essay on poor child

Poverty Essay for Students and Children

500+ words essay on poverty essay.

“Poverty is the worst form of violence”. – Mahatma Gandhi.

How Poverty is Measured?

For measuring poverty United nations have devised two measures of poverty – Absolute & relative poverty.  Absolute poverty is used to measure poverty in developing countries like India. Relative poverty is used to measure poverty in developed countries like the USA. In absolute poverty, a line based on the minimum level of income has been created & is called a poverty line.  If per day income of a family is below this level, then it is poor or below the poverty line. If per day income of a family is above this level, then it is non-poor or above the poverty line. In India, the new poverty line is  Rs 32 in rural areas and Rs 47 in urban areas.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

Causes of Poverty

According to the Noble prize winner South African leader, Nelson Mandela – “Poverty is not natural, it is manmade”. The above statement is true as the causes of poverty are generally man-made. There are various causes of poverty but the most important is population. Rising population is putting the burden on the resources & budget of countries. Governments are finding difficult to provide food, shelter & employment to the rising population.

The other causes are- lack of education, war, natural disaster, lack of employment, lack of infrastructure, political instability, etc. For instance- lack of employment opportunities makes a person jobless & he is not able to earn enough to fulfill the basic necessities of his family & becomes poor. Lack of education compels a person for less paying jobs & it makes him poorer. Lack of infrastructure means there are no industries, banks, etc. in a country resulting in lack of employment opportunities. Natural disasters like flood, earthquake also contribute to poverty.

In some countries, especially African countries like Somalia, a long period of civil war has made poverty widespread. This is because all the resources & money is being spent in war instead of public welfare. Countries like India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, etc. are prone to natural disasters like cyclone, etc. These disasters occur every year causing poverty to rise.

Ill Effects of Poverty

Poverty affects the life of a poor family. A poor person is not able to take proper food & nutrition &his capacity to work reduces. Reduced capacity to work further reduces his income, making him poorer. Children from poor family never get proper schooling & proper nutrition. They have to work to support their family & this destroys their childhood. Some of them may also involve in crimes like theft, murder, robbery, etc. A poor person remains uneducated & is forced to live under unhygienic conditions in slums. There are no proper sanitation & drinking water facility in slums & he falls ill often &  his health deteriorates. A poor person generally dies an early death. So, all social evils are related to poverty.

Government Schemes to Remove Poverty

The government of India also took several measures to eradicate poverty from India. Some of them are – creating employment opportunities , controlling population, etc. In India, about 60% of the population is still dependent on agriculture for its livelihood. Government has taken certain measures to promote agriculture in India. The government constructed certain dams & canals in our country to provide easy availability of water for irrigation. Government has also taken steps for the cheap availability of seeds & farming equipment to promote agriculture. Government is also promoting farming of cash crops like cotton, instead of food crops. In cities, the government is promoting industrialization to create more jobs. Government has also opened  ‘Ration shops’. Other measures include providing free & compulsory education for children up to 14 years of age, scholarship to deserving students from a poor background, providing subsidized houses to poor people, etc.

Poverty is a social evil, we can also contribute to control it. For example- we can simply donate old clothes to poor people, we can also sponsor the education of a poor child or we can utilize our free time by teaching poor students. Remember before wasting food, somebody is still sleeping hungry.

Customize your course in 30 seconds

Which class are you in.

• Travelling Essay
• Picnic Essay
• Our Country Essay
• My Parents Essay
• Essay on Favourite Personality
• Essay on Memorable Day of My Life
• Essay on Knowledge is Power
• Essay on Gurpurab
• Essay on My Favourite Season
• Essay on Types of Sports

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Download the App

• High contrast
• Press Centre

Search UNICEF

• Child poverty

Children are more likely to live in poverty than adults. They’re also more vulnerable to its effects.

In recent years, the world has made remarkable strides advancing development. Yet hundreds of millions of people still live in extreme poverty. Children are disproportionately affected. Despite comprising one third of the global population, they represent half of those struggling to survive on less than $2.15 a day. An estimated 333 million children live in extreme poverty.

Children who grow up impoverished often lack the food, sanitation, shelter, health care and education they need to survive and thrive. Across the world, about 1 billion children are "multidimensionally" poor, meaning they lack necessities as basic as nutritious food or clean water.

The consequences are grave. Worldwide, the poorest children are twice as likely to die in childhood than their wealthier peers. For those growing up through humanitarian emergencies, the risks of deprivation and exclusion surge. Compounding crises – from the impacts of climate-related disasters, conflicts and COVID-19 – have stalled progress for the most vulnerable children. Even in the world’s richest countries, one in seven children still live in poverty.

No matter where they are, children who grow up impoverished suffer from poor living standards, develop fewer skills for the workforce, and earn lower wages as adults. But only a limited number of Governments have set the elimination of child poverty as a national priority.

UNICEF’s response

Child poverty is neither inevitable nor immune to efforts to address it. As many countries have already shown, it can be reduced and even eradicated through continued attention and action.

With the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), nations agreed for the first time in history to end extreme child poverty. The SDGs call for multidimensional child poverty – a measure of poverty that goes beyond income – to be halved by 2030, building a world in which all children have what they need to survive, thrive and fulfil their potential.

As part of this commitment, UNICEF mobilizes actors at the national, regional and global levels to help countries measure and address child poverty in all its dimensions. With the World Bank, we produce global statistics on extreme child poverty that help guide policymakers. We also work with Governments and partners on integrated policies and programmes, backed by the resources needed to put them into practice. Our efforts support the expansion of child-sensitive social protection programmes, including universal child benefits , which have been shown to positively impact children’s health, education and nutrition.

Since 2014, UNICEF has played an instrumental role in directing global attention to child poverty. The Global Coalition to End Child Poverty , chaired by UNICEF, has become a powerful initiative for raising awareness about child poverty and accelerating global efforts to tackle it. As part of the coalition, we produced a comprehensive guide to help countries reach the Sustainable Development Goals for child poverty.

More from UNICEF

Children’s futures at a crossroads

Geopolitical and geoeconomic fragmentation threaten the development and survival of children across the globe. But a more hopeful path exists

More than 1 in 5 children live in poverty in 40 of the world’s richest countries

Climate finance is about fulfilling obligations

It’s no longer about developed countries being “good-hearted”

Children bearing brunt of stalled progress on extreme poverty reduction worldwide

Ending child poverty: A policy agenda

Unicef’s commitment to ending child poverty and achieving the sustainable development goals, a practical guide to monetary poverty analysis, are countries committed to ending child poverty by 2030 a review of vnr reports from 2017 to 2021, a review of the use of multidimensional poverty measures, a world free from child poverty: a guide to the tasks to achieve the vision , global estimate of children in monetary poverty: an update, social policy analysis to inform the covid-19 response, ending extreme poverty: a focus on children, putting children first: a policy agenda to end child poverty, end child poverty global coalition: child poverty reports.

An official website of the United States government

The .gov means it’s official. Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

The site is secure. The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

• Publications
• Account settings

Preview improvements coming to the PMC website in October 2024. Learn More or Try it out now .

• Advanced Search
• Journal List
• HHS Author Manuscripts

Child Poverty in the United States: A Tale of Devastation and the Promise of Hope

Alyn t. mccarty.

University of Wisconsin-Madison, Center for Women’s Health and Health Disparities Research

The child poverty rate in the United States is higher than in most similarly developed countries, making child poverty one of America’s most pressing social problems. This article provides an introduction of child poverty in the US, beginning with a short description of how poverty is measured and how child poverty is patterned across social groups and geographic space. I then examine the consequences of child poverty with a focus educational outcomes and child health, and three pathways through which poverty exerts its influence: resources, culture, and stress. After a brief review of the anti-poverty policy and programmatic landscape, I argue that moving forward we must enrich the communities in which poor families live in addition to boosting incomes and directly supporting children’s skill development. I conclude with emerging research questions.

SECTION I: Introduction

In 2014, 15.5 million children—or 21.1% of children under age 18—lived in families with incomes below the federal poverty line, making children the largest group of poor people in the United States ( DeNavas-Walt & Proctor 2015 ). Rates are even higher for the youngest children: 25% of children under age 3 are poor ( Jiang et al. 2015 ). These figures position the US second only to Romania in rankings of child poverty rates among 35 industrialized countries ( Adamson 2012 ).

Poor children in the US face a widening economic chasm between themselves and their more affluent peers ( Autor 2014 ). Income inequality has grown substantially in the last forty years; after decades of decline, income inequality now harkens back to levels similar to those during the Great Depression ( Piketty & Saez 2014 ). What’s more, children from impoverished backgrounds in the US have a tougher time getting out of poverty than children in other similarly developed countries. Rates of social mobility are lower in the United States than most continental European countries ( Bjorklund & Jantti 2009 ; Duncan & Murnane 2011 , pg. 5–6; Hertz et al. 2008 ) and have remained unchanged since 1979 ( Lee & Solon 2009 ).

High rates of child poverty, income inequality, and social immobility motivate a sense of urgency and importance in research and policy focused on poor children and their families. In this article, I review the latest research on child poverty across multiple social and behavioral science disciplines. Together, this work tells two stories: One narrative warns of the long-term negative impacts associated with child poverty, but the other offers hope of resilience through policies and programs designed to reduce child poverty and mitigate its damages.

In Section II, I begin by describing how researchers define and measure poverty. Section III offers a descriptive portrait of what child poverty looks like in America today. In Section IV, I review literature on the impact of child poverty educational outcomes and child health. I discuss new types of data and approaches to the study of child poverty that have uncovered nuance in the impact of child poverty. In Section V, I describe three pathways through which poverty exerts its effects on children: resources, culture, and stress. Section VI briefly reviews anti-poverty policies that aim to reduce the rate of child poverty and early childhood interventions that aim to limit its effects. In Section VII, I argue that providing economic benefits to poor families and investing early on in children’s human capital may be more effective if paired with investments in the communities in which poor families live. Finally, in Section VII, I conclude with emerging research questions.

SECTION II: Definition of Poverty & Measurement

Approximately 46.7 million people in the United States live below the poverty line, a rate of 14.8 percent ( DeNavas-Walt & Proctor 2015 ). Of these, 15.5 million—about a third—are children. Children account for about 23 percent of the overall US population, which means that children are overrepresented among the poor ( US Census Bureau 2015 ). Figure 1 shows 2014 poverty rates for children across multiple age groups using data from the American Community Survey. 1 Overall, 21.7% of children are poor. Poverty rates are higher among younger children and lower among older children: approximately 24% of children ages 5 or younger are poor compared to about 18% of youth ages 16 or 17.

Source: Author’s calculations using American Community Survey (ACS) data, 2014.

