Maid is Stephanie Land’s New York Times bestselling memoir of her life as a single mom struggling to make ends meet by working as a housekeeper and relying on government assistance.
While it’s not meant to be political, Land’s story does present a broader social commentary on the American “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” mentality. In contrast to the common perception that poverty is the result of laziness or bad choices, Land puts forth her own life as an example of how circumstances beyond a person’s control can force them into poverty and keep them there. She demonstrates how factors such as domestic abuse, lack of a support system, a weak labor market, and flawed government policies make it extremely difficult for her to lift herself out of poverty, no matter how hard she works. Maid is not so much a story of overcoming poverty as it is of surviving it. Land is, however, able to improve her circumstances.
(Shortform note: Following the events on which the book is based, Land went on to become a freelance writer. She received early support from the Economic Hardship Reporting Project, a nonprofit founded by Barbara Ehrenreich (author of Nickel and Dimed, and who also wrote the forward to Maid). Land wrote a viral article for Vox about her experiences as a maid, leading to a book deal. Maid was adapted into a popular, critically acclaimed Netflix miniseries, finally bringing Land the financial stability she worked so many years to achieve.)
The book moves back and forth in time, beginning with Land and her daughter’s life in a homeless shelter, then jumping backward to show how they ended up there. This pattern repeats throughout. In this guide, we’ve reordered the events of the story chronologically and divided them into phases. Next, we explore the book’s events thematically, analyzing each of the factors that contribute to Land’s poverty. Our guide also provides background information, research, and statistics on the key themes, bringing context to Land’s personal experience as it relates to the larger population of Americans experiencing poverty and abuse.
Work and Upward Mobility in America
The concept of “bootstrapping” dates back to the 1800s, when American author Horatio Alger wrote popular young-adult novels about boys who rose from poverty to a comfortable, middle-class existence through their own hard work and good deeds.
Since then, the “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” narrative has become pervasive in American culture. In the context of government assistance, the idea is often politicized. Conservatives tend to argue that hard work and individual initiative are sufficient to achieve upward mobility, and that government aid encourages dependency. Liberals tend to argue that hard work is not enough, and that without assistance, structural forces keep people from rising above the poverty line.
Land doesn’t take a political stance, but much of Maid is devoted to showing how no amount of hard work and initiative can lift her out of poverty. J.D. Vance presents an alternate viewpoint in Hillbilly Elegy, his memoir about growing up as a member of the Appalachian white working class. Vance argues that his community’s inability to achieve upward mobility is due (in part) to a lack of personal responsibility and an aversion to hard work. Unlike Land, he blames individual moral failings, rather than systemic problems, for economic stagnation.
Data shows that upward economic mobility is harder to achieve in America than it used to be. The percentage of Americans who earn more than their parents has shrunk by more than 40% from the 1940s to the 1980s. Studies also show that, while there is some opportunity for upward mobility within the middle class, people who are born into low-income families tend to remain at the bottom of the economic ladder from one generation to the next, while people who are born into wealth tend to stay wealthy.
Land was born in rural Washington, and she comes from generations of poverty on both sides of her family. However, her parents managed to achieve financial stability. The family moved to Alaska when Land was 7. There, she had a relatively middle-class upbringing, where she lived in the suburbs and attended church with her family.
When Land was in her early 20s, her mother had an affair, resulting in her parents’ divorce. Land’s mother married a younger man and moved to Europe to live with him. As a result, Land and her mother rarely see each other. Land’s father also remarried.
Both of Land’s parents are now struggling financially. Land also feels that they both prioritize their relationships with their new spouses over their relationship with her.
Land moves back to Washington from Alaska in her late 20s and meets Jamie. She and Jamie both work at cafes and in a variety of odd jobs in Port Townsend. Both have big plans for the future. Land has always wanted to become a writer; she dreams of attending the writing program at the University of Montana. Jamie suggests that Land move into his trailer so that they can save money toward achieving their goals.
Land and Jamie have known each other for only four months when she gets pregnant. Land had used birth control, and she isn’t against abortion, but she wants to be a mother. She wants to keep the pregnancy a secret and continue with her plans to go to college, but she also wants to give Jamie the chance to be a father. She realizes that having a baby means staying in Port Townsend and putting her plans to be a writer on hold.
