Children Growing Up Poor in America Why are some people poor and homeless, while others have so much money they literally throw it away? Depending on who is asked, the reasons for the great inequality range from illiteracy to corruption. The United States, the wealthiest nation on Earth, has the widest gap between rich and poor of any industrialized nation, and disparities continue to grow. The people most affected by poverty are the future of this country, the children. “Young children are the largest age group living in poverty today. Children are nearly twice as likely as adults to be poor”( Papalia et al. 295). Thousands of children around the United States sit on street corners each day begging for change. In New Orleans, you often see these kids tap dancing for the tourist’s amusement in the French Quarter. It seems cute, but these children are praying somebody will give them enough money for them to survive another day. Little do these tourists know the effects poverty has on children include poor health, ignorance, and crime. Children from disadvantaged families are more likely than any others to have poor health. “ Most parents of poor children have no medical insurance and don’t have the money to pay medical bills. Less than half of these children are immunized against such preventable diseases as measles, polio, and diphtheria” ( Meltzer 44). These children’s poor health often begins before they are born. Pregnant women of low income are less likely to seek prenatal help and are more likely to have poor nutrition and abuse drugs. This can have devastating effects on a baby ranging from low birth weight and abnormalities to death. There are a few government sponsored programs, such as Medicaid, that try and offset medical problems of the poor youth, but these programs do not often reach all that need it. Unfortunately poor health is just the beginning of problems faced by disadvantaged children. The ability to read and write is a basic condition for social and personal growth. In my opinion, education is essential to have success in life. When the main goal of life is purely survival, often privileges such as education and opportunity are forgotten. Poor children perform less well in school and are more likely to drop out of school. Often, the reason for dropping out of school is to get a job to help with family expenses. Ironically, without an education even getting a minimum wage job is impossible to obtain.
The U.S. has the highest income gap between the wealthiest and poorest in the industrial world, which is approximately 12 to 1. In 2004, the affluent experienced a wage increase by 12%, whereas the 99% of average income makers saw an increase of 1%.
It is not difficult to document that poor children suffer a disproportionate share of deprivation, hardship, and bad outcomes. More than 16 million children in the United States – 22% of all children – live in families with incomes below the federal poverty level – $23,550 a year for a family of four. (Truman, 2005) Living in poverty rewires children 's brains and reports show that it produces prolonged effects. Also, growing up in a community with dangerous streets, gangs, confused social expectations, discouraging role models, and few connections to outsiders commanding resources becomes a burden for any child. The concern about the number of children living in poverty arises from our knowledge of the problems children face because of poverty.
Poor Kids is a documentary that highlights a major issue the United States is suffering from. This issue is known as poverty, more specifically, childhood poverty. This documentary views the world through the eyes of children that are subjected to lives of poverty due to the poor financial state that their parents are in. Life is very rough for these children and they must live their everyday lives with little to none of the luxuries most people take for granted. Poor Kids sheds light on the painful fact that there are children that starve every day in the United States.
When children receive the nutrition they need, they are more likely to move out of poverty than adults. Read for the World. The dense streets of our country make strolling outside on a beautiful and perfect day or evening exhausting. The streets, roads, and sewers are perfusing with grimy looking, foul smelling, still breathing and talking corpses. Panhandling for food, water, clothes, and shelter all while fighting each other to get near you.
Firstly research shows that ⅙ newborns are born into poor families. Another reason is poor children struggle with education. Kids that are born into undereducated parents are not likely to succeed at school without help that targets their family problem. Children that spend more than half of their lives in poverty are almost always likely to enter their 20’s without completing high school in contrast to, a child that has never been poor. Poor people with families also struggle with providing necessities. And lastly workers at the bottom of the economic scale barely get by during hard times scraping every last dollar they have from paycheck to
"Growing Income Inequality and the Education Gap." Economist's View. N.p., 8 May 2006. Web. 12 Dec. 2013.
People in America often suffer from poverty and the treatment that comes with it, throughout their everyday lives. The question raised is why are poor individuals dehumanized by high structures of power? Some people with a higher income feel like they have a choice and a real recourse to justice rather than a lower class individual. They also believe that they are entitled to the world and their opinion matters because of their financial status versus someone who doesn’t have material things. Lessin’s and Deal’s film , Natasha Trethewey’s Memoir, and Bell Hooks’ excerpts, depicts that the poor are often dehumanized and neglected by structures of power, such as the government and media, because of their lack of money and education, however some of structures of power are ignorant to how the lives of poor people really are.