Accurately measuring child poverty and how it varies over time and place gives us…

Accurately measuring child poverty and how it varies over time and place gives us insight into how rates of child poverty are shaped by economic, demographic, and public policy change ( Cancian & Danziger 2009 ). On its face, measuring poverty should be quite simple. Yet, there is some debate about how best to categorize a family’s poverty status ( Haveman et al. 2015 ). Since the early 1960s, poverty status has been determined by comparing a household’s pre-tax cash income (e.g., wages and salaries) to a threshold that accounts for inflation using the Consumer Price Index. The child poverty rate is the proportion of families with children who have incomes below the threshold. The threshold is anchored at three times the cost of a subsistence food budget. 2 The threshold is adjusted for family size, composition, and age of householder, but it is the same no matter where a person lives in the US.

The official poverty measure is intended to reflect the proportion of the population for whom the resources they share with others in their household are not enough to meet their basic needs ( Haveman et al. 2015 ). However, a number of criticisms of the measure have been raised, revealing the significant shortcomings of the way poverty is officially determined ( Citro & Michael 1995 ). In response to these criticisms, the Census Bureau now reports a supplemental poverty measure (SPM) each year, which (1) takes into account necessary expenses (e.g., taxes and childcare) and cash and in-kind government benefits (e.g., cash welfare, housing subsidies, WIC and SNAP benefits); (2) broadens the definition of household to include foster children and unmarried partners; (3) updates the poverty threshold annually rather than “anchoring” it to a set poverty line; and (4) reflects housing costs reported in the American Community Survey, thus varies by place of residence ( Haveman et al. 2015 ).

For most groups, the SPM rates are higher than official measures; however, for some groups—including children—the SPM rates are lower ( Short 2015 ). The lower SPM child poverty rate largely reflects the impact of government anti-poverty policies, many of which explicitly target families with children such as the Child Tax Credit, school lunch subsidies, and WIC benefits ( Fox et al. 2015 ). According to Short (2015) , the official poverty rate for children under 18 in 2014 was 21.5 percent, which exceeds the 2014 SPM rate of 16.7 percent by about 4.8 percentage points. 3

SECTION III: A PORTRAIT OF CHILD POVERTY IN AMERICA

The burden of child poverty is unequally distributed across population subgroups in the US. In this section, I describe patterns of child poverty in our society, drawing on research that explores the social and economic factors that generate and maintain poverty for some groups more than others, over time, and across geographic space.

The Color of Child Poverty

There are dramatic disparities in child poverty rates by race/ethnicity: in 2014, child poverty rates were highest for children who are non-Hispanic Black or African American (38%), American Indian (36%), or Hispanic or Latino (32%), while rates were lowest for children who are non-Hispanic White (13%) or Asian and Pacific Islander (13%) ( Kids Count 2015 ).

Though rates help us understand the disproportionate burden of child poverty for some racial/ethnic minorities, it is also revealing to examine the total population of children in poverty by race/ethnicity (see Figure 2 ). First, poverty affects all children, regardless of racial/ethnic background. Second, contrary to racialized stereotypes about who is poor in America, there are more non-Hispanic white children in poverty (4.9 million) than non-Hispanic Black or African American children (3.9 million). Third, the majority of children in poverty are of Hispanic origin (5.7 million). Fourth, for each racial/ethnic group, most children in poverty are between 0 and 5 years of age.

High levels of child poverty among Back, American Indian, and Hispanic children…

High levels of child poverty among Black, American Indian, and Hispanic children reflect changes over time in the economy, public policy, and institutional practices that disproportionately affect people of color, such as declining relative wages of less educated men, declining availability of full-time jobs, and rising incarceration rates ( Wilson 1996 ). The disproportionality of poverty by race/ethnicity also reflects past and current discrimination in schooling, housing markets, and labor markets ( Cancian & Danziger 2009 ; Desmond 2016 ; Stokes et al. 2001 ).

Immigration and Child Poverty in the US: A Growing Concern

Immigrant status is also closely associated with poverty. Children of recent immigrants are a rapidly growing share of the child population in the United States: from 2006 to 2011, the number of children with at least one immigrant parent grew by 1.5 million, from 15.7 to 17.2 million ( Hanson & Simms 2014 ). Thus, children of immigrants account for nearly a fourth of all children in the United States. The majority of children of immigrants are Hispanic, and more than 40% have parents from Mexico.

Similar to many racial/ethnic minority groups, immigrant children are disproportionately likely to experience poverty relative to children whose parents were born in the US. In 2009, 18.2% of children with native-born parents were poor compared to 27.2% of children with “established immigrant” parents (i.e., those who have been in the US for more than ten years), and 38.5% of children with parents who recently immigrated to the US (Wight et al. 2011).

Since immigrants represent an increasing share of the US population and poverty rates among the foreign born tend to be high, immigration directly affects the overall child poverty rate ( Raphael & Smolensky 2009 ). Theoretically, immigration could also affect child poverty rates by driving down the wages and employment of native-born workers, though there is little evidence to support this claim ( Raphael & Smolensky 2009 ).

Declining Rates of Marriage and the Growing Burden of Child Poverty

Child poverty rates are substantially higher for children in single-mother families than for those in married-couple families, in part because single-mother families have fewer potential earners, and many have difficulty collecting child support payments from fathers ( Mather 2010 ). In 2014, 30.6% of single mother families were poor, compared with only 6.2% of married families with children ( DeNavas-Walt & Proctor 2015 ).

During the 1970s and 1980s, there was a rapid increase in single-mother families in the US, and rates have remained high since the 1990s; nearly one-fourth of children under 18 live in single-mother families ( Mather 2010 ). 4 Cancian & Reed (2009) note that though women are now less likely to be married than previously, women also tend to have fewer children, are more educated, and are more likely to be working than in the past. The researchers argue that these trends have countervailing influences on the child poverty rate: increased maternal employment has offset the poverty increasing effects of single motherhood. Still, recent changes in family structure have increased the child poverty rate, all else being equal.

Poverty of Place: How Child Poverty is Spatially Distributed in the US

In addition to their race/ethnic identification, immigrant status, and their parents’ marital status, where children live can also put them at a greater risk of growing up poor. Though many conceive of poverty as an urban problem, 95 of the 100 counties in the US with the highest child poverty rates are located in rural areas, whereas most counties with the lowest child poverty rates tend to be in wealthy suburbs of large metropolitan areas ( O’Hare & Mather 2008 ). Poverty disproportionately affects children living in rural areas as a result of recent economic changes in rural communities where key industries have disappeared (e.g., family farms) or moved overseas (e.g., textiles manufacturing) ( O’Hare 2009 ; Vernon-Feagans et al. 2012 ). The service sector jobs that have replaced these industries contribute to higher rates of poverty because they are less stable and lower paying, and rural areas have not benefitted from the rise of technology-related companies in the same way as have urban and suburban areas ( O’Hare 2009 ).

Child poverty is also a highly clustered regional phenomenon. The South has a regional poverty rate of over 16%, and there are hotspot clusters of high rates of child poverty in the Mississippi Delta region, the Black Belt, Appalachia, southwest Texas and New Mexico, southern South Dakota, and northern Nebraska ( Voss et al. 2006 ). Regional variation in child poverty can in part be explained by their social and economic contexts. Structural factors such as racial/ethnic composition and industry combine to influence the social processes that generate levels of child poverty in different areas. For example, racial/ethnic composition is more strongly associated with child poverty in farming dependent areas, which in part explains the higher levels of child poverty that are observed in the South ( Curtis et al. 2012 ).

The supplemental child poverty rate varies widely across states, which in large part reflects variation in state anti-poverty policies ( The Anne E Casey Foundation 2015 ). In an analysis of the US Census Bureau Supplementary Poverty Measure Public Use Research files in 2012–2014, The Anne E Casey Foundation (2015) found that federal benefits, which generally do not adjust for differences in costs of living, have a smaller impact on reducing child poverty rates in states where cost of living is high. In addition, though most government benefits are funded at the federal level, states vary with respect to the ins-and-outs of policy implementation, particularly for welfare: income eligibility limits, benefit levels, financial incentives to work, time limits, eligibility requirements for two-parent families, and the stringency of rules that reduce or terminate benefits for families that are non-compliant ( McKernan & Ratcliffe 2006 ; Soss et al. 2001 ). Many of these welfare policy variations are associated with variation in poverty levels by state, making the state that children are raised in particularly consequential for their economic well-being ( McKernan & Ratcliffe 2006 ).

SECTION IV: Consequences of Poverty

The literature on the consequences of child poverty is enormous, and the latest scholarship is increasingly methodologically sophisticated (see recent review by Duncan et al., 2012 ). Recent research has moved away from cross-sectional analyses, which capture a snapshot of children’s lives at one point in time, toward longitudinal analyses, which allow the linking of trajectories of poverty exposures during infancy and early childhood to outcomes across the life course. As such, it is increasingly common for studies to address the dynamics of exposure to poverty, including intensity, timing, and duration (e.g., short term vs. long term poverty). Furthermore, studies are paying increasing attention to the context of children’s lives beyond their families’ own socioeconomic status by explicitly modeling the impact of economic resources of others around them, for example in their schools and neighborhoods.

These new ways of studying the effects of child poverty have revealed that: 1) most differences in outcomes between poor and non-poor children remain after adjusting for potentially confounding factors (i.e., factors other than income that are associated with both poverty and child outcomes); 2) poverty exposure may be especially harmful during early childhood, a period of rapid brain growth and development; 3) the longer a child is exposed to poverty, the greater the risk of negative outcomes; 4) the effects of poverty can accumulate over time or lie dormant for years, only to be revealed in adulthood; and 5) the socioeconomic context of neighborhoods and schools matter for children’s outcomes net of their own family’s resources ( Brooks-Gunn et al. 1993 ; Duncan & Magnuson 2011a ; Duncan et al. 1998 ; Duncan et al. 2010 ; Elder 1985 ; Entwisle et al. 2005 ; Foster & Furstenberg 1999 ; Harding 2003 ; Hertzman 1999 ; Kuh & Shlomo 2004 ; McLeod & Shanahan 1996 ; Ratcliffe & McKernan 2010 ; Sastry & Pebley 2010 ; Turley 2003 ).

In the next few pages, I review literature on two domains of child well-being: academic achievement and child health. Due to lack of space, I do not focus on other outcomes, though they remain the focus of much of the current academic research on the consequences of child poverty across the life course, including learning and developmental delays, criminal activity, teenage childbearing, marriage, and adult health and socioeconomic outcomes ( Brooks-Gunn & Duncan 1997b ; Duncan & Brooks-Gunn 1997 ; Duncan et al. 2010 ; Duncan et al. 2012 ).

