Concord Hosts Symposium on Poverty

Poverty is a growing problem in this country and around the world.
Photo by Mark Stuart

With the new addition of the loan dashboard to the MyCU page, many students might be thinking about how they’re going to start paying their loans back. Those students will be considering how they’re going to be tightening their belts in order to be able to afford their payments. Hopefully, some of these same students gained a little perspective at the 2016 Poverty and Inequality Symposium held on March 9th 2016 in the main auditorium of the Alexander Fine Arts Center. While it is true that students fresh out of college will be making adjustments to their lifestyles to pay back loans, the Poverty and Inequality Symposium talked more about how people all over the country have to make the same kinds of adjustments in order to make a living, and how this kind of poverty relates to countries all over the world.

    The symposium itself consisted of three main highlighted events: Dr. Mark Robert Rank from Washington University in St. Louis, who gave his opening address entitled, “Towards a New Understanding of American Poverty,” followed by a poster presentation session from Dr. Lawrence Eppard’s Social Deviants students, and concluding with a presentation from Richard Wilkinson, a Professor Emeritus of Social Epidemiology at University of Nottingham. Unfortunately, due to an error in communication, Wilkinson was unable to attend for his part of the Symposium. Wilkinson’s TED talk entitled, “How Economic Inequality Harms Societies” was displayed for the audience, and can be found on YouTube.

    Dr. Rank’s opening address comprised the first hour of the symposium, but was easily summarized by Dr. Eppard. Eppard said that Rank is one of, if not the leading expert of poverty in America and that Concord was very blessed to have him give the opening address. Rank talked about how people should view poverty at a more holistic level rather than at an individual level. Eppard stated, “As a culture we tend to look at individuals when you think about poverty. Social policy, because our culture supports it, our social policy treats poverty that way, it looks at individuals. Even our social science, the way we study poverty, tends to focus almost solely on individuals. [Rank] says this is the wrong thing to do. Individual levels shows you who was at a higher risk of poverty, but it doesn’t tell you why poverty exists, and this is particularly important to sociologists.” Eppard continued by saying that Rank’s research focuses more on the context behind what causes poverty, and not just what is perceived as causing poverty. The example that Eppard gives is that of single mothers, which Eppard says are not inherently problematic, but appear as such in the United States where over half of all single mothers are poor. Meanwhile, in other countries, the percentage of poor, single mothers is less than seven percent.

    Eppard goes further into Rank’s message, saying “Individual characteristics absolutely matter. And in most countries having a lack of things like social capital, economic capital, cultural capital…having a lack of resources is going to put you at a high risk of poverty. But it’s not the same risk; it’s not even close to the same risk in some countries versus others. That’s really what his research focuses on. In the U. S. we tend to lose sight of that which means we tend to develop policies that lose sight of that. And so we have much higher poverty rates, and the childhood poverty rates here…as much as one in five, sometimes one in four, depending upon the year, of our children live in poverty, and that’s appalling in the richest country in the world.”

    After the opening address came the students’ presentations of their research posters. The posters all focused around three themes as they relate to poverty: work, marriage, and education. Eppard said that the students had to pick sociological sources to render these claims problematic, and much of what was discussed in the poster presentations was also touched upon in Rank’s address. Topics discussing the kinds of opportunities afforded to people, like their parents’ incomes, quality of primary schooling, and types of job openings available to certain individuals, were all concerning factors in poverty as it related to both work and education. As far as poverty as it related to marriage, Eppard said “What’s interesting about the marriage research is that Americans expect more from their spouses today than ever before. You not only expect them to be a good lover, good financially, have a good job, but to be a good parent, be communicative… I mean all these things that a 1950’s family wouldn’t expect from a father.” Eppard goes on to talk about how these kinds of rising standards led to an increase in divorce rates, and how these rates have still not changed a lot for the poor class. One of Eppard’s students presenting in the Symposium, Jacqulyn Gross, presented her poster on Poverty and Marriage for Eppard’s Social Deviants class. When asked how the course material related to the Symposium, Gross said, “Poverty in itself is a deviant act. Most people don’t want to be poor, most people view poor living as not normal.”

    As stated, this is the first Poverty and Inequality Symposium, but Eppard is proud of its resounding success and has big plans for more symposiums in the future. Eppard says that he plans to host the next Symposium in the Fall semester 2017, and wants to make the event even more grand than before, expanding it into an all day event filled with poster presentations, community organizations, faculty research presentations, a social justice artwork exhibition, and plenty more food. Students are urged to be alert for the announcement of this next Poverty and Inequality Symposium in order to gain some perspective and learn how to stand against such inequality and injustice.