the "white AngloSaxon Protestant" as "Mr. Bigot." Historian Martin Marty said in 1991 that WASPs "are the one ethnoreligioracial group that all can demean with impunity."

In the 21st century, WASP is often applied as a derogatory label to those with social privilege who are perceived to be snobbish and exclusive, such as being members of restrictive private social clubs. Kevin M. Schultz stated in 2010 that WASP is "a much-maligned class identity....Today, it signifies an elitist snoot." A number of popular jokes ridicule those thought to fit the stereotype.

Occasionally, a writer praises the WASP contribution, as conservative historian Richard Brookhiser did in 1991, when he said the "uptight, bland, and elitist" stereotype obscures the "classic WASP ideals of industry, public service, family duty, and conscience to revitalize the nation." Likewise, conservative writer Joseph Epstein praised WASP history in 2013 and asked, "Are we really better off with a country run by the self-involved, over-schooled products of modern meritocracy?" He deplores how the WASP element lost its self-confidence and came under attack as "The Establishment."

In media

American films, including Annie Hall and Meet the Parents, have used the conflicts between WASP families and urban Jewish families for comedic effect.

The 1939 Broadway play Arsenic and Old Lace, later adapted into a Hollywood film released in 1944, ridiculed the old American elite. The play and film depict "old-stock British Americans" a decade before they were tagged as WASPS.

The playwright A. R. Gurney (1930-2017), himself of WASP heritage, has written a series of plays that have been called "penetratingly witty studies of the WASP ascendancy in retreat". Gurney told the Washington Post in 1982:

WASPs do have a culture – traditions, idiosyncrasies, quirks, particular signals and totems we pass on to one another. But the WASP culture, or at least that aspect of the culture I talk about, is enough in the past so that we can now look at it with some objectivity, smile at it, and even appreciate some of its values. There was a closeness of family, a commitment to duty, to stoic responsibility, which I think we have to say weren't entirely bad.

In Gurney's play The Cocktail Hour (1988), a lead character tells her playwright son that theater critics "don't like us... They resent us. They think we're all Republicans, all superficial and all alcoholics. Only the latter is true."

Filmmaker Whit Stillman, whose godfather was E. Digby Baltzell, has made films dealing primarily with WASP characters and subjects. Stillman has been called the "WASP Woody Allen." His debut 1990 film Metropolitan tells the story of a group of college-age Manhattan socialites during débutante season. A recurring theme of the film is the declining power of the old Protestant élite.

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Sunday, December 4, 2022

Poverty in the United States

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