to an examination of poor women across the age spectrum, and will look at the increase in poor households headed by women alone. In the next section, there will be a major discussion of 'the feminization of poverty,' looking in depth at female headed households, the social welfare system, effects of economics, and personal income and poverty, all in the context of the Reagan years. Finally, the paper will conclude with further suggestions for actions and the legacy that the role of poor women have left on society.
There is a multitude of literature on the subject of poverty, most of it dealing with the urban poor. Nevertheless, there is also a significant body of work on the genderization of poverty, and works that are specifically devoted to the quantity and quality of poor women in the American social system.
In an early analysis of the impact of Reaganomics on the poor, author John Schiller combined essays from several sociologists and urban historians to conclude that even though Americans became more aware on poverty in the 1960s, the so called "war on poverty" was short lived. In fact, by the 1980s the "inequities in the distribution of wealth and income [grew] out of complex economic, political, and social processes and structures."2
An earlier study, written in the 1970s, placed more emphasis on lost opportunities, and projected trends with the warning that if something was not quickly done at the national level, the situation would likely grow out of control.3 Besides women, there is an additional complex problem with poverty for certain segments of the minority population. The trends in minority research, though, show more problems with gender. However, the gender gap knows no racial boundaries, and women are effected regardless of their ethnic heritage.4 Finally, by the late 1980s, the earlier predictions had come true with a vengeance: the American women occupied one of the lowest stratum of the economic sys...