Jamie tries to convince Land to get an abortion. When she doesn’t, he begins a pattern of angry outbursts and threatens Land that he won’t pay child support.
Land lives with Jamie throughout her pregnancy and during the first seven months of her daughter, Mia’s, life. During this time, Jamie continues his rages, threats, and insults. He calls Land ugly, stupid, and crazy.
Land no longer feels safe. She decides to move in with her father and his new family. When she asks Jamie for child support, he crumples a paper containing the child support calculation and throws it in her face. He yells and threatens to take Mia away from Land. When he punches through a window, Land calls a domestic violence hotline and the police come and take a report. She feels relieved that she can point to physical evidence of Jamie’s abusive behavior, because much of his abuse up to that point has been invisible—it didn’t leave bruises. The police report feels like confirmation that Jamie really is abusive and reassures her that she’s not crazy.
Emotional Abuse
Emotional abuse, such as Land experienced from Jamie, is a pattern of behavior such as threats, manipulation, humiliation, and isolation, which one partner in an intimate relationship uses to assert dominance and control over the other. In addition, it’s the foundation for other forms of domestic violence, such as physical and sexual abuse. Emotional abuse is also known as psychological abuse or coercive control, a term popularized by sociologist and professor Evan Stark in his book Coercive Control: How Men Entrap Women in Personal Life.
Emotional abuse can include verbal abuse, such as demeaning comments, as well as controlling behaviors—such as constant monitoring of or attempts to control a partner’s movements and communications, excessive jealousy and accusations of cheating, controlling a partner’s finances, prohibiting a partner from working or getting an education, acts of violence against pets or inanimate objects, or preventing a partner from seeing friends or family. Emotional abuse often escalates over time, in cycles of rage and devotion employed to diminish a person’s self-worth and create a psychological dependency on the abusive partner.
This form of abuse is often called “invisible abuse” because, as Land points out, it doesn’t leave bruises. It can be difficult to detect while it’s happening, as abusive behaviors such as gaslighting and manipulation can lead a victim to distrust their own beliefs and perceptions until they feel they must be crazy. This is evident in Land’s relief when Jamie commits a physical act of violence.
While emotional abuse has long been recognized as domestic violence by psychological fields and within some state laws, it wasn’t until 2015 that European countries began passing laws specifically outlawing coercive control, with a handful of US States following suit beginning in 2020. For example, California law now allows a victim of coercive control to obtain a domestic violence restraining order against their abuser, as well as to use evidence of coercive control in child custody proceedings. California law defines coercive control as “a pattern of behavior that unreasonably interferes with a person’s free will and personal liberty and includes, among other things, unreasonably isolating a victim from friends, relatives, or other sources of support.”
Following the domestic violence call, Land and Mia move in with Land’s dad. Land’s dad and his wife don't have a lot of money and live in a mobile home, so having two extra people staying with them is a burden. After a few weeks, Land’s dad tells her that she needs to leave. He and his wife then have a fight about Land staying with them, and he physically abuses his wife. Land tries to tell her aunt and brother about the domestic violence, but her father has already told them that Land made the story up for attention, and that she did the same with her story about Jamie. Land moves out.
With nowhere else to go, Land and Mia move into an emergency homeless shelter. The shelter only allows for a 90-day stay.
During this time, Land spends most of her time working as a landscaper and cleaner and trying to get government assistance for herself and Mia, which requires her to spend hours attending appointments with caseworkers, standing in long lines, and preparing folders of paperwork.
Land and Mia then move to transitional housing, where half of the residents are coming from homeless shelters and the other half have recently been released from jail. When living in transitional housing begins to feel unsafe, Land applies for government housing assistance to help her and Mia move into an apartment. As with other forms of government aid, Land must jump through multiple hoops to receive benefits.
(Shortform note: Despite the red tape, Land finds housing and moves into her new apartment relatively quickly. Her experience is not representative of that of most low-income Americans. Two-thirds of families at or below the poverty line don’t receive any housing assistance—not because they don’t qualify for it, but because government funding is limited. For those who do get benefits, the median wait time is 18 months for a housing voucher and nine months for public housing. As Matthew Desmond points out in Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, most poor, renting families spend more than half of their income on housing; Desmond argues that the lack of affordable housing is a major contributor to poverty in the US.)
