ABSTRACT
This chapter examines six difficult conditions disadvantaged groups face. Neighborhoods have a substantial influence, with findings showing that the less the poverty in children’s locale, the higher their lifetime income. Within many poor neighborhoods, violence against Black women can be so common that they are considered “unvictimizable.”
Poor families are often “food insecure,” having insufficient food for a healthy, hunger-free lifestyle. The coronavirus pandemic sharply increased the spread of food insecurity.
American communities suffer a greater gap in health-care quality between poor and affluent residents than peers in other wealthy nations. Racial minorities and women experience persistent discrimination in the American system.
In growing old, the poor are particularly susceptible to three deadly factors—obesity, limited exercise, and particularly smoking. People of color vary in their longevity averages, often facing major challenges to staying healthy.
Certain Americans are unusually vulnerable to climate change, including Black residents’ upheaval and resettlement disadvantages following Hurricane Katrina, Native Americans’ adjustment to living in the water-deprived Southwest, and people of color experiencing accelerated summer temperatures in urban neighborhoods impoverished by early twentieth-century discriminatory government loan policies.
The section “Black Lives Diminished” cites studies providing an overview of the persistent, massive incarceration of African American men.