A Growing Academic Achievement Gap Between Rich and Poor

One of the most widely studied outcomes of childhood poverty is success in school. The focus on schooling is rooted in the widespread belief that children who do well in school have a better chance of escaping poverty when they are adults. Indeed, education is increasingly necessary for economic wellbeing in the US, in part due to a growing earnings gap between those who are college-educated and those who are not ( Goldin & Katz 2008 ). Success in school also strongly predicts a wide variety of other desired outcomes, such as civic participation, adult health, and life expectancy ( Attewell & Levin 2007 ; Hout 2012 ; van Kippersluis et al. 2011 ). Yet, the challenge of succeeding academically for children living in poverty is a difficult one. Poverty has large and consistent associations with academic outcomes, including achievement on standardized tests, years of completed schooling, and degree attainment ( Bailey & Dynarski 2011 ; Brooks-Gunn & Duncan 1997a ; Duncan & Magnuson 2011b ; Entwisle et al. 2005 ). Differences between poor and non-poor children are observable early on and persist across the school years: gaps in academic achievement are evident in kindergarten, and by age 14, students from the bottom income quintile are a full academic year behind their peers in the top income quintile ( Duncan & Magnuson 2011b ; Duncan & Murnane 2011 ). What’s more, income inequality in academic achievement is getting worse rather than improving over time: the achievement gap between the 90th and 10th percentiles of the income distribution among children born in 2001 is 30–40 percent larger than among children born twenty-five years earlier and is now larger than racial gaps ( Reardon 2011 ). The growing income-achievement gap is driven by a strengthening of the association between family income and children’s academic achievement for families above the median income level, which reflects increasing parental investment in children’s cognitive development among the more economically advantaged ( Reardon 2011 ). 5

Impact of Poverty on the Physical and Mental Health of Children

Poverty is also key social determinant of infant and child health, which can have lasting effects on educational attainment, earnings, and adult health ( Aber et al. 1997 ; Duncan & Brooks-Gunn 1997b ; Wagmiller et al. 2006 ). The central role of poverty in shaping child health is increasingly clear. Recently, the American Academy of Pediatrics released a policy statement and technical report that recognizes this centrality, drawing on research demonstrating a causal relation between early childhood poverty and child health ( Council on Community Pediatrics 2016 ).

For infants, poverty increases the risk of a number of birth outcomes including low birth weight, which is a general indictor of a baby’s in utero environment and development and a precursor to subsequent physical health and cognitive and emotion problems ( Bennett 1997 ; Brooks-Gunn & Duncan 1997b ; Starfield et al. 1991 ). Poverty increases the risk of infant mortality, another widely accepted indicator of the health and well-being of children ( Brooks-Gunn & Duncan 1997b ; Corman & Grossman 1985 ). With an infant mortality rate of 6.1 in 2009, the US lags far behind European countries, ranking last in a comparison of 26 OECD countries ( MacDorman et al. 2014 ). The excess infant mortality rate in the US is largely driven by post-neonatal deaths (those that occur between one month and a year after the birth) among low-income mothers ( Chen et al. forthcoming ).

For children, poverty is associated with a number of physical health insults: increased risk of injuries resulting from accidents or physical abuse/neglect; more frequent and severe chronic conditions (e.g., asthma, diabetes, and problems with hearing, vision, and speech); more frequent acute illnesses; poorer nutrition and growth; lower immunization rates or delayed immunization; and increased risk of obesity and its complications ( Aber et al. 1997 ; Starfield 1991 ; Currie & Lin 2007 ; Case et al. 2002 ).

In addition to physical health problems, the disadvantages associated with poverty and economic insecurity can trigger significant mental health problems for children, including ADHD, oppositional defiant disorder, conduct disorder, and mood and anxiety disorders (Costello et al. 2004; Cuellar 2015 ; Perou et al. 2013 ). Mental health problems are more common than physical health problems, and their effects can be more pervasive ( Currie & Stabile 2006 ; Currie 2009 ). Approximately one fourth of youth experience a mental disorder during the past year and about a third across their lifetimes ( Merikangas et al. 2009 ). These problems, which are the dominant cause of childhood disability, can restrict children’s social competence and opportunities to learn ( Delaney & Smith 2012 ; Halfon et al. 2012 ).

Estimates across poverty status for mental disorders combined are not available. But, according to a recent summary of mental health surveillance among children in the US between 2005–2011 by the Center for Disease Control, prevalence rates are higher for children living in poverty compared with non-poor children for ADHD, behavior or conduct disorders, and mood/anxiety disorders ( Perou et al. 2013 ). The only exception to the pattern is among children who have been diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders, who are more likely to come from more economically advantaged families.

Beyond The Individual: How Neighborhood Poverty Affects Children

A rising share of US children live in high-poverty neighborhoods, defined as a neighborhood with poverty rates of 30 percent or more: more than 10 percent of US children lived in a high poverty neighborhood in 2010, up from 8.7 percent in 2000, a 25% increase ( Mather & Dupuis 2012 ). There are small but clear negative effects for children of growing up in a poor neighborhood that are beyond the effects of growing up in a poor family (see Sastry 2012 for a summary of this literature). Children growing up in high-poverty neighborhoods are at a higher risk of health problems, teen pregnancy, and dropping out of school ( Shonkoff & Phillips 2000 ; Brooks-Gunn et al. 1993 ). What’s more, the effects of neighborhoods may linger across generations. Many caregivers themselves grew up in the neighborhoods in which they are raising their children ( Sharkey 2008 ), and neighborhood environments experienced over multiple generations of a family influence children’s cognitive ability: exposure to neighborhood poverty over two consecutive generations can reduce a child’s cognitive ability by more than half a standard deviation ( Sharkey & Elwert 2011 ).

Section V: MechanismS of Influence

There are several pathways through which poverty affects children’s outcomes, which have been linked to three main theoretical frameworks: resources, culture, and family and environmental stress ( Duncan et al. 2014 ). This section reviews these frameworks, emphasizing the particular mechanisms that link poverty to child outcomes that each bring to light.

Material and Social Resources

Parents who struggle to make ends meet do not have enough income to fulfill basic material needs for their children, such as food, clothing, adequate and stable housing, and quality educational environments ( Becker 1991 ). Families who are poor also tend to be less socially connected to others, are less emotionally supported, and have more frequent negative social interactions ( Lin 2000 ; Mickelson & Kubzansky 2003 ). Inequality in access to resourceful social networks contributes to—and even reproduces—social inequality (for a review and discussion, see Lin 2000 ; DiMaggio & Garip 2012 ). In some ways, material and social resources work in tandem to disadvantage families in poverty. For example, high rates of mobility in areas of concentrated economic disadvantage erode the social fabric of neighborhoods, a process which has negative consequences for families who are able to stay put ( Jacobs 1961 ). As Desmond (2016) emphasizes in his ethnography Evicted , housing instability and evictions operate as mechanisms that degrade the social connectivity upon which resourceful neighborhoods are built. Evictions are not rare—one in eight families face involuntary moves each year nationwide—and evictions disproportionately affect low-income families with children. Many poor families that are in need of stable social environments to raise their children struggle to maintain stable housing, and are forced to move from place to place when a combination of their good will and financial supports give way to a rental market that profits from tenants’ financial instability ( Desmond 2016 ). Facing eviction, these families are not motivated to invest in their neighborhoods, emotionally or otherwise, and the ties that are formed between those crippled by the weight of their housing situations are often “disposable,” made for the short-term benefits they provide but easily discarded ( Desmond 2012 ). Disposable ties can add stress rather than reduce it, making them ill-suited to rebuff the negative consequences of poverty on child outcomes.

A Renewed Focus on the Culture of Poverty

After a considerable absence from the research agenda of social scientists, the study of culture within poverty scholarship has been reinvigorated. A culture perspective asks questions about how and why people cope with poverty and how they escape it, focusing on individuals’ beliefs, preferences, orientations, and strategies in response to poverty as well as anti-poverty policies and programs ( Small et al. 2010 ). Unlike much of what proceeded it, current culture of poverty scholarship avoids blaming the victim for their problems, rather focusing on why poor people adopt certain frames, values, and repertoires, and how people make meaning of their social status in relation to others ( Small et al. 2010 ).

Central to literature that addresses child poverty from a cultural perspective are studies of how parenting practices operate as a mechanism through which poverty affects children. For example, Lareau (2003) observes families from different class backgrounds with school-aged children in order to understand how social class differences in child-rearing strategies might contribute to stratification processes. She argues that social class position shapes parents’ cultural logics of child-rearing. Middle and upper class families practice “concerted cultivation,” wherein parents actively foster and assess their child’s talents, opinions, and skills. In contrast, working class and poor families are more likely to see the development of their children as an “accomplishment of natural growth,” allowing for unstructured free time socializing with family and community members and teaching children to be deferential and quiet. As a result of these different approaches, Lareau argues that middle-class children exhibit a sense of entitlement that puts them at a distinct advantage within schools and other institutions, while working-class children develop a sense of constraint in relation to schooling and the wider social world and are less adept at responding to school demands and practices. While Lareau’s theory is intuitively appealing, the small scope of her study leaves many questions unanswered. Nonetheless, her study is a primary example of the culture of poverty approach, which highlights parenting practices as key to understanding the mechanism through which poverty impacts children.

The Stress of Poverty

In contrast to the material, social, or cultural pathways that highlight social, cultural and economic factors and how they affect children, the stress pathway turns our focus inside the body. Living in poverty is a stressful, often chaotic experience ( Thompson 2014 ; Vernon-Feagans et al. 2012 ; Evans and Wachs 2010 ). The term “toxic stress” is often used to describe the potential impact on body systems of living in the disorganized, unstable, and unpredictable environments of impoverished families ( Garner & Shonkoff 2012 ). Toxic stress refers to strong, frequent, or prolonged activation of the body’s stress response system ( Thompson 2014 ). In contrast to positive or tolerable stress responses, which refer to more mild and adaptive changes in the body’s stress response system or stronger changes over a short period of time, a toxic stress response can undermine the organization of the brain. In some cases, toxic stress can challenge the body’s ability to respond to subsequent stressors, even those of the positive or tolerable variety ( Ladd et al. 2000 ). This lowered threshold makes some poor children less capable of coping effectively with stress as they age, influences genomic function and brain development, and increases the risk of stress-related physical and mental health problems later in life ( Blair et al. 2011 ; Danese & McEwen 2012 ).

SECTION VI: Anti-Poverty Policy and Interventions

It is clear that the consequences of growing up poor are substantial, particularly when children are exposed to conditions associated with poverty early on and for long stretches of time ( Duncan & Magnuson 2011a ). Government policies and early childhood interventions represent society’s response to the burden of child poverty. A comprehensive review of anti-poverty policies is beyond the scope of this review (see Cancian & Danziger 2009 and Haveman et al. 2015 for excellent analyses of anti-poverty efforts over the past 60 years), but the consensus is that anti-poverty policies successfully lift many people out of poverty, especially people with children ( Danziger and Wimer 2014 ; Haveman et al. 2015 ). In particular, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which is an income-based monthly benefit that can be used to purchase food at authorized stores, has become one of the most effective anti-poverty policies, particularly for households with children living in deep poverty ( Bartfeld et al. 2015 ). Yet, economic benefits of current policies constitute proportionately less of their income for poor families now than in prior decades ( Danziger & Danziger 2009 ). The public benefits that remain available to low-income families are mostly concentrated among families with earnings, such as the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and the Child Tax Credit (CTC), mostly come in the form of in-kind benefits—like SNAP—rather than cash assistance ( Shaefer et al 2015 ), and often fall very short of full coverage for those in need. For example, Section 8 housing choice vouchers, which guarantee that a family will pay no more than 30 percent of its income for housing, are available only to a third of poor renting families ( Desmond 2016 ).

