orary period remains far higher than that of any type of assistance available in the earlier periods dating before 1933.
Another major difference between the contemporary period and earlier periods of metropolitan development in the United States involves poverty. Poverty, as is true of hunger and homelessness, has increased in the United States since 1981. Nevertheless, poverty as a way of life for a near majority of the residents of the United States does not exist in the contemporary period. By contrast, living in poverty was far more prevalent in earlier periods. It is true that, in those earlier periods, not everyone deemed to have been living in poverty from the perspective of the contemporary period thought at the time that they were living in poverty. The standard of living criteria that define poverty have changed over the years. Thus, many of the people living in poverty in the contemporary period would not be placed in that status if the guidelines of earlier periods were employed. As American society has evolved, however, the criteria for an acceptable standard of living have changed along with the standard itself.
1.b. While the motivation for immigration in this period sounds similar to today, what are the important differences between the two periods for those who come?
In the earlier periods of metropolitan development in the United States, immigrants with little formal education and few developed skills could come to this country, and, through hard work and marginal living, earn a place in society from which, if not they themselves, at least their children could advance. In the contemporary period, it is, in the first place, difficult to the point of impossibility for an individual with little formal education and few developed skills to legally immigrate to the United States. To be sure, such individuals, particularly from Latin America, do enter the country illegally in the contemporary period. For...