After Land and Mia move out of Jamie’s trailer, she and Jamie engage in a battle for custody of Mia. Jamie accuses Land of being mentally unstable, arguing that she’s an unfit mother because she’s depressed. However, Land’s depression was caused by Jamie’s emotional and verbal abuse.
Land ultimately wins full custody of Mia, and Jamie has visitation rights. But Land lives in fear that her precarious living situation will affect her custody rights. For example, when a woman in the transitional housing tries to kill herself, Land is concerned that Jamie will find out and use that against her by claiming Mia is in an unsafe environment.
(Shortform note: Land and Jamie’s custody battle may represent another form of emotional abuse known as post-separation abuse. Post-separation abuse occurs when a person uses the court system to control and harass their former partner, often stretching out legal proceedings indefinitely in an attempt to exact a financial and psychological toll. This can take the form of an abuser arguing for custody not out of love for their child, but out of a desire to maintain an ongoing means of inflicting abuse on their former partner.)
Land begins working for one maid service, then another. She makes minimum wage, which in 2009 in Washington State is $8.55 an hour. The company she ends up with doesn’t pay for travel time, and Land sometimes spends up to two hours a day traveling from house to house. It takes her at least an hour of work every day just to pay for the gas to get there. Land is unable to survive on her income from the maid service, so she later takes on her own clients as well.
Land’s work is physically demanding. She works alone, and her employer has strict rules about how much time she has to clean each house—some houses must be cleaned in as little as three hours. Land rushes to finish cleaning in the allotted time. Some of the houses are truly filthy and disgusting, which makes her task even harder. She doesn’t get a lunch break.
Land’s work causes multiple illnesses and injuries. She injures her back moving furniture and has chronic back pain. Cleaning exacerbates a preexisting condition, causing a pinched nerve down her right arm that prevents her from gripping a sponge. She has to devise elaborate workarounds to scrub surfaces, and when she gets home at the end of a six-hour day, she can barely hold a plate or a grocery bag. She has lingering sinus infections as a result of her allergies to the pet hair, dust, and mold she encounters cleaning houses.
Although Mia is covered by Medicaid, Land makes too much money to receive it herself. Without health insurance, she can’t afford to see a doctor about her injuries, sickness, and pain, so she simply lives with them. She tries to rely on over-the-counter remedies, but they are expensive, so she has to ration them.
In order to work, Land needs to leave Mia at daycare, where Mia also gets sick constantly. Land receives a child care assistance grant that pays for half a day of daycare.
Land and Mia rely on food stamps (also called SNAP, or Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) to eat. Their diet is not varied because they can’t afford much. Land gives more of the food to Mia and often relies on coffee to stave off her own hunger. She eats a lot of instant noodles, and only buys fresh produce if it’s very inexpensive. At one point, the rules for the food stamp program change, and Land is allowed to spend exactly $10 a month for produce—no more. Because it’s cheaper, she has to buy unhealthy food full of artificial ingredients.
While many of Land’s clients are wealthy, their houses are filled with evidence that they are unhappy: photos of dead family members; antidepressant and anti-anxiety medications; a husband and wife leading separate existences, he in one bedroom with his porn magazines and she in another with her romance novels. At times, Land envies her clients—but she increasingly feels that her own apartment, however small and faulty, is a home because she and Mia fill it with love. Land doesn’t have a lot of time to spend with Mia, but she makes sure Mia has a predictable routine and the two of them go exploring and find free activities to do together on the weekends.
Land’s job as a maid makes her feel invisible. Small kindnesses from her clients—like one man buying her two lobsters for dinner, or another woman sitting down for lunch with Land and paying her for that time—help her make it through.
In addition to working and taking care of Mia, Land spends a significant amount of time filling out forms, waiting at government offices for appointments, taking prerequisite classes, and fulfilling any number of other requirements so that she and Mia can continue receiving government benefits.
At the same time, Land is also taking online classes at a community college and writing a blog about her experiences.
Minimum Wage and Government Assistance in the US
As of 2022, federal minimum wage in the US has been $7.25 an hour since 2009. Many states set a higher minimum wage, but some laws allow employers to pay certain workers less than the federal minimum wage. For example, tipped workers (such as restaurant servers) can be paid significantly below federal minimum wage in a number of states.
