At the beginning of these studies conducted on poverty in the U.S, I prepared myself to leave behind my usual soothing daily activities, such as visiting my local panera for a $4.49 strawberry banana smoothie, along with a half sandwich on Asiago Cheese Focaccia bread.
Oh, and you can’t forget the 3.49 cents pastry to accompany it, just to get a sense of that “just right” feeling. I also leave behind my ‘extravagant’ taste bud expectations, along with my common everyday instant gratification, and my every other day visit to my local ACAC to enjoy a health and wellness yoga class. For five days, I don’t focus on my education, or my workout habits, I focus on what I will eat that day. There, I became a hungry, present oriented american living on a poverty budget of just $4.25 a day.
The other three, I picked up on the second day. I will not use their real names for the sake of identity protection, but let’s use the names Subin and Yoon for the two employees that I have had the priviledge to know for the past year, and the other two were Hannah, and Jason. For the first three days, I observed from a distance the amount of people each of them would get into their chair, thus the number of hands and feet they had to scrub, massage, and wash. On the first day, from 12-3, subin had six different people sit into her pedicure chair. If you think about the hours operation, they are open from 9:30am-7pm, Tuesday through sunday, meaning they only get Mondays off. This about 9.5 hours a day, not including the 45 minutes it takes to open and close the salon.
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That’s 11 hours a day, 6 days a week, or 66 hours a week. So, consider the rate of customers was slightly slow from 9:30-10:30, but from 10:30 to 7pm, each person has to personally scrub about 12 hands and feet (2 people per hour), hunched over, in a uncomfortable looking chair, with 100% concentration. While observing subins posture, she looked almost sick, she almost seemed as if she hadn’t slept in days.
The person sitting in the chair was observing subin themselves, or either they were making sure their paint was a good color, and that she better not mess up. Yoon was at the manicure station, painting, filing, and perfecting at lightning speed, almost as if she had gotten a full 8-9 hours of rest. Hannah was next to Yoon, performing the same duties, but at a slower rate. She clearly wasn’t into it, and apparently from my perspective and most likely the customer’s perspective, she wanted to go home, shower, and sleep. Lastly, Jason was the one person who seemed to be moving at fast pace like Subin, but showed signs of fatigue and slight disgust.
He looked like one of those people who lives off of 5-hour energy drinks, like one of those people who just needed to make it to the next hour. Each day, these four workers were there, still filing, still moving, still bent over painting. On day seven, I finally went in. Approaching Subin, she had greasy hair, fairly pimpled skin, and plain clothes. Up close, you could see her bags, and she didn’t even look over 30.
Not mentioning that I was doing research, I asked Subin what it was like to be a nail technician, she simply responded by, “It’s okay.” That wasn’t the answer I was quite looking for, I was looking for a more detailed elaborate response. I took “okay” as I do it to get by and it’s how I’m able to most bills. I expected an answer more like “I work a lot, get great tips, and I get to design nails.”
Subin clearly hated her job, and wished she had a more fulfilled life. The second person I approached was Jason, the fatigued one. I asked him to tell me why he chose to be a nail technician, he responded by saying “I didn’t really choose it, in my opinion, none of us really did.” He then added, “I guess you could say that I’m doing this because I have a family to feed.” I responded by saying, thank you and have a great day. He just turned around and continued to scrub. I left the salon, went home, and googled the average nail technician salary, and my findings were that the majority of Nail Technicians in the United States in this line of work make around an average of $10.09 per hour.
Earnings generally go between $7.88 and $15.55. The two biggest factors for the amount of income is residence, and experience level. Satisfaction is reported as high, (which I find hard to believe based on what I saw) by the vast majority of workers. Medical and dental benefits are awarded to around one in seven, and fewer than one in ten earn vision coverage. This report is based on answers to PayScale’s salary questionnaire (Payscale 2016). Below I will transition to research on the socioeconomic, labor, and basic economic issues that surround Asian Americans.
Sharon, M. “Poverty and the US Asian population.” Asian American Issues Relating to Labor, Economics, and Socioeconomic Status 6.3 (2014): 207.
Based on the recent findings the level of poverty in the United States is relatively lower if compared with the other parts of the world. It has partly been attributed to years of economic and policy reforms that has seen the US create so many jobs to people subsequently increasing their income but hence minimally reducing the level of poverty.