In addition to anti-poverty policies that supplement income or increase employment for families with children, there are also programs and interventions that help redress the negative effects of poverty on children’s life chances. Rigorous evaluations of a number of famous early childhood programs (e.g., the Perry Preschool program, The Incredible Years, and the Abecedarian project) are often cited as evidence that such programs can at least partially compensate for the disadvantages associated with growing up poor, promoting cognitive skills and non-cognitive traits such as motivation (Cuhna et al. 2006). The positive effects appear to be long-lasting, and early interventions produce larger effects than programs focused on older children. Ultimately, though expensive at the outset, the returns on early investments come in the form of a more productive workforce, a reduction in expensive treatment for mental and physical problems, reduced reliance on public assistance, and less involvement in the criminal justice system ( Heckman et al. 2010 ).

In contrast to small-scale early childhood interventions, Head Start, which is administered by the Administration for Children and Families within the Department of Health and Human Services, serves over 1 million low-income children ages birth to 5 ( Administration for Children and Families 2014 ). Head Start services generally focus on early learning, health and developmental screenings, and strengthening parent-child relationships. Though children who attend Head Start score below norms across developmental areas including language, literacy, and mathematics, at both Head Start entry and exit ( Aikens et al. 2013 ), Head Start is associated with modest improvements in children’s preschool experiences and school readiness in certain areas compared to similarly disadvantaged children who did not attend Head Start ( Puma et al. 2012 ). However, the benefits appear to wane over time.

Another large scale program designed to address the needs of low-income families with children is the Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting Program (MIECHV) ( Michalopoulos et al. 2015 ). MEICHV began as a pilot initiative in the Bush administration and a full fledged program in 2010 as an expansion to the Affordable Care Act. Between 2010 and 2014, it provided $1.5 billion to states for home visiting. For the most part, states used the MIECHV funds to expand the use of four evidence-based home visiting models: Early Head Start – Home Based Program Option; Healthy Families America; Nurse-Family Partnership; and Parents as Teachers. Home visiting programs vary quite a bit, but generally consist of visits from social workers, parent educators, and/or registered nurses to low-income pregnant women and new parents. Participants receive health check-ups and referrals, parenting advice, and guidance with navigating other programs. The duration and frequency of the visits vary depending on the program and age of the child. Some continue until the baby is two years old, others support families until children complete kindergarten. A recent review of 19 home visiting models suggests that home visiting programs have favorable impacts on a number of child outcomes including child health, child development, and school readiness ( Avellar et al. 2015 ). Many of the programs have sustained impacts at least one year after program enrollment.

SECTION VII: A Community approach to combating child poverty

Anti-poverty policy and early childhood interventions are successful, but both typically focus on individual families and children. This focus draws away from the ecological underpinnings of the poverty experience. Multiple ecologies of children’s lives—the variety of institutions with which families interact, the relations among these institutions, and the social networks of families—contribute developmental and educational inequalities among children (e.g., Bronfenbrenner & Morris 1997 ; Coleman 1988 ; Durlauf & Young 2001 ; Gamoran 1992 ; Turley 2003 ; Vandell & Pierce 2002 ). Given evidence of the increasing spatial concentration of poverty and the impact of living in areas of concentrated economic deprivation ( Jargowsky 2013 ; Sastry 2012 ), I argue that child and/or family-centered approaches may be more effective and longer lasting if paired with approaches that directly and purposefully target the communities in which low-income families live, thus in the ecological contexts of poor children.

A community approach should involve both indirect investments through institutions such as stable and affordable housing, schools, and labor markets, and direct investments through programs explicitly designed to strengthen social connectivity among parents. Indeed, a crucial aspect of breaking the cycle of poverty must directly build resourceful social connections among the caregivers of poor children. Resourceful social connections are those that are rich in social resources, like social support (e.g., listening to problems or plans for the future), social control (e.g., maintaining consistent expectations among parents and others within the social network), advice and information (e.g., regarding program eligibility, effectiveness of teachers and other institutional agents), and commonplace reciprocal exchanges (e.g., car pooling, child care) ( Domina 2005 ; Thoits 2011 ; Small 2009 ). As many low-income families know all too well, it takes a lot of effort, energy, and human capital to take advantage of the benefits the state provides ( Edin & Lein 1997 ). Building resourceful social connections within high-poverty neighborhoods can make these tasks less daunting by spreading information about how to determine eligibility, sharing in child care responsibilities, and providing transportation to government agencies, doctors’ offices, school, and other institutions designed to help poor families. Additionally, perhaps by investing in the social resources of communities devastated by high rates of poverty, we can empower residents to fight for policy changes they identify for themselves as immediately warranted.

Sociological research is not unequivocal about the benefits of tight social networks. Similar to the depiction of “disposable ties” describe above, Portes and Landolt (1996) argue that we are remiss when failing to consider the pitfalls of close relationships in areas of concentrated disadvantage. Thus, merely connecting parents to each other may not be enough to benefit children. The quality of those connections is tantamount as well. One example of a community-based program that targets parental social resources for low-income families is Families and Schools Together (FAST). FAST is a multi-family group intervention developed using family stress theory, family systems theory, social ecological theory, and community development strategies ( McDonald and Frey 1999 ). Four randomized controlled trials of the program show that, compared to control groups, FAST participants exhibit reduced aggressive and withdrawal behaviors, increased academic competence, and more developed social skills ( Abt Associates 2001 ; Kratochwill et al. 2004 ; McDonald et al. 2006 ; Gamoran et al. 2012 ). The effect of FAST on child outcomes is mediated in part through its effect on parent social networks ( Turley et al. 2012 ). Parents who participate in FAST are more likely to know other parents in their child’s school, to report that other parents share their expectations for their children, and to participate in reciprocal exchanges with other parents ( Turley et al. 2012 ).

The FAST program and others like it take direct aim at the quantity and quality of parents’ social connections. Social resource interventions may break down insidious hurdles that may be difficult for children from low-income families to overcome than by intervening through income supplementation or skill acquisition alone. Of course, the success of these types of programs will be undercut by the high rates of residential mobility currently experienced in low-income neighborhoods. Thus, indirect investments in social resources, for example through expanding housing vouchers to enable more poor families to pay their rent and avoid eviction ( Desmond 2016 ), should be considered a requisite for a truly enriched community approach to combating child poverty.

SECTION VIII: Emerging research questions

Poverty is a persistent problem for over 20% of the children in the United States ( DeNavas-Walt & Proctor 2015 ). Child development is shaped by children’s interactions within and across social contexts ( Bronfenbrenner 2002 ). The social contexts in which children from impoverished backgrounds live can be devastatingly harmful: growing up in poverty exposes children to more stress or abuse in the home, neighborhood crime, and school violence ( Duncan and Brooks-Gunn 1997 ). Exposure to environmental conditions associated with poverty profoundly shapes their development, and the effects become more pronounced the longer the exposure to poverty ( Duncan et al., 1998 ; Foster & Furstenberg 1999 ). Empirical studies from multiple social science disciplines including sociology, psychology, economics, have consistently documented crippling disadvantages across a number of developmental domains, showing that the disadvantages associated with poverty are entrenched, wide-reaching, and constitute an immediate and pressing policy challenge.

Moving the field forward are emerging questions about who sets the anti-poverty policy and programmatic agendas (e.g., Bradshaw 2007 ; O’Connor 2001 ), what cultural and behavioral assumptions are made by specific policy and program components (e.g., Edin & Kefalas 2005 ; Steensland 2006 ), and how policies and programs interact with the ways in which poor people engage various institutions, each other, and those who profit from their disadvantaged status (e.g., Desmond 2016 ). Furthermore, as argued here, an examination of the ways that neighborhood institutions support or erode the social connectivity of low-income neighborhoods is key. Researchers should continue to centrally locate the analysis of the impact of policy and programs not only on individual children but also on the social ecological environments in which they live and learn. Investing in the communities in which poor parents and caregivers live may enhance the positive effects of anti-poverty policy and early childhood interventions. Poverty scholars should examine how institutional features shape the social networks of families in financial trouble, and how children fare under different organizational arrangements. In Unanticipated Gains , his study of day care centers in New York City, Mario Small (2005) offers a theoretical framework to think about how organizational features of institutions can promote the kinds of stable ties that benefit families with young children. Small documents the social network benefits of certain centers that, by virtue of the particular institutional conditions in place, connect families to each other and provide families, particularly single mothers with young children, relationships that support their health and well being. Rather than the “unanticipated gains” like those that were observed in Small’s study, we may find we can anticipate these gains as we invest in the social and economic opportunities for the poor.

These emerging research questions will bring us closer to an understanding what policies will work best for addressing the high rates of overall child poverty, the disproportionality of child poverty, and the most cost-effective mechanisms for buffering children from the negative effects of poverty and its associated conditions.

Acknowledgments

This work is supported by a National Institutes of Health T32 award (5T32HD049302-08) from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD).

1 These estimates are from American Community Survey data, whereas official estimates come from the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement. The numbers are slightly different for overall poverty (21.7% vs 21.1%). These differences reflect the different samples included in the poverty universe: The ACS includes the civilian and military household population and excludes group quarters (e.g., nursing homes and college dormitories), whereas the CPS includes the civilian non-institutionalized population ( US Census Bureau 2014 ).

2 The logic behind defining the threshold this way reflects research in the 1950s that showed families spent a third of their annual budget on food ( Haveman et al. 2015 ).

3 The official child poverty rate reported in Short (2015) is 21.5%, which differs from the official rate of 21.1% reported by DeNavas-Walt and Proctor (2015) . This is because Short includes unrelated individuals under the age of 15 in her calculation of the official rate among families with children.

4 Though single father families and cohabiting partners have increased in recent years, the overwhelming majority of children in single-parent homes live with their mothers ( Mather 2010 ).