The value of a minimum-wage job has declined over time. At its high point in 1968, the minimum wage of one full-time worker was enough to maintain a family of three above the poverty line, and up until the early 1980s, it was enough to keep a family of two out of poverty. Since then, however, a full-time, minimum wage job has been insufficient to keep a family of two above the poverty line.
More than ever before, workers such as Land who earn at or slightly above the federal minimum wage are much more likely to receive some form of government assistance. In fact, the vast majority of families who receive government assistance contain workers—about 70% of non-elderly individuals or families.
After years of working as a maid and living in survival mode, Land is exhausted. She’s receiving some financial aid for her studies, and she decides to apply for the full amount of aid available. The money will allow her to quit her maid service job (while keeping her private clients) and spend more time with Mia.
It seems like a huge risk to take on debt and quit her job, but Land realizes she’ll never get anywhere if she keeps living paycheck to paycheck. Unlike those who have always been entrenched in poverty, she had the privilege of growing up middle class, which gives her faith that her current situation will eventually improve.
(Shortform note: Land is not alone in taking on debt in the form of student loans. Approximately 58% of students graduate from four-year public universities with debt, with most of them owing about $26,000. Low-income students tend to borrow less than higher-income students, but they are more likely to default on loans because they have less access to wealth. In addition, low-income students and students of color are particularly vulnerable to predatory lending, defined by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) as the practice of imposing unjust and abusive loan terms on borrowers.)
Land still dreams of moving to Montana and becoming a writer, but she is afraid that Jamie won’t let her take Mia to another state. Using money from a scholarship she’s earned for domestic violence survivors, she manages to take her first vacation in years to visit Missoula. When she tells Jamie she wants to move there, he coaches Mia to say she doesn’t want to go. He threatens Land that he will tell Mia that her mom wants to take her away from her dad.
Land and Mia move to Missoula anyway. Slowly, their lives start to improve. Land starts attending college classes. She gets a job cleaning an office building and has an essay published in a magazine.
One weekend, she and Mia hike to the top of “the M,” the mountain near the University of Montana with the school’s letter on the side. From the top, they can see the university campus and the auditorium where Mia will watch Land graduate in two years with a degree in English and creative writing. Land feels they didn’t just make it up the mountain that day, they made it to a better life.
Is Land a Typical Maid and Abuse Victim?
The vast majority of domestic workers and abuse victims are women, so in that sense Land is typical. But in most other respects, Land is not representative of the average house cleaner or abuse survivor.
Unlike Land, most maids and abuse victims are women of color: 68% of house cleaners are women of color, with Latina women making up the highest percentage (59%). Women of color also experience significantly higher rates of domestic violence than white women. And although women are victims of physical and sexual violence at a much higher rate than men, when it comes to emotional abuse such as that suffered by Land, men and women are affected in similar numbers.
In addition, while Land is a native English speaker and US citizen, approximately half of all house cleaners are born outside the United States and are noncitizens, some of whom aren’t fluent in English. Land’s familiarity with the English language and US culture may help her navigate both the job market and the system of government benefits in a way that foreign-born, non-native speakers cannot.
As Land acknowledges, her background as a member of the middle class also allows her to view working as a maid as temporary, while for many, housekeeping is a lifelong occupation.
Beyond being a story of Land’s life, Maid is a broader social commentary on the American “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” mentality. Land demonstrates that American stereotypes about the poor—that they are lazy, they are freeloaders, that their situation is the result of bad choices—aren’t only untrue and demeaning, they also ignore overarching causes of poverty that go beyond questions of personal responsibility.
Land puts forth her own life as an example of how systemic problems and circumstances beyond a person’s control can force them into poverty and keep them there. She shows how abuse, single motherhood, a weak labor market, the lack of an education or a support system, flawed government policies, and the cyclical nature of poverty all contribute to and compound poverty, making it extremely difficult for her to pull herself out no matter how hard she works.
Jamie’s emotional, psychological, and verbal abuse of Land precipitates her descent into poverty. Land is forced to leave the home she shares with Jamie because she no longer feels safe, but she has nowhere else to go, and she ends up in a homeless shelter.
Not only does the abuse cause Land to lose her home, it almost causes her to lose Mia. Jamie fights Land for custody of Mia, claiming that Land is mentally unstable and an unfit mother.
