What is Poverty?

Poverty can be described in many ways depending upon our station in life. To some teens poverty might be the lack of gas money for the car or having to buy less expensive copies of name brand shoes like Air Jordans. To newlyweds it might mean shopping for furniture at thrift stores like Value Village or The Salvation Army. However, the best description of real poverty was that of Jo Goodwin Parker, in her essay "What is Poverty". In preparation for the writing of our second major writing assignment, we were to read the essay, write a summary of the piece and a reflection on it. This summary was chosen for its demonstration of analytical writing/thinking as seen in, "For this reason, constant review of policies is needed to achieve optimum use of welfare funds and programs."