5 During the 1970s, middle class families on average spent about $3,700 per year on investments in their children, compared to today’s average of $9,300 per year. Poor parents have not been able to keep pace with these increases in investments, so that contemporary poor children lag further behind their affluent counterparts of fifty years prior. The current average annual spending of $1,400 on investments in children among poor families is not even twice the 1970s average of $880 per year ( Duncan and Murnane 2011 )

• Abt Associates. National Evaluation of Family Support Programs. Vol. B: Research Studies: Final Report. Cambridge, MA: Abt Associates; 2001. [ Google Scholar ]
• Aber JL, Bennett NG, Conley DC, Li J. The Effects of Poverty on Child Health and Development. Annual Review of Public Health. 1997; 18 (1):463–483. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Adamson P. Measuring Child Poverty: New League Tables Of Child Poverty In The World’s Richest Countries. Florence, Italy: UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre; 2012. [ Google Scholar ]
• Administration for Children and Families. [8 February 2016]; Head Start Program Facts: Fiscal Year 2014. 2014 Retrieved from: http://eclkc.ohs.acf.hhs.gov/hslc/data/factsheets/2014-hs-program-factsheet.html .
• Aikens N, Kopack Klein A, Tarullo L, West J. Getting Ready for Kindergarten: Children’s Progress During Head Start. Faces 2009 Report. Washington, DC: Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation, Administration for Children and Families, U.S., Department of Health and Human Services; 2013. [ Google Scholar ]
• Attewell PA, Levin DE. Passing the Torch: Does Higher Education for the Disadvantaged Pay Off Across the Generations? New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation; 2007. [ Google Scholar ]
• Autor D. Skills, Education, and the Rise of Earnings Inequality Among the Other 99 Percent. Science. 2014; 344 (6186):843–351. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Avellar S, Paulsell D, Sama-Miller E, Del Grosso P, Akers L, Kleinman R. Home Visiting Evidence of Effectiveness Review: Executive Summary. Washington, DC: Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation, Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services; 2015. [ Google Scholar ]
• Bailey MJ, Dynarski SM. Inequality in Postsecondary Education. In: Duncan GJ, Murnane RJ, editors. Whither Opportunity? Rising Inequality, Schools, and Children’s Life Chances. New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation; 2011. pp. 117–132. [ Google Scholar ]
• Bartfield J, Gundersen C, Smeeding TM, Ziliak JP, editors. Snap Matters: How Food Stamps Affect Health and Well-Being. Redwood City, CA: Stanford University Press; 2015. [ Google Scholar ]
• Becker G. A Treatise on the Family. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; 1991. [ Google Scholar ]
• Bennett F. The LBW, premature infant. In: Gross R, Spiker D, Haynes C, editors. Helping Low Birth Weight, Premature Babies: The Infant Health and Development Program. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press; 1997. pp. 3–6. [ Google Scholar ]
• Bjorklund A, Jantti M. Intergenerational Income Mobility and the Role of Family Background. In: Salvedra W, Nolan B, Smeeding TM, editors. The Oxford Handbook of Income Inequality. New York, NY: Oxford University Press; 2009. pp. 491–521. [ Google Scholar ]
• Blair C, Raver CC, Granger D, Mills-Koonce R, Hibel L, Family LPKI. Allostasis and Allostatic Load in the Context of Poverty in Early Childhood. Development & Psychopathology. 2011; 23 (3):845–857. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Bradshaw T. Theories of Poverty and Anti-Poverty Programs in Community Development. Community Development. 2007; 38 (1):7–25. [ Google Scholar ]
• Bronfenbrenner U. Preparing a World for the Infant in the 21st Century: The Research Challenge. In: Gomes-Pedro J, Nugent K, Young JG, Brazelton TB, editors. The Infant and the Family in the 21st Century. New York, NY: Brunner-Routledge; 2002. pp. 45–52. [ Google Scholar ]
• Bronfenbrenner U, Morris PA. The Ecology of Developmental Processes. In: Damon W, Eisenberg N, editors. Handbook of Child Psychology. New York: Wiley: John Wiley & Sons Inc; 1997. pp. 993–1028. [ Google Scholar ]
• Brooks-Gunn J, Duncan GJ. Income Effects Across the Life Span: Integration and Interpretation. In: Duncan GJ, Brooks-Gunn J, editors. Consequences of Growing Up Poor. New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation; 1997a. pp. 596–610. [ Google Scholar ]
• Brooks-Gunn J, Duncan GJ. The Effects of Poverty on Children. The Future of Children. 1997b; 7 (2):55–71. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Brooks-Gunn J, Duncan GJ, Klebanov PK, Sealand N. Do Neighborhoods Influence Child and Adolescent Development. American Journal of Sociology. 1993; 99 (2):353–395. [ Google Scholar ]
• Cancian M, Danziger S. Changing Poverty and Changing Anti-Poverty Policies. FOCUS. 2009; 26 (2):2–5. [ Google Scholar ]
• Cancian M, Reed D. Family structure, childbearing, and parental employment: Implications for the level and trend in poverty. In: Cancian M, Danziger S, editors. Changing Poverty, Changing Policies. New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation; 2009. pp. 92–121. [ Google Scholar ]
• Case A, Lubotsky D, Paxson C. Economic Status and Health in Childhood: The Origins of the Gradient. American Economic Review. 2002; 95 (2):1308–1334. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Chen A, Oster E, Williams H. Why is Infant Mortality Higher in the Us Than in Europe? [21 Mar 2016]; American Economic Journal: Policy. Forthcoming. Retrieved From: https://www.brown.edu/research/projects/oster/sites/brown.edu.research.projects.oster/files/uploads/Why_is_Infant_Mortality_Higher_In_US.pdf . [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ]
• Citro C, Michael R. Measuring Poverty: A New Approach. Washington, DC: National Academy Press; 1995. [ Google Scholar ]
• Coleman JS. Social Capital in the Creation of Human Capital. American Journal of Sociology. 1988; 94 (S):S95–S120. [ Google Scholar ]
• Corman H, Grossman M. Determinants of Neonatal Mortality Rates in the Us: A Reduced Form Model. Journal of Health Economics. 1985; 4 (3):213–236. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Costello EJ, Compton SN, Keeler G, Angold A. Relationships Between Poverty and Psychopathology: A Natural Experiment. JAMA. 2003; 290 (15):2023–2029. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Council on Community Pediatrics. Poverty and Child Health in the United States. [9 Mar 2016]; Pediatrics. 2016 Retrieved From: http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/early/2016/03/07/peds.2016-0339 . [ PubMed ]
• Cuellar A. Preventing and Treating Child Mental Health Problems. Future of Children. 2015; 25 (1):111–134. [ Google Scholar ]
• Cunha F, Heckman JJ, Lochner L, Masterov DV. Interpreting the Evidence on Life Cycle Skill Formation. In: Hanushek EA, Welch F, editors. Handbook of the Economics of Education. Philadelphia, PA: Elsevier B. V; 2006. [ Google Scholar ]
• Currie J. Healthy, Wealthy, and Wise: Socioeconomic Status, Poor Health in Childhood, and Human Capital Development. Journal of Economic Literature. 2009; 47 (1):87–122. [ Google Scholar ]
• Currie J, Lin W. Chipping Away At Health: More on the Relationship Between Income and Child Health. Health Affairs. 2007; 26 (2):331–344. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Currie J, Stabile M. Child Mental Health and Human Capital Accumulation: The Case of ADHD. Journal of Health Economics. 2006; 25 (6):1094–1118. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Curtis K. Spatial Variation in Poverty-Generating Processes: Child Poverty in the United States. Social Science Research. 2012; 41 (1):146–159. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Danese A, McEwen BS. Adverse Childhood Experiences, Allostasis, Allostatic Load, and Age-Related Disease. Physiology & Behavior. 2012; 106 (1):29–39. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Danziger S, Danziger SK. The Us Social Safety Net and Poverty. In: Bane MJ, Zenteno R, editors. Poverty and Poverty Alleviation Strategies in North America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; 2009. pp. 233–261. [ Google Scholar ]
• Danziger S, Wimer C. The State of the Union: Poverty and Inequality Report. Stanford, CA: Stanford Center for Poverty and Inequality; 2014. Poverty; pp. 15–20. [ Google Scholar ]
• Delaney L, Smith JP. Childhood Health: Trends and Consequences Over the Life Course. The Future of Children. 2012; 22 (1):43–63. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• DeNavas-Walt C, Proctor B. Income and Poverty in the United States: 2014. Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, Washington DC; 2015. [ Google Scholar ]
• Desmond M. Disposable Ties and the Urban Poor. American Journal of Sociology. 2012; 117 (5):1295–1335. [ Google Scholar ]
• Desmond M. Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City. New York, NY: Crown Publishers; 2016. [ Google Scholar ]
• DiMaggio P, Garip F. Network Effects and Social Inequality. Annual Review of Sociology. 2012; 38 (1):93–118. [ Google Scholar ]
• DiPrete T, Eirich G. Cumulative Advantage as a Mechanism for Inequality: A Review of Theoretical and Empirical Developments. Annual Review of Sociology. 2006; 32 :271–297. [ Google Scholar ]
• Domina T. Leveling the Home Advantage: Assessing the Effectiveness of Parental Involvement in Elementary School. Sociology of Education. 2005; 78 (3):233–249. [ Google Scholar ]
• Duncan GJ, Brooks-Gunn J. Consequences of Growing Up Poor. New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation; 1997. [ Google Scholar ]
• Duncan GJ, Brooks Gunn J, Klebanov PK. Economic Deprivation and Early Childhood Development. Child Development. 1994; 65 (2):296–318. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Duncan GJ, Magnuson K. Pathways. 2011a. Winter. The Long Reach of Early Childhood Poverty; pp. 22–27. [ Google Scholar ]
• Duncan GJ, Magnuson K. The Nature and Impact of Early Achievement Skills, Attention Skills, and Behavioral Problems. In: Duncan GJ, Murnane RJ, editors. Whither Opportunity? Rising Inequality, Schools, and Children’s Life Chances. New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation; 2011b. pp. 47–69. [ Google Scholar ]
• Duncan GJ, Magnuson K, Kalil A, Ziol-Guest K. The Importance of Early Childhood Poverty. Social Indicators Research. 2012; 108 (1):87–98. [ Google Scholar ]
• Duncan GJ, Magnuson K, Votruba-Drzal E. Boosting Family Income to Promote Child Development. Future of Children. 2014; 24 (1):99–120. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Duncan GJ, Murnane RJ. Introduction: The American Dream, Then and Now. In: Duncan GJ, Murnane RJ, editors. Whither Opportunity? Rising Inequality, Schools, and Children’s Life Chances. New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation; 2011. pp. 3–23. [ Google Scholar ]
• Duncan GJ, Yeung WJ, Brooks-Gunn J, Smith JR. How Much Does Childhood Poverty Affect the Life Chances of Children? American Sociological Review. 1998; 63 (3):406–423. [ Google Scholar ]
• Duncan GJ, Ziol Guest KM, Kalil A. Early Childhood Poverty and Adult Attainment, Behavior, and Health. Child Development. 2010; 81 (1):306–325. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Durlauf S, Young HP, editors. Social Dynamics. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press; 2001. [ Google Scholar ]
• Edin K, Kefalas M. Promises I Can Keep: Why Poor Women Put Motherhood Before Marriage. Berkeley: University of California Press; 2005. [ Google Scholar ]
• Edin K, Lein L. Making Ends Meet. New York: NY: Russell Sage Foundation; 1997. [ Google Scholar ]
• Elder G. Life Course Dynamics: Trajectories and Transitions. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press; 1985. [ Google Scholar ]
• Entwisle DR, Alexander KL, Olson LS. First Grade and Educational Attainment By Age 22: A New Story. American Journal of Sociology. 2005; 110 (5):1458–1502. [ Google Scholar ]
• Evans GW, Wachs TD. Chaos and Its Influence on Children’s Development: An Ecological Perspective. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association; 2010. [ Google Scholar ]
• Foster EM, Furstenberg FF. The Most Disadvantaged Children: Trends over Time. Social Service Review. 1999; 73 (4):560–578. [ Google Scholar ]
• Fox L, Wimer C, Garfinkel I, Kaushal N, Waldfogel J. Waging War on Poverty: Poverty Trends Using a Historical Supplemental Poverty Measure. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management. 2015; 34 (3):567–592. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Gamoran A. Social Factors in Education. In: Alkin M, editor. Encyclopedia of Educational Research. New York, NY: Macmillan; 1992. pp. 1222–1229. [ Google Scholar ]
• Gamoran A, Turley RNL, Turner A, Fish R. Differences Between Hispanic and Non-Hispanic Families in Social Capital and Child Development: First-Year Findings From an Experimental Study. Research in Social Stratification and Mobility. 2012; 30 (1):97–112. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Garner AS, Shonkoff JP. Early Childhood Adversity, Toxic Stress, and the Role of the Pediatrician: Translating Developmental Science Into Lifelong Health. Pediatrics. 2012; 129 (1):e224–31. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Goldin CD, Katz LF. The Race Between Education and Technology. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press; 2008. [ Google Scholar ]
• Halfon N, Houtrow A, Larson K, Newacheck PW. The Changing Landscape of Disability in Childhood. The Future of Children. 2012; 22 (1):13–42. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Hanson D, Simms M. Children of Immigrants: 2011 State Trends Update. Washington, DC: Urban Institute; 2014. [1 December 2015]. Retrieved from: http://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/alfresco/publication-pdfs/413113-Children-of-Immigrants--State-Trends-Update.pdf . [ Google Scholar ]