Even years after Land wins custody, Jamie continues to verbally abuse her and have angry outbursts about having to pay child support or take care of Mia. He also manipulates Mia into believing it’s Land’s fault that Mia doesn’t see him more. The constant conflict with Jamie takes a psychological toll on Land and her daughter. It also means Land has to shoulder a heavier load as a single parent.
Intersection Between Domestic Violence and Poverty
Research shows a strong correlation between domestic violence and poverty: Each exacerbates the other.
People living in poverty rarely have the resources they need to leave an abusive situation, which prolongs their exposure to abuse (and increases the danger they’re in, as abuse tends to escalate over time). The psychological impact of intimate partner violence can affect a person’s ability to maintain employment: Women in abusive relationships frequently lose their jobs, and this effect lasts even after the abuse ends.
People who do leave abusive relationships can find themselves, like Land, without a place to live or a job. In fact, between 22% and 57% of all homeless women report that domestic violence was the immediate cause of their homelessness, and 38% of all domestic violence victims become homeless at some point in their lives.
Although Land’s relationship with Jamie was untenable, it did provide some financial stability. When Land lived with Jamie before getting pregnant, they were able to combine their incomes and save money on rent. After Land gave birth, she could stay home with Mia while Jamie continued to work.
Once Land and Jamie split up, however, Land is on her own. She receives a minimal amount of child support from Jamie, but she’s essentially the sole breadwinner for herself and her daughter, as well as the person responsible for Mia’s care and for obtaining any government assistance that will help them survive. This makes it harder to hold onto a working class existence.
(Shortform note: Land’s own experience as a single mom is borne by statistics, which show a close relationship between poverty and single motherhood. In 2020, the poverty rate for single-mother families was 23.4%, nearly five times the rate for married-couple families (4.7%). Similarly, 38.1% of children with single moms lived in poverty, while only 7.5% of children in two-parent families were considered poor. The problem compounds for single moms who are victims of domestic violence. The vast majority of single moms experiencing homelessness—80%—are victims of domestic violence.)
In addition to Jamie’s abuse and Land’s status as a single mom, the lack of jobs in her area also contributes to her poverty. The town where Land lives at the outset of the book, Port Townsend, is a small, seaside community that caters to tourists. Most of the available jobs are low-wage positions in the service industry, and there aren’t many jobs with flexible, part-time work schedules that can accommodate a single parent.
In fact, when Land becomes a maid, she notices that three of the women she encounters in her work are single moms, as housekeeping is one of the few jobs flexible enough to allow employees to juggle working and caring for a child.
Besides the labor market in her local area, the 2008 recession means many people are unemployed and looking for work throughout the US at the time Maid takes place.
(Shortform note: The financial crisis that officially began in December 2007 and lasted until June 2009 is often referred to as the Great Recession, as it was the most significant economic downturn since the Great Depression. During this time, wages dropped significantly, unemployment rose, and poverty increased. Research shows that expanded government assistance programs mitigated some of the worst effects of the Great Recession, preventing many low-income families from sinking below the poverty line.)
In addition to an overall lack of opportunity, Land has only a high school education, which further limits the jobs available to her. She believes that obtaining a college degree will be her only way out of poverty. To achieve that goal, she takes online classes to earn a two-year degree at a community college.
In order to manage getting an education while simultaneously working and caring for Mia, Land often stays up until one or two in the morning finishing her homework. She also receives financial aid for low-income students. Her story illustrates how hard it can be for a member of the working poor to get an education.
Education as a Predictor of Income and Wealth
While workers with a college degree do tend to earn more than those without, Land’s belief that a college education will lift her out of poverty is not entirely supported by the data.
On one hand, higher-wage jobs generally require a higher level of education, so workers with a bachelor’s degree or higher do tend to earn more and be wealthier. For example, in 2016, families headed by someone with a bachelor’s degree earned more than twice as much as families headed by someone without.
In contrast, Americans without a high school diploma or bachelor’s degree are more likely to live below the poverty line: 24.7% of people living below the poverty line in 2020 hadn’t graduated from high school, and 13.2% of people living in poverty had a high school diploma, but no college degree. By contrast, only 4% of people living below the poverty line had a bachelor’s degree or higher.