Such policies began back in the 1960s when President Lyndon Johnson declared an economic war intended to lessen the level of poverty in the US ushering in a series of policy measures for combating poverty. However, recent studies reveal that the levels of poverty are heavily dependent on the ethnic makeup of the people in the country. By using historical data running through the 1980s, the study was instituted to investigate the prevalence of poverty among the migrant communities especially the Asian immigrant population in the US.
The results of their study indicate that it is true the level of poverty in these people is higher than that reported. For the Asian communities, their level of poverty was greater than that recorded for the white population. However, the study also discovered that amongst the
Asian population, the poverty levels were more prevalent in the new and recent immigrants compared to other Asian immigrants in the country (Sharon p.207). The study stresses that the major reason for this phenomena is that the new immigrants often find it hard to get any income generating job as compared to their counterparts that have stayed for relatively longer periods in the country. This phenomena also points to the reason why people see many asians opening nail salons, seven elevens, and various other cash making jobs. Thus, overall the study concluded that poverty can be correctly measured using immigration-related characteristics.
Kwon, Hee-Kyung, Virginia S. Zuiker, and Jean W. Bauer. “Factors associated with the poverty status of Asian immigrant householders by citizenship status.” Journal of Family and Economic Issues 25.1 (2004): 101-120.
Transitioning from poverty traced from immigration-related characteristics, this article stresses that there has been a pronounced sociological change in the socio-economic profiles of the Asian Populations over time hence the need for examining the poverty status of the Asian minorities at a national level.
The poverty status of most Asian households has often been a constituent of so many studies that often include a series of variables to indicate the Asian poverty in most of their research studies. The study carried out an investigation of the major factors directly associated with the poverty status of Asian householders. It utilized the 1990 U.S census results with an aim of investigating that proportion of Asian populations living in absolute poverty, and the factors that are contributing to this phenomena like human capital variables, acculturation factors and immigration.
The 1990 Census public use micro sample data conducted a study in over 22,9004 Asian respondents in the country and used a hierarchical bivariate logistic regression analysis to investigate the extent of poverty amongst these people (Kwon etal. pp.101-120). The results of their study suggest that as acculturation and human capital increase, the odds of Asians households living below the poverty threshold also reduce regardless of their citizenship status in the country. Further analysis of the data indicated that the degree at which any selected variables are associated with the overall poverty status positively depends on the citizenship status of the respondents.
The results obtained for this study were in correspondence with previously done studies that showed that immigration has got an influence on the overall poverty status of the Asian populations for the years running through 1980 (Kwon etal. pp.101-120). For instance, it showed that the recent immigrants possess relatively higher levels of poverty compared to US-born Asians or those that have stayed in the US for a longer period.
Phua, V., McNally, J. W., & Park, K. S. (2007). Poverty among elderly Asian Americans in the twenty-first century. Journal of poverty, 11(2), 73-92.
Aside from the citizenship of Asians, what about the elderly? Despite the slight decreasing levels of poverty, only a few studies have been carried out to investigate the real levels of poverty in the country. This is most likely because it involves sampling an enormous population, or carrying out an entire census. Such investigations are also difficult because the poverty line set officially by the government is not widely understood truly. Examples would include the expectations of a family of four’s income isn’t over $24,300, otherwise they would not qualify for any government assistance.
Or that a household of two can’t bring in more than $16,020 net per annum, and their rent is $750 dollars a month. That leaves 9,000 a year for all other bills, not including a car, insurance, utilities, groceries, outside of work activities, or emergency funds. These people, according to the government make too much. The elderly may be living in a household of one, but isn’t able to work, and many not have much of a social security check because it’s possible that they never made a lot of money or worked in the U.S long enough to accumulate the taxes. In this study two researchers examine the risks among the Asian communities that are elderly with inferential interpretation of the implication of the finding from the study.
The study utilized census data and various other statistics of the United States Census data for the 2000 U.S census to study the trend in the poverty for the Asian populations in the US. The study employed the model minority precepts to study the differences and variations in poverty levels among the Asians living in America while adjusting for instances of heterogeneity in the data set obtained from the census results (Phua etal pp. 73-92).
The first result of the data is that there appears to be no noticeable homogeneity in the Asian populations since the statistical inquiry did not consider that while collecting the data. However, the analysis reveals that there is a relatively higher level of poverty among the Asian populations if compared to the other people particularly the white people in the US and the level of poverty was much more prevalent among the elderly Asians and less among the middle aged Asian communities. The analysis in the book also reveals that these Asian elders often benefit greatly from co-residence with other fellow Asians to facilitate their livelihoods (Phua etal pp. 73-92), and plus, it is the only thing they are able to afford. The results were largely consistent with previous studies that were conducted to investigate poverty among the Asian communities.