• Harding DJ. Counterfactual Models of Neighborhood Effects: The Effect of Neighborhood Poverty on Dropping Out and Teenage Pregnancy. American Journal of Sociology. 2003; 109 (3):676–719. [ Google Scholar ]
• Haveman R, Blank R, Moffitt R, Smeeding T, Wallace G. The War on Poverty: Measurement, Trends, and Policy. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management. 2015; 34 (3):593–638. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Haveman R, Smeeding T. The Role of Higher Education in Social Mobility. The Future of Children. 2006; 16 (2):125–150. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Heckman JJ, Moon SH, Pinto R, Savelyev PA, Yavitz A. The Rate of Return to the High/Scope Perry Preschool Program. Journal of Public Economics. 2010; 94 (1):114–128. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Hertz T, Jayasundera T, Piraino P, Selcuk S, Smith N, Verashchagina A. The Inheritance of Educational Inequality: International Comparisons and Fifty-Year Trends. BE Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy. 2008; 7 (2):1–47. [ Google Scholar ]
• Hertzman C. The Biological Embedding of Early Experience and its Effects on Health in Adulthood. In: Adler NE, Marmot M, McEwen BS, Stewart J, editors. Socioeconomic Status and Health in Industrial Nations. New York, NY: New York Academy of Sciences; 1999. pp. 85–95. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Hout M. Social and Economic Returns to College Education in the United States. Annual Review of Sociology. 2012; 38 :379–400. [ Google Scholar ]
• Institute of Medicine. How Far Have We Come In Reducing Health Disparities?: Progress Since 2000: Workshop Summary. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press; 2012. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Jacobs J. The Death and Life of Great American Cities. New York, NY: Random House; 1961. [ Google Scholar ]
• Jargowsky P. Concentration of Poverty in the New Millennium: Changes in the Prevalence, Composition, and Location of High Poverty Neighborhoods. New York: NY: The Century Foundation; 2013. [ Google Scholar ]
• Jiang Y, Ekono M, Skinner C. Basic Facts About Low-Income Children: Children Under 18 Years, 2013. New York, NY: National Center for Children in Poverty; 2015. [ Google Scholar ]
• Kids Count. [19 October 2015]; Children in Poverty by Race and Ethnicity. 2015 Retrieved from: http://datacenter.kidscount.org/data/tables/44-children-in-poverty-by-race-and-ethnicity#detailed/1/any/false/869,36,868,867,133/10,11,9,12,1,185,13/324,323 .
• Kratochwill TR, McDonald L, Levin JR, Young BT. Families and Schools Together: An Experimental Analysis of a Parent-Mediated Multi-Family Group Program for American Indian Children. Journal of School Psychology. 2004; 42 (5):359–383. [ Google Scholar ]
• Kuh D, Shlomo B. A Life Course Approach to Chronic Disease Epidemiology. Oxford: Oxford University Press; 2004. [ Google Scholar ]
• Ladd CO, Hout RL, Thivikrama KV, Neneroff CB, Meaney MJ, Plotsky PM. Long-Term Behavioral and Neuroendocrine Adaptation to Adverse Early Experience. In: Mayer EA, Saper CB, editors. Progress in Brain Research: The Biological Basis for Mind Body Interactions. Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Elsevier Science; 2000. pp. 81–102. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Lareau A. Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race, and Family Life. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press; 2003. [ Google Scholar ]
• Lee CM, Solon G. Trends in Intergenerational Income Mobility. Review of Economics and Statistics. 2009; 91 (4):766–772. [ Google Scholar ]
• Lin N. Inequality in Social Capital. Contemporary Sociology. 2000; 29 (6):785–795. [ Google Scholar ]
• MacDorman M, Mathews TJ, Mohangoo AD, Zeitlin J. International Comparisons of Infant Mortality and Related Factors: United States and Europe, 2010. National Vital Statistics Reports. 2014; 65 (5):1–6. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Mather M. US Children in Single-mother Families. Washington, DC: Population Reference Bureau; 2010. [1 December 2015]. Retrieved from: http://www.prb.org/pdf10/single-motherfamilies.pdf . [ Google Scholar ]
• Mather M, Dupuis G. Rising Share of U.S. Children Living in High-Poverty Neighborhoods. Washington, DC: Population Reference Bureau; 2012. [5 June 2014]. Retrieved from: http://www.prb.org/Publications/Articles/2012/us-high-poverty-neighborhoods.aspx . [ Google Scholar ]
• McDonald L, Frey HE. Families and Schools Together: Building Relationships. Washington, DC: Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention; 1999. [ Google Scholar ]
• McDonald L, Moberg DP, Brown RB, Rodriguez-Espiricueta I, Flores NI, Burke MP, Coover G. After School Multifamily Groups: A Randomized Controlled Trial Involving Low-Income, Urban, Latino Children. Children & Schools. 2006; 28 (1):25–34. [ Google Scholar ]
• McKernan S, Ratcliffe CE. The effect of specific welfare policies on poverty. Washington, DC: The Urban Institute; 2006. [21 Mar 2016]. Retrieved from: http://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/alfresco/publication-pdfs/411334-The-Effect-of-Specific-Welfare-Policies-on-Poverty.PDF . [ Google Scholar ]
• McLeod JD, Shanahan MJ. Trajectories of Poverty and Children’s Mental Health. Journal of Health and Social Behavior. 1996; 37 (3):207–220. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Merikangas KR, Nakamura EF, Kessler RC. Epidemiology of Mental Disorders in Children and Adolescents. Dialogues in Clinical Neuroscience. 2009; 11 (1):7–20. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Mickelson KD, Kubzansky LD. Social Distribution of Social Support: The Mediating Role of Life Events. American Journal of Community Psychology. 2003; 32 (3–4):265–281. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Michalopoulos C, Lee H, Duggan A, Lundquist E, Tso A, Crowne SS, Burrell L, Somers J, Filene JH, Knox V. A Mother and Infant Home Visiting Program Evaluation: Early Findings on the Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting Program. A Report to Congress. Washington, DC: Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation, Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services; 2015. [ Google Scholar ]
• O’Connor A. Poverty Knowledge: Social Science, Social Policy, And The Poor In Twentieth Century U.S. History. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press; 2001. [ Google Scholar ]
• O’Hare WP. The Forgotten Fifth: Child Poverty in Rural America. Manchester, NH: Carsey Institute; 2009. [ Google Scholar ]
• O’Hare W, Mather M. Child poverty is Highest in Rural Counties in US. Washington, DC: Population Reference Bureau; 2008. [1 December 2015]. Retrieved from: http://www.prb.org/Publications/Articles/2008/childpoverty.aspx . [ Google Scholar ]
• Perou R, Bitsko RH, Blumberg SJ, Pastor P, Ghandour RM, Gfroerer JC, Hedden SL, Crosby AE, Visser SN, Schieve LA. Mental Health Surveillance Among Children—United States, 2005–2011. Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. 2013; 62 (Suppl 2):1–35. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Piketty T, Saez E. Inequality in the Long Run. Science. 2014; 344 (6186):838–843. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Portes A, Landolt P. The Downside of Social Capital. The American Prospect. 1996; 26 (94):18–21. [ Google Scholar ]
• Puma M, Bell S, Cook R, Heid C, Broene FJ, Mashburn A, Downer J. Third Grade Follow-Up to the Head Start Impact Study: Final Report. Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation, Administration for Children and Families, US Department of Health and Human Services; 2012. [ Google Scholar ]
• Raphael S, Smolensky E. Immigration and Poverty in the United States. FOCUS. 2009; 26 (2):27–31. [ Google Scholar ]
• Ratcliffe C, McKernan S. Childhood poverty persistence: Facts and consequences. Washington, DC: Urban Institute; 2010. [21 Mar 2016]. Retrieved from: http://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/alfresco/publication-pdfs/412126-Childhood-Poverty-Persistence-Facts-and-Consequences.PDF . [ Google Scholar ]
• Reardon S. The Widening Academic Achievement Gap Between the Rich and the Poor: New Evidence and Possible Explanations. In: Duncan GJ, Murnane RJ, editors. Whither Opportunity? Rising Inequality, Schools, and Children’s Life Chances. New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation; 2011. pp. 91–115. [ Google Scholar ]
• Sastry N. Neighborhood Effects on Children’s Achievement: A Review of Recent Research. In: Maholmes V, King R, editors. The Oxford Handbook of Poverty and Child Development. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press; 2012. pp. 423–447. [ Google Scholar ]
• Sastry N, Pebley AR. Family and Neighborhood Sources of Socioeconomic Inequality in Children’s Achievement. Demography. 2010; 47 (3):777–800. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Shaefer HL, Edin K, Talbert E. Understanding the Dynamics of $2-a-day Poverty in the United States. RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences. 2015; 1 (1):120–138. [ Google Scholar ]
• Sharkey P. The Intergenerational Transmission of Context. American Journal of Sociology. 2008; 113 (4):931–969. [ Google Scholar ]
• Sharkey P, Elwert F. The Legacy of Disadvantage: Multigenerational Neighborhood Effects on Cognitive Ability. American Journal of Sociology. 2011; 116 (6):1934–1981. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Shonkoff JP, Phillips DA, editors. From Neurons to Neighborhoods: The Science of Early Childhood Development. Washington, D.C: National Academy Press; 2000. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Short K. The Research Supplemental Poverty Measure: 2014. Washington, DC: US Census Bureau; 2015. [ Google Scholar ]
• Small ML. Unanticipated Gains: Origins of Network Inequality in Everyday Life. Oxford: Oxford University Press; 2009. [ Google Scholar ]
• Small ML, Harding DJ, Lamont M. Reconsidering Culture and Poverty. The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. 2010; 629 (1):6–27. [ Google Scholar ]
• Soss J, Schram SF, Vartanian TP, O’Brien E. Setting the Terms of Relief: Explaining State Policy Choices in the Devolution Revolution. American Journal of Political Science. 2001; 45 (2):378–395. [ Google Scholar ]
• Starfield B. Childhood Morbidity: Comparisons, Clusters, and Trends. Pediatrics. 1991; 88 (3):519–526. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Steensland B. Cultural Categories And The American Welfare State: The Case Of Guaranteed Income Policy. American Journal of Sociology. 2006; 111 (5):1273–1326. [ Google Scholar ]
• Stokes C, Melendez T, Rhodes-Reed G, editors. Race in 21st Century America. East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press; 2001. [ Google Scholar ]
• The Anne E Casey Foundation. Measuring Access to Opportunity. Baltimore, MD: Anne E. Casey Foundation; 2015. [21 Mar 2016]. Retrieved from: http://www.aecf.org/m/resourcedoc/aecf-MeasuringAccesstoOpportunityKC2-2015.pdf . [ Google Scholar ]
• Thoits PA. Perceived Social Support and the Voluntary, Mixed, or Pressured Use of Mental Health Services. Society and Mental Health. 2011; 1 (1):4–19. [ Google Scholar ]
• Thompson RA. Stress and Child Development. The Future of Children. 2014; 24 (1):41–59. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Turley RNL. When Do Neighborhoods Matter? The Role of Race and Neighborhood Peers. Social Science Research. 2003; 32 (1):61–79. [ Google Scholar ]
• Turley RNL, Gamoran A, Turner A, Fish RM. Causal Effects of Social Capital on Child Outcomes. Presentation. Research Committee on Social Stratification (RC28) of the International Sociological Association; Hong Kong. May 2012.2012. [ Google Scholar ]
• US Census Bureau. [7 Nov 2015]; Fact Sheet: Differences Between CPS ASEC and ACS. 2014 Retrieved from: http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty/about/datasources/factsheet.html .
• US Census Bureau. [15 Jan 2016]; State and County Quick Facts. 2015 Retrieved from: http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/00000.html .
• Van Kippersluis H, O’Donnell O, van Doorslaer E. Long-Run Returns to Education. Journal of Human Resources. 2011; 46 (4):695–721. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Vandell DL, Pierce KM. After-School Programs and Structured Activities That Support Children’s Development. In: Garner R, editor. Hanging Out: Community-Based After-School Programs for Children. Westport, CT: Greenwood; 2002. pp. 167–178. [ Google Scholar ]
• Vernon-Feagans L, Garrett-Peters P, DeMarco A, Bratsch M. Children Living in Rural Poverty: The Role of Chaos in Early Development. In: Maholmes V, King R, editors. The Oxford Handbook of Poverty and Child Development. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press; 2012. pp. 448–446. [ Google Scholar ]
• Voss PR, Long DD, Hammer RB, Friedman S. County Child Poverty Rates in the Us: A Spatial Regression Approach. Population Research and Policy Review. 2006; 25 (4):369–391. [ Google Scholar ]
• Wagmiller RL, Lennon MC, Kuang L, Alberti PM, Aber JL. The Dynamics of Economic Disadvantage and Children’s Life Chances. American Sociological Review. 2006; 71 (5):847–866. [ Google Scholar ]
• Wight VR, Thampi K, Chau M. Poor Children by Nativity. New York, NY: National Center for Children in Poverty; 2014. [7 Nov 2015]. Retrieved from: http://www.nccp.org/publications/pub_1006.html . [ Google Scholar ]
• Wilson WJ. When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor. New York, NY: Knopf; 1996. [ Google Scholar ]