However, the correlation between education and wealth has declined significantly in recent decades for people of all ethnicities. For families headed by white people born in the 1980s, the correlation between a bachelor’s degree and greater wealth is at an all-time low. And for families headed by people of color who were born more recently, there is almost no correlation at all between a bachelor’s degree and greater wealth.
Another factor contributing to Land’s poverty is her lack of a support system. Her fraught relationship with her parents, as well as her parents’ own financial instability, means she has no one to bail her out in emergencies. Not only are her parents unable to provide monetary support, but they also are unequipped to provide psychological support, as they are too wrapped up in their own lives.
Land has also lost touch with most of her friends because she is embarrassed about her poverty, and she doesn’t want them to know how much government assistance she receives. When Land does confide in a friend, the friend remarks that her tax dollars are paying for all the government assistance Land is receiving.
(Shortform note: Some studies show that a stronger social support network is associated with a lower incidence of material hardship among low-income families. But while low-income families are less likely to enter into hardship if they have a strong support system, this doesn’t mean it’s easier to exit it should they find themselves there.)
Throughout her story, Land illustrates how government policies feed into degrading stereotypes about the poor, while also making it extremely difficult for them to pull themselves out of poverty.
Land gives many examples of how government aid policies make degrading assumptions that the poor are uneducated, untrustworthy, dirty, or addicted to drugs. These policies reflect and amplify society’s negative views of people who live in poverty—views that Land herself internalizes.
For example, the homeless shelter that Land moves into after leaving Jamie has strict rules: random urinalysis, random unit inspections, a 10 p.m. curfew, no outside guests, and submission of monthly statements showing income and expenses. These rules make Land feel like she is an addict or a criminal.
In addition, when she lives in transitional housing, the police, firefighters, and paramedics perform frequent checks of tenants to make sure their apartments are clean or they’ve repaired their broken-down cars sitting in the parking lot, as if the authorities believe the poor are untrustworthy or dirty.
In order to qualify for government housing assistance, Land is required to take various classes that teach very basic, common-sense concepts. For example, to receive a grant for heating fuel, she has to take a class on how to use energy efficiently, which teaches participants to turn the lights off. She feels the government assumes that people who need aid are uneducated and unintelligent.
Land internalizes these negative stereotypes of the poor to such an extent that she constantly feels ashamed of herself. She feels that cashiers and store customers are judging her when she pays with food stamps (indeed, one man remarks, “You’re welcome,” when he sees her using them at the grocery store), and she’s reluctant to relax or read a book in her own home for fear of fulfilling the stereotype of the poor as “lazy.”
Although Land and Mia receive many different types of government assistance—housing, food, child care, education, and health insurance for Mia—it still isn’t enough to supplement Land’s meager earnings as a maid. Land’s total monthly expenses are about $1,000 for rent, utilities, car insurance, gas, the laundromat, cell phone and internet, and toiletries. She receives about $200 a month in food stamps and $275 in child support, which primarily pays for the gas she uses when she takes Mia to visit her father. Her rent once she settles in an apartment of her own is $550 a month.
Land works as many hours as she can for the maid service, and she seeks out her own clients to get more work. She’s the opposite of the “lazy” stereotype often applied to the poor, but even with government assistance, Land and Mia are barely scraping by.
Land’s experiences demonstrate how government programs discourage upward mobility by penalizing workers who earn too much.
When Land’s income goes over the government limit by even a few dollars, she loses hundreds of dollars in benefits. She also risks losing her government child care grant if she makes too much—and without child care, she can’t work. When she finds her own cleaning clients and her wages go up slightly, she has to pay a $50 copay for her child care grant, and she receives less in food stamps. Land observes that the system provides no incentives for the working poor to save money.
Effectiveness of Government Programs at Reducing Poverty
Although Land is critical of government safety net programs, she also makes it clear that government benefits are necessary for her survival. Research demonstrates that government assistance can be effective at lifting Americans out of poverty; however, as Land suggests, many programs are inadequate or can’t reach the large numbers of people in need. In addition, some programs are more effective than others.