Takei, Isao, and Arthur Sakamoto. “Poverty among Asian Americans in the 21st century.” Sociological perspectives 54.2 (2011): 251-276.
There has been a marked change in the proportions of poverty by region and ethnicity in the US for last few years. Due to a desire for investigating the nature of such changes, several studies have been carried out to find out the true accurate extent of poverty. These studies often examine the ethnic groups that seem to be having the highest levels of poverty in the country. Takei and Sakamoto investigated the relative to absolute levels of poverty among the Asian populations in the US using census data for a series of surveys that were conducted between 2005 and 2007.
The figures obtained from their statistical inquiry indicate that the absolute, as well as the relative levels of poverty existent among the Asian communities, was higher if compared to the results obtained for the White populations in the country. Furthermore, the study revealed that immigrant Asians recorded relatively higher levels of poverty compared to the Asians that are natively born in the US though both categories were poorer than the White population. In addition, the results further indicate that the racially based differences in the levels of poverty are strongly linked to the migration tendencies of the Asian people (Takei pp. 251-276).
For instance, the data shows that the Asian communities that have just moved into the US are poorer than those that have stayed in the US for at least five years. Thus, the study implies the foreign-born Asian people are more likely to immigrate to the US than the foreign-born whites. Furthermore, following statistical methods of controlling for other demographic characteristics within the population, it was discovered that even the foreign born-Asians are poorer than the white counterparts with higher level of significance.
Concluding, It is my new perception from research that Asian Americans might work harder because the immigrant status usually motivates a person to excel to find his status in the new society he moved to. This might be one reason why Asian Americans usually achieve high academic results. This belief cancels out all beliefs I had before, academically, I figured that they were just born smarter. This whole idea ties back to their culture, they are from of culture of hard work, and are expected nothing less. After several findings, It has come to the light that they are not the only ones struggling to get by in America today. They are the ones, too, pulling 60-70 hour work weeks, but still barely being able to put food on the table for their family.
While I didn’t particularly enjoy the bland, tasteless food I had to choose from during my poverty budget, I did however enjoy getting the sense of how it feels to be on the very low end of impoverished. It was not at all easy, but I successfully stayed within budget, settling most days for high in sodium ramen noodles or aka the high blood pressure waiting to happen.
My buying habits changed dramatically, no buying organic milk for 4.79, but rather the 1.99 store branded skim milk. I couldn’t afford the pre-made smoothies, because those were 2.99 just by themselves, and it would’ve only left me me with 1.25 for other food. I settled for water everyday, and along with that beverage change I noticed that I lost a little over pound.
If I were to keep up this poverty budget, based on the pound lost in five days, I would probably end up losing six pounds a month. I felt malnourished some days, and I hated the feeling that I couldn’t just go out and buy a Bodo’s bagel to fill the void, instead, I had to suffer. My day-to-day routine was altered slightly, I still attended classes normally, but my attention a lot of times was shifted elsewhere because I was thinking about food. This helped me develop a better understanding of the focus of people who don’t have much money. They are not thinking about the future, or college, or buying the next pair of shoes, they are thinking about how they are going to survive in that moment, that day.
From my experiment observing the nail salon, I concluded that most people don’t tend to enjoy their work, they do it to support their family, to make it to the next week. Their priorities, outlook, and goals are very different than someone who makes a livable wage. The literature reviews relate to my experiences in different ways, the first way is the mere fact that I never truly considered asians to be a suffering group in America.
They are largely misrepresented in most cases, because often times people are stereotypical. They assume Asian Americans have it easier because they are smarter, but that ties back to their culture. From a structural functionalist theoretical standpoint, we continue to have poverty in a wealthy U.S because their is unequal opportunities to jobs, education, government assistance, and transportation. All of the unequally distributed aspects named above are the reasons for some people never getting to live the “American dream.” Often times, it is said that people just don’t try hard enough, but actually it’s not that simple.
Those people do not have the same opportunities as the next, they maybe don’t even have the intellect or resources to reach out even if the chance was staring them right in the face. In my opinion, a less impoverished America starts with equal opportunity, equality of condition, and equality of outcome.
