Jacob Riis How The Other Half Lives Summary

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In 1849, Jacob Riis was born in Denmark. He was known as a photographer, writer, social reformer and a police officer. As transitioning from Denmark to United States, He learned how poor immigrants in New York was living. Only having $40.00 on him, Riis endured the struggle of life on the streets of New York. He wrote “How the Other Half Lives” based on the harsh and unsanitary living conditions of the people. Riis, first pioneer of the cameras, portrayed poverty by using flash photography to capture images of children, the tenements overcrowded and provided statistics data to prove his point. In addition to, “How the other half lives “book help readers understand poverty better by picturing how was it then. Also, it improves reader’s way of thinking about poverty. Some people think poverty is based on an individual morale’s but Riis believed that poverty is a based on environmental conditions.…show more content…
Immigrant families in New York downtown tenements often had no electricity or indoor toilets. Unfortunately, Things have not changed that much today in the Birmingham area compared to the 1890s. According to the Birmingham News, “Forty-nine Jefferson County census tracts have at least 20 percent of the population living below the poverty line. All are in Jones Valley but most of the poverty are in Birmingham. One of the nation’s fastest-shrinking cities, Birmingham has an ever-growing, world-class medical center. The metro area’s growth lags, but many suburbs prosper. Middle-class flight has left pools of concentrated poverty”. Birmingham continues to face the following problems annually: poverty, crime, and falling schools and will continue to be growing problem in the
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