Featured Topics

Featured series.

A series of random questions answered by Harvard experts.

Explore the Gazette

Read the latest.

Footnote leads to exploration of start of for-profit prisons in N.Y.

Should NATO step up role in Russia-Ukraine war?

It’s on Facebook, and it’s complicated

Robert Sampson, Henry Ford II Professor of the Social Sciences, is one of the researchers studying the link between poverty and social mobility.

Rose Lincoln/Harvard file photo

Unpacking the power of poverty

Peter Reuell

Harvard Staff Writer

Study picks out key indicators like lead exposure, violence, and incarceration that impact children’s later success

Social scientists have long understood that a child’s environment — in particular growing up in poverty — can have long-lasting effects on their success later in life. What’s less well understood is exactly how.

A new Harvard study is beginning to pry open that black box.

Conducted by Robert Sampson, the Henry Ford II Professor of the Social Sciences, and Robert Manduca, a doctoral student in sociology and social policy in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, the study points to a handful of key indicators, including exposure to high levels of lead, violence, and incarceration as key predictors of children’s later success. The study is described in an April paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“What this paper is trying to do, in a sense, is move beyond the traditional neighborhood indicators people use, like poverty,” Sampson said. “For decades, people have shown poverty to be important … but it doesn’t necessarily tell us what the mechanisms are, and how growing up in poor neighborhoods affects children’s outcomes.”

To explore potential pathways, Manduca and Sampson turned to the income tax records of parents and approximately 230,000 children who lived in Chicago in the 1980s and 1990s, compiled by Harvard’s Opportunity Atlas project. They integrated these records with survey data collected by the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods, measures of violence and incarceration, census indicators, and blood-lead levels for the city’s neighborhoods in the 1990s.

They found that the greater the extent to which poor black male children were exposed to harsh environments, the higher their chances of being incarcerated in adulthood and the lower their adult incomes, measured in their 30s. A similar income pattern also emerged for whites.

Among both black and white girls, the data showed that increased exposure to harsh environments predicted higher rates of teen pregnancy.

Despite the similarity of results along racial lines, Chicago’s segregation means that far more black children were exposed to harsh environments — in terms of toxicity, violence, and incarceration — harmful to their mental and physical health.

“The least-exposed majority-black neighborhoods still had levels of harshness and toxicity greater than the most-exposed majority-white neighborhoods, which plausibly accounts for a substantial portion of the racial disparities in outcomes,” Manduca said.

“It’s really about trying to understand some of the earlier findings, the lived experience of growing up in a poor and racially segregated environment, and how that gets into the minds and bodies of children.” Robert Sampson

“What this paper shows … is the independent predictive power of harsh environments on top of standard variables,” Sampson said. “It’s really about trying to understand some of the earlier findings, the lived experience of growing up in a poor and racially segregated environment, and how that gets into the minds and bodies of children.”

More like this

Cities’ wealth gap is growing, too

Racial and economic disparities intertwined, study finds

The study isn’t solely focused on the mechanisms of how poverty impacts children; it also challenges traditional notions of what remedies might be available.

“This has [various] policy implications,” Sampson said. “Because when you talk about the effects of poverty, that leads to a particular kind of thinking, which has to do with blocked opportunities and the lack of resources in a neighborhood.

“That doesn’t mean resources are unimportant,” he continued, “but what this study suggests is that environmental policy and criminal justice reform can be thought of as social mobility policy. I think that’s provocative, because that’s different than saying it’s just about poverty itself and childhood education and human capital investment, which has traditionally been the conversation.”

The study did suggest that some factors — like community cohesion, social ties, and friendship networks — could act as bulwarks against harsh environments. Many researchers, including Sampson himself, have shown that community cohesion and local organizations can help reduce violence. But Sampson said their ability to do so is limited.

“One of the positive ways to interpret this is that violence is falling in society,” he said. “Research has shown that community organizations are responsible for a good chunk of the drop. But when it comes to what’s affecting the kids themselves, it’s the homicide that happens on the corner, it’s the lead in their environment, it’s the incarceration of their parents that’s having the more proximate, direct influence.”

Going forward, Sampson said he hopes the study will spur similar research in other cities and expand to include other environmental contamination, including so-called brownfield sites.

Ultimately, Sampson said he hopes the study can reveal the myriad ways in which poverty shapes not only the resources that are available for children, but the very world in which they find themselves growing up.

“Poverty is sort of a catchall term,” he said. “The idea here is to peel things back and ask, What does it mean to grow up in a poor white neighborhood? What does it mean to grow up in a poor black neighborhood? What do kids actually experience?

“What it means for a black child on the south side of Chicago is much higher rates of exposure to violence and lead and incarceration, and this has intergenerational consequences,” he continued. “This is particularly important because it provides a way to think about potentially intervening in the intergenerational reproduction of inequality. We don’t typically think about criminal justice reform or environmental policy as social mobility policy. But maybe we should.”

This research was supported with funding from the Project on Race, Class & Cumulative Adversity at Harvard University, the Ford Foundation, and the Hutchins Family Foundation.

Share this article

You might like.

Historian traces 19th-century murder case that brought together historical figures, helped shape American thinking on race, violence, incarceration

National security analysts outline stakes ahead of July summit

‘Spermworld’ documentary examines motivations of prospective parents, volunteer donors who connect through private group page 

Six receive honorary degrees

Harvard recognizes educator, conductor, theoretical physicist, advocate for elderly, writer, and Nobel laureate

Everything counts!

New study finds step-count and time are equally valid in reducing health risks

Five alumni elected to the Board of Overseers

Six others join Alumni Association board

• Stories & videos
• My life then and now
• People We Love

Then and now: My life growing up in poverty

• by Cindy L., CI grad, Colombia

Then: A childhood of poverty

My childhood was difficult, because my parents separated when I was just 2. My father went to Barranquilla, Colombia, leaving my mother very sick.

Our economic situation wasn’t the best. [My mother] would take me every morning with her to her friends’ house where she would help them do the chores. As payment, they would give us food. Later, she worked as a maid with the condition that they would let her be with me. That’s how she took care of my needs. My maternal grandmother also supported us.

We lived in a community without many opportunities and with problems with safety, violence and sanitation.

What I remember with great admiration was the care and love that my mother always expressed to me, no matter what she was going through. I always yearned for the love of my father.

When I was 5, Children International came to my community. They enrolled me, and soon an angel appeared and sponsored me. Such happiness!

When I received my first gift, I was excited. Up until then, I didn’t know how important Children International would be in my life.

I happily received all of the gifts. As with the medical and dental care, the medicines were always available. All of that made me feel better and more secure.

This support and the love of my family helped make achieving my dreams easier. Seeing the sacrifices my mother made gave me the strength to keep moving forward and be able to change my life story. I always wanted to be a nurse, and Children International helped me to make that dream a reality.

Smile time: “Although I have a daughter and I’m a single mother, I can take care of her needs and help my mother,” explains Cindy happily.

Now: A dream come true

Thanks to God and Children International for giving me the opportunity to study through a HOPE education scholarship, now I’m a nursing assistant. I stood out as the best student because I really wanted it and I wanted to improve more and more each day.

Currently, I’m working as a nursing assistant for the second consecutive year. I feel really happy to have had Children International’s help, because they contributed to the realization of my dreams.

