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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. In 2018, on what amount were 5.3 million Americans subsisting daily?

2. Who wrote that the history of the world was "who gets eaten and who gets to eat" (42)?

3. Near what town did Desmond grow up?

4. What did the house cost that Desmond grew up in?

5. How much less did workers with a high school diploma make in 2017 than they made in 1979, adjusted for inflation?

Short Essay Questions

1. Why did many people applying for Supplement Security Income (SSI) hire a lawyer?

2. Had poverty gotten worse because spending was reduced?

3. How did many welfare policies have an antifamily design?

4. How does race affect who lives in poverty and who does not?

5. What happened when poor workers received a pay raise?

6. What was the relationship between corporate profits and labor costs?

7. When Desmond went to college, how was his life different from the lives of many of his classmates?

8. Did raising the minimum wage cause unemployment?

9. What were Julio Payes's days like and why?

10. Where did Desmond grow up?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Desmond narrated information about poverty and its effects based on personal experience and research in Poverty, by America. Was he a trustworthy or untrustworthy narrator?

Essay Topic 2

The prevailing theory was that giving aid to the poor made them lazy. Why did Desmond call this the “propaganda of capitalism” (85), and was it true that giving aid to the poor made them lazy?

Essay Topic 3

Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, nearly a third of U.S. workers belonged to unions. In the 1970s, unions began to lose their power. What were unions, and what effect did they have on poverty?

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