Tomas Morrissey - October 11, 2008 10:06:34 AM CDT

A Framework for Understanding Poverty tried to encapsulate how poverty effects those who live in it.    However, the conclusion the  book arrives to seems at once a failure and even somewhat dangerous.  The book, in my opinion, focuses on how lower class citizens in the US act, which is not the same as understanding poverty.  In fact this is a backwards approach, poverty does not necessarily influence all the choices that the lower class in the US makes, its more about culture, education, and other variables.  Children who come from wealthy homes generally perform better in schools, but is this because of the money, or because their parents are more likely to be well educated than parents in poor communities?  Simply put, the book examines a situation and claims that it is caused by one of many factors that are affecting that area, which is an incorrect way to view a situation.  If you travel to other areas and cultures, poverty affects these areas differently, because it is not poverty that the book looks at, but  stereotyped culture.