I was in the youth program. I participated in the workshops which really strengthened me. I learned that we can overcome [issues] if we really want to — that poverty can be overcome, to value ourselves as people, to have a life project and to set goals for ourselves. I had a lot of fun playing, sharing in group, being tolerant and responsible.

This program helped me clarify my goals and strive to achieve them, no matter the difficulties that get in the way.

Having studied nursing and practicing it, means changing my life story — a story full of love, but also with many economic necessities.

Now my life is different. Although I have a daughter and I’m a single mother, I can take care of her needs and help my mother. My future goal is to continue on with becoming a professional in my career, to offer my daughter a good future, never forgetting to give her love. To help my family, my mother, my stepfather (who gave me a father’s love) and my siblings from whom I have always received unconditional love and who give me the strength to move forward.

My dream: become a head nurse or teacher of young children.

I want to serve people and work with boys and girls.

Thank you, Children International and sponsors. God bless you.

Photos and reporting assistance by Marelvis Campo, CI field reporter – Barranquilla.

• Thought Leadership

Children International Among Its Peers

• by  ALEXANDRA GENESER,  Global Manager, Strategic Partnerships

• Team Impact
• United States

CI Dream Makers

• Happy Moments

Happy Mother’s Day

• by Gretchen D.

This site uses cookies to improve your experience. You can restrict cookies through your browser; however that may impair site functionality.

Are you sure?

My order summary

5 Essays About Poverty Everyone Should Know

Poverty is one of the driving forces of inequality in the world. Between 1990-2015, much progress was made. The number of people living on less than $1.90 went from 36% to 10%. However, according to the World Bank , the COVID-19 pandemic represents a serious problem that disproportionately impacts the poor. Research released in February of 2020 shows that by 2030, up to ⅔ of the “global extreme poor” will be living in conflict-affected and fragile economies. Poverty will remain a major human rights issue for decades to come. Here are five essays about the issue that everyone should know:

“We need an economic bill of rights” –  Martin Luther King Jr.

The Guardian published an abridged version of this essay in 2018, which was originally released in Look magazine just after Dr. King was killed. In this piece, Dr. King explains why an economic bill of rights is necessary. He points out that while mass unemployment within the black community is a “social problem,” it’s a “depression” in the white community. An economic bill of rights would give a job to everyone who wants one and who can work. It would also give an income to those who can’t work. Dr. King affirms his commitment to non-violence. He’s fully aware that tensions are high. He quotes a spiritual, writing “timing is winding up.” Even while the nation progresses, poverty is getting worse.

This essay was reprinted and abridged in The Guardian in an arrangement with The Heirs to the Estate of Martin Luther King. Jr. The most visible representative of the Civil Rights Movement beginning in 1955, Dr. King was assassinated in 1968. His essays and speeches remain timely.

“How Poverty Can Follow Children Into Adulthood” – Priyanka Boghani

This article is from 2017, but it’s more relevant than ever because it was written when 2012 was the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. That’s no longer the case. In 2012, around ¼ American children were in poverty. Five years later, children were still more likely than adults to be poor. This is especially true for children of colour. Consequences of poverty include anxiety, hunger, and homelessness. This essay also looks at the long-term consequences that come from growing up in poverty. A child can develop health problems that affect them in adulthood. Poverty can also harm a child’s brain development. Being aware of how poverty affects children and follows them into adulthood is essential as the world deals with the economic fallout from the pandemic.

Priyanka Boghani is a journalist at PBS Frontline. She focuses on U.S. foreign policy, humanitarian crises, and conflicts in the Middle East. She also assists in managing Frontline’s social accounts.

“5 Reasons COVID-19 Will Impact the Fight to End Extreme Poverty” – Leah Rodriguez

For decades, the UN has attempted to end extreme poverty. In the face of the novel coronavirus outbreak, new challenges threaten the fight against poverty. In this essay, Dr. Natalie Linos, a Harvard social epidemiologist, urges the world to have a “social conversation” about how the disease impacts poverty and inequality. If nothing is done, it’s unlikely that the UN will meet its Global Goals by 2030. Poverty and COVID-19 intersect in five key ways. For one, low-income people are more vulnerable to disease. They also don’t have equal access to healthcare or job stability. This piece provides a clear, concise summary of why this outbreak is especially concerning for the global poor.

Leah Rodriguez’s writing at Global Citizen focuses on women, girls, water, and sanitation. She’s also worked as a web producer and homepage editor for New York Magazine’s The Cut.

“Climate apartheid”: World’s poor to suffer most from disasters” – Al Jazeera and news Agencies

The consequences of climate change are well-known to experts like Philip Alston, the special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights. In 2019, he submitted a report to the UN Human Rights Council sounding the alarm on how climate change will devastate the poor. While the wealthy will be able to pay their way out of devastation, the poor will not. This will end up creating a “climate apartheid.” Alston states that if climate change isn’t addressed, it will undo the last five decades of progress in poverty education, as well as global health and development .

“Nickel and Dimed: On (not) getting by in America” – Barbara Ehrenreich

In this excerpt from her book Nickel and Dimed, Ehrenreich describes her experience choosing to live undercover as an “unskilled worker” in the US. She wanted to investigate the impact the 1996 welfare reform act had on the working poor. Released in 2001, the events take place between the spring of 1998 and the summer of 2000. Ehrenreich decided to live in a town close to her “real life” and finds a place to live and a job. She has her eyes opened to the challenges and “special costs” of being poor. In 2019, The Guardian ranked the book 13th on their list of 100 best books of the 21st century.

Barbara Ehrenreich is the author of 21 books and an activist. She’s worked as an award-winning columnist and essayist.

You may also like

16 Inspiring Civil Rights Leaders You Should Know

15 Trusted Charities Fighting for Housing Rights

15 Examples of Gender Inequality in Everyday Life

11 Approaches to Alleviate World Hunger 

15 Facts About Malala Yousafzai

12 Ways Poverty Affects Society

15 Great Charities to Donate to in 2024

15 Quotes Exposing Injustice in Society

14 Trusted Charities Helping Civilians in Palestine

The Great Migration: History, Causes and Facts

Social Change 101: Meaning, Examples, Learning Opportunities

Rosa Parks: Biography, Quotes, Impact

About the author, emmaline soken-huberty.

Emmaline Soken-Huberty is a freelance writer based in Portland, Oregon. She started to become interested in human rights while attending college, eventually getting a concentration in human rights and humanitarianism. LGBTQ+ rights, women’s rights, and climate change are of special concern to her. In her spare time, she can be found reading or enjoying Oregon’s natural beauty with her husband and dog.

The impact of poverty on early childhood

For most parents, bringing a baby into the world and nurturing a young child brings both great joy and intense love, but it also comes with many changes, and sometimes stress, pressure and anxiety. Those pressures and stresses are likely to be much greater for families who are struggling to make ends meet.  In the UK today, more than one in four families with a child under five are living in poverty .  

Experiencing poverty can cause harm at any age, but particularly for the youngest children. This is when the foundations for their physical, emotional and social development are being laid. A substantial body of research shows that family poverty is associated with and can cause poorer academic attainment and social and emotional development. Perhaps not surprisingly, poverty can be highly detrimental if it is persistent, experienced in the first three years of life and combined with other disadvantages. Given this, addressing early childhood poverty is a vital part of the jigsaw of support needed to enable young children to flourish.

The harm that poverty can inflict begins during pregnancy and is shaped by the health and well-being of parents and their socio-economic status. Gaps in development between disadvantaged and advantaged children emerge very early on. Poverty impacts are also not the same for everyone and are further compounded by inequalities in relation to parents’ ethnicity, health and economic status. By the time a child reaches 11 months there are gaps in communication and language skills, and by the age of three inequalities in children’s cognitive and social and emotional skills are evident. A large body of analysis shows how these early disadvantages can go on to affect children’s development in later life.

Importantly, this is not to say that economic disadvantage inevitably leads to poor long-term outcomes; other factors – family circumstances, wider family support, social networks and connections, educational resources and public services - all play a vital role and can mitigate the effects of poverty.

Younger children are more likely to be in poverty than other groups 

Poverty here is defined as not having enough material resources such as money, housing, or food to meet the minimum needs - both material and social – in today’s society. While there have been some key changes over the last two decades, there is one constant – children are markedly more likely to experience poverty than adults or pensioners and it is younger children who are most at risk .

This is the result of a combination of factors including the costs of children and that households with younger children are less likely to have two parents in full-time work parents. The latest figures show that there are some 4.2 million children living in poverty in the UK, a rise of 600,000 over the last decade.

Most worryingly deep poverty has been rising, particularly affecting lone parents, large families, and people living in families with a disabled person. The Runnymede Trust found that Black and minority ethnic people are currently 2.2 times more likely to be in deep poverty than white people, with Bangladeshi people more than three times more likely.  The Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s report on Destitution in the UK 202 3 found that over 1 million children had experienced destitution at some point over 2022.

Poverty affects children’s material, social, educational and emotional well-being

Poverty affects young children’s experiences directly. Parents have less money to meet children’s material and social needs. The sharply rising costs of providing the basic essentials – food, warmth, lighting, housing costs, nappies, baby food, clothing - has created acute pressure for many families. Drawing on a survey of their service users, in 2022 Barnardo’s reported that 30% of parents said their child’s mental health had worsened in the previous four months, 16% said their child/ren had to share a bed with them or a sibling, and 30% were concerned about losing their home/being made homeless.

Recent research (Ruth Patrick et al. 2023 ) looked at the effects of benefit changes on larger families. It shows the many hardships that families are dealing with, the inability to meet their children’s needs and the stress and worry they feel as a result. But it also shows the resilience, strength and skills they employ to give their children the best possible life in the circumstances. Families spoke about the sheer amount of time it takes to manage on a very tight budget and its direct impact on children – from missing bath time to reading a bedtime story. This is affecting children’s educational outcomes. 95% of teachers surveyed by Kindred Squared believe that the cost-of-living crisis is going to impact school readiness next year.

Poverty gets under your skin; it takes a toll on the mental health of mothers, fathers, and wider family. The Family Stress Model, underpinned by research, shows the way in which economic stress - poverty, hardship, debt - creates psychological distress, lack of control and feelings of stigma. Not surprisingly, these stresses affect family relationships, both between parents and with children. Hardship, debt, deprivation and ‘feeling poor’ is linked to poorer maternal mental health and lower life satisfaction and this can make it more difficult to find the mental space to be an attentive and responsive parent. This in turn can affect young children’s social and emotional development and outcomes.

What can we do?

Explaining how poverty affects young children’s well-being and outcomes is important when it comes to developing effective responses: addressing poverty and hardship directly, supporting parents’, especially mothers’, mental health, and providing support for parenting.

The research also helps identify the protective factors that help to reduce the detrimental impact of poverty: wider family and neighbourhood support, good maternal and paternal mental health, access to high quality early education, warm parent-child interaction and financial and housing stability.

Early years professionals, health visitors, family support workers and many