The sociological approach toward social problems is different from many social science studies. Sociology connects with social problems which are local, or global; as well as, social problems discovered in individuals, and groups. Equally important the sociological study measures the effect of people and society. “As a social science, sociology offers an objective and systematic approach to understanding the causes of social problems.” (Leon-Guerrero, 2011, pp. 5-6) Unfortunately some social problems remain more significant than other social problems. Subsequently due to the danger and, or seriousness it may cause to some, or many people in society. (Crone, 2011, p. 7)
Several citizens in America may not empathize with many social conflicts which transpire in America. Unfortunately, when poverty is mentioned people of diverse gender, race/ethnic, and age can relate to poverty in America. Although several societies have not experienced the undesirable measures of relative or absolute poverty; several people know poverty exist through many channels, such as the media, social networking, history and charities.
Child poverty refers to the number of children that are living in poverty. The United States has one of the highest childhood poverty rates out of all the developed nations in the world. To be more exact, 16 million children in the United States live in poverty (National Center for Children in Poverty 2014). That means 22% of children in America live in poverty. These children live in households with an income that is less than the federal poverty level, which is $23,550 a year. According to Bernstein (2008), in order for a family to have a basic standard of living they would need a household income of $48,778, more than double what they are actually making. Children living in poverty tend to experience many adverse developmental affects due to a lack of secure attachment with caregivers and a lack of resources provided to them by their families. This can cause social, emotional and behavioral problems for the children. This paper will focus on the behavioral problems children in poverty
These kids grow up in harsh conditions, they don’t live in adequate housing, don’t receive healthcare and sometimes don’t have access to clean water. A study done on children's poverty shows the poorer the household the more likely the adults will be given priority over children in terms of the distribution of calories (Bartlett and Minujin 2009:4). This can hurt the younger children on a more drastic scale, due to the lack of healthcare they normally have high morbidity rates which result in a higher mortality rate. This leads to a cycle of poverty that becomes hard to escape, living in poverty can make you ill while being ill can lead you to continue to live in poverty since most families lack
Insular poverty has grown to be a leading factor of why kids and families stay at or below the poverty line. “Poverty is self-perpetuating partly because the poorest communities are poorest in the services which would eliminate it”(Galbraith, John). Galbraith has hit the nail head on. Galbraith has recognized that the only true way to bring these people out of poverty to supply the area with the municipal needs necessary. “To eliminate poverty efficiently, we must, indeed, invest more than proportionately in the children of the poor community”(Galbraith, John). Once again, Galbraith makes an outstanding point. If Americans would invest in the future, those children might not have to live in poverty. Galbraith describes insular poverty as an island of poor people. Those people have no way of leaving the island or getting on their feet because they have nothing to start with. Galbraith suggests that the American people must build a bridge of opportunity for those people to truly have a fair chance. Studies have actually shown that early childhood poverty can eventually lead to an early death. Poverty at a young age leads to social, emotional, and cognitive impairment, which leads to adoption of health risk behaviors, which leads to disease, disability, and social problems, which leads to an early death (Poverty and Premature Death Still Firmly Linked). If Americans acted on this issue now, this poverty crisis could eventually be
Poverty extends out over all continents, making it the most widespread negative factor. Out of the world’s 2.2 billion children, approximately half live in poverty according to UNICEF. Poverty claims approximately 22,000 children’s lives per day. This statistic illustrates the struggle children that live in poverty must face in order to survive. Poverty is a root cause of hunger, disease, and lack of shelter. It is concentrated in pockets in areas such as South Africa and South Asia. Children, who must...
Income is the amount earned from salaries, interests on savings, profits, rent, dividends and wages. The gap between high-income earners and low-income earners is growing at a high rate in the United States. The number of people earning ten dollars within one hour has increased to fifteen percent over the past ten years. This has created a big gap between the low-income citizens and the wealthy citizens. These low-income earners have no access to health insurance and retirement benefits. People are blaming the Chinese and Indian investors on the big gap (Baranoff, 2015). They believe that the cheap labor offered by investors from both countries has facilitated the increase of low-income earners. Poor exchange rates have also facilitated the increase in poor
Children take the impact of extreme poverty. This is statistical fact, not hyperbole. It was proven that, recently, the World Bank’s poverty data displayed that about half of all of the people living on less than $1.25 per day are eighteen years of age or even younger. Also, almost four-hundred million children all around the world under the age of thirteen were living in extreme poverty. This number of children in extreme poverty is more than the population of the entire United States.