Brittany Davis Abramsky book discussion part 2

Brittany Davis I thought the second part of the book was a little bit easier to understand. Part two went in to more depth about the law policies concerning poverty. There was also a lot more personal stories that individuals have gone through while living in poverty. One part that caught my attention was when it was talking about how many children will be in poverty by 2010 in Chicago, Illinois. "In 2010, Chicago authorities had calculated that 14,000 school kids would be homeless in the city at some point that year. By 2011, that number had increased to 16,000- more than 3,000 of whom weren't even living with an adult" (Abramsky, 2013). That is just one city that Abramsky is talking about so there will be a lot more children who are living in poverty without an adult present. There is something wrong with that image and the government needs to figure out a policy that will help children living in poverty. California was also having issues with the food stamp program. According to Abramsky, California was not reaching out to a lot of the poor families and individuals that would qualify for food stamps. Texas had more families and individuals receiving food stamps than California. Texas has a smaller population size compared to California. Part two of Abramsky's book also talked about Hurricane Katrina and how it affected many individuals. Poverty had an increase when George W. Bush was in office and also when Obama became president. Another issue that stood out to me was when Abramsky was talking about the SNAP program on page 220. "Since SNAP is available to anybody below a certain income threshold, it ends up being used in recessions- as well as in periods of collapsing wages for the working poor- by far more people than can use TANF or general cash assistance programs" (Abramsky, 2013). Potential test question: What are the current problems that happen with the SNAP program?