By some calculations, government assistance programs are largely responsible for the poverty rate falling by nearly half—from 26% to 14%—from 1967 to 2017. In 2017, economic security programs lowered the number of people living in poverty by 43%. One study found that five government programs sharply reduce deep poverty (income below 50% of the poverty line): Social Security, Supplemental Security Income, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (commonly known as “welfare”), housing assistance, and food stamps (SNAP). It found that another program, the Earned Income Tax Credit, mostly helps families that earn around 150% of the poverty line.
Many Americans living in poverty aren’t entitled to or don’t receive the same amount of government assistance as Land. There are very few government assistance programs for poor adults who don’t have children (unless they have a serious disability), and the benefits those programs provide are often very modest. In addition, as mentioned in Part 1, most poor Americans don’t receive any housing assistance due to the lack of government funds.
Besides the multiple independent factors that force Land into poverty and keep her there, Land has to contend with the cyclical way in which these factors interact with each other to exacerbate her poverty. Land and her daughter’s living conditions make Mia sick, which results in Land missing work. Complying with requirements for government aid also causes Land to miss work. And because Land and her daughter are barely surviving, any unforeseen expense or circumstance puts them at risk of homelessness.
The apartment where Land and Mia live the longest contains mold, which causes respiratory problems and ear infections for Mia. In turn, taking Mia to the doctor causes Land to miss work. (Although Land’s job makes her sick, too, she works when she’s sick or injured to avoid losing income.)
In addition, Mia frequently contracts illnesses at her daycare. The daycare only calls Land to pick Mia up when Mia is very sick, but when that happens, Land has to miss work as well.
Land often has to take time off work—and forfeit earned income—to attend appointments with her government caseworkers or comply with other requirements to continue receiving government aid.
Land has to carefully track her income and expenses at all times to make sure she has enough to get through the month. She can’t buy anything without doing a mental calculation of how much money she has and which bills are about to come due. Any unforeseen expense, such as a small repair on her aging car, can send her spiraling into more severe poverty or homelessness. Her precarious life can’t tolerate minor unpredictability, much less major accidents.
For example, when Land pulls over on the freeway to retrieve Mia’s doll and their car is rear-ended, the tragedy of the accident is compounded due to Land’s poverty. Land loses her car—her primary method of survival. She also has to worry about the expense of taking an ambulance to the hospital. And although she’s still traumatized by the accident, she has to return to driving immediately in order to earn a living.
How Race and Ethnicity Factor In to Poverty
The causes of poverty are complex, and, as Maid illustrates, no single factor is determinative. While Land’s own life illustrates many of the factors that contribute to poverty, there are many others she doesn’t directly address—from tax policies to addiction to the criminal justice system. One significant factor that Land’s story is unable to speak to is race.
The poverty rate for Black and Latino Americans is more than double that of white Americans. Since 1960, the median wealth of white households has tripled while the wealth of Black households has hardly increased. In addition, Black poverty is multigenerational—one in five Black Americans are experiencing poverty for the third generation in a row, compared to just one in a hundred white Americans.
Research shows that this inequality is due in large part to the legacy of slavery and America’s long history of discriminatory laws and policies. Following the abolition of slavery, Jim Crow laws that persisted through the 1960s legalized racial segregation in all areas of life. These laws, in combination with discriminatory private practices, prevented African Americans from purchasing homes and forced them to live in specific areas not of their choosing. Examples of these measures include zoning laws, restrictive housing covenants, and discriminatory lending policies.
One policy that had particularly damaging repercussions was redlining, by which the Federal Housing Administration, beginning in the 1930s, refused to insure mortgages in and near African American neighborhoods. During this time, the housing administration also provided subsidies to builders who were mass-producing subdivisions for whites only. In The Color of Law, Richard Rothstein explains the lasting effects of redlining: African Americans who were prohibited from purchasing homes were unable to build up home equity. Because homes are a major source of wealth, by the time the Fair Housing Act of 1968 outlawed discrimination in housing, the wealth disparity between Blacks and whites was significant.
Maid paints a picture of poverty in America with which many readers are unfamiliar. Examine your perceptions of poverty and its causes.
Think about your earliest perceptions of poverty and the poor. What were your assumptions, and what were the sources of those opinions? (For example, school, family, books, personal experiences)
From your own experiences, have your perceptions of poverty or its causes changed over time? Explain why or why not.
Has reading this guide changed your views on poverty or its causes? Explain why or why not.