Nickel and Dimed Book Reflection free essay sample

Although the pathway model is primarily focused on the potential effects of poverty on children, the model can also be applied to adults. Because of this, I found that the research presented by Seccombe on the pathways to poverty paralleled many of the experiences that Ehrenreich faced in her endeavor to make ends meet as a minimum-wage worker.Most of the connections I made between Seccombe’s research and Ehrenreich’s experiences fell under the pathway of â€Å"Housing Problems,† in which there were several similarities between the two. Seccombe (2006) writes that â€Å"the United States currently faces a severely limited supply of affordable housing units† (p. 73). Ehrenreich, in her attempt to find somewhat affordable housing, definitely experienced the effects of this housing shortage.For instance, in order to pay only $500 dollars a month as opposed to $675 dollars in Key West, she had to move even further away from town, resulting in a commute that would take approximately forty-five minutes (Ehrenreich, 2001, p. 12). In Portland, Maine, Ehrenreich comes across the same dilemma when trying to find affordable housing located near town. She found that â€Å"the only low-rent options seem to be clustered in an area about a thirty-minute drive south† (Ehrenreich, 2001, p. 5). One can only imagine the additional costs that would be incurred if a person even deeper in poverty could not afford the luxury of a car for transportation purposes. Ehrenreich encountered the most difficulties finding housing, and specifically affordable housing, in the city of Minneapolis, Minnesota. Of her intense search, she writes: â€Å"The vacancy rate is less than 1 percent, and if we’re talking about affordable, why it might be as low as a tenth of that.Listings in the Star Tribune are meager or nonexistent† (Ehrenreich, 2001, p. 138). Ehrenreich finally ends up securing a room in an inn only twenty minutes away from work, as opposed to at least forty-five, at the weekly rate of $245 dollars versus the original $295 dollars she spent (Ehrenreich, 2001, p. 150). She was promised the opportunity to later acquire housing at $179 dollars a week, and even if she would have been able to obtain and manage two jobs, this would have amounted to about 55 percent of her income.This, in her words, was â€Å"beginning to look ‘affordable,’† despite the fact that she cites that rents usually have to be less than 30 percent of one’s income to be considered â€Å"affordable† (Ehrenreich, 2001, p. 170). Regardless, Seccombe presents a statistic that further confirms Ehrenreich’s experiences to be true for a large amount of the general public as well. According to Seccombe (2006), â€Å"more than 14 million households spend more than 50 percent of their income on rent, and three quarters of these households are poor† (p. 73).In concurrence with Ehrenreich’s personal findings, Seccombe (2006) writes that even full-time workers earning only the minimum wage cannot afford to pay fair market rent in any location within the United States (p. 73). Therefore, Seccombe (2006) writes that they must instead be forced to live in â€Å"damp, dirty, crowded, dangerous, and disease-ridden housing† (p. 73). In Key West, all of Ehrenreich’s coworkers who earned approximately the same amount as her (about seven) were living with at least one other person (Ehrenreich, 2001, p. 5). Ehrenreich herself even experienced poor housing conditions that could potentially lead to health problems. In addition to a missing window screen in an inn near Minneapolis, she also found mouse droppings (Ehrenreich, 2001, p. 151). Such rodents, Seccombe (2006) writes, can â€Å"contribute to asthma and other respiratory problems by filling the air with rodent urinary proteins (p. 73). Older, more affordable, housing may also increase the potential of lead paint poisoning. After reading Nickel and Dimed, I came to the conclusion that Ehrenreich primarily uses a social structuralist perspective to explain why there is a â€Å"working poor† class of people in the United States. This perspective â€Å"assumes that poverty is a result of economic or social imbalances within our social structure that restrict opportunities for some people† (Seccombe, 2006, p. 94). In my opinion, Ehrenreich’s experiences led her to believe that the reason a number of â€Å"working poor† remain in poverty is because, in her words, â€Å"wages are too low and rents too high† (Ehrenreich, 2001, p. 99). Something is wrong with a system, Ehrenreich (2001) came to believe, when a person such as she who is in good health and who possesses a car, cannot find a way to support herself in the most basic sense (p. 199). To provide evidence for this perspective, she goes on to cite that expenditures on public housing have decreased since the 1980s and despite the fact that wages have increased in recent years, it has not been enough to bring low-wage workers up to the amounts they were earning in 1973 (Ehrenreich, 2001).According to Seccombe (2006), another facet of the social structuralist perspective, is the belief that poverty is an inherent feature of capitalism and that control over some social structures is â€Å"designed to serve the interests and maintain the dominance of the wealthy class† (p. 95). Ehrenreich provided statements that led me to believe that she too holds this belief. She points out the fact that when the â€Å"working poor† have to work near their wealthier counterparts, as in the case of several service and retail jobs, they end up having to compete for housing in the same area.As it is clear that they don’t stand a chance, they are then â€Å"forced i nto housing that is more expensive, more dilapidated, or more distant from their places of work† (Ehrenreich, 2001, p. 200). As long as there is a great number of rich to compete with, then there will remain in place a lower class of people to serve them.