te among the poor. In developing countries these conditions are in the process of being manufactured. LaDou (1993) notes for example that “workers in poor countries--usually with limited educational, skill and training--tend to labor in small crowded factories with old, unsafe machinery, dangerous noise levels, and unsound buildings” (p.117). In these situations it is hard for anyone to work long hours in an uncomfortable environment for little pay, therefore some choose to find other ways to make money which leads to most likely making money illegally. It hurts our society whether they are distributing drugs to the young children, stealing, or doing other criminal acts. One important distinction between Third World overpopulation and conditions affecting the inner-city poor in the United States comes from the fact that in the Third World population pressures create competition for basic things such as food and land. Durning (1992) notes that, under circumstances of Third World poverty, “dispossessed peasants slash and burn their way into Latin American rain forests and hungry nomads turn their herds out onto fragile African range land, reducing it to desert” (p.210). In the US, in contrast, the inner city poor are under ordinary circumstances not likely to lack such necessities as food and housing because of the welfare system we have. (Such conditions are happening here but the number is so small that it is not reported and exposed like that of the Third World countries.) In the inner cities of this country the underprivileged are more likely to be driven into violent competition for scarce social goods such as jobs and access to health care. While welfare will insure the maintenance of mothers and their dependent children on a bare subsistence level and the illegal economy will provide a living for a large proportion of young males, employers will still be assured of enough applicants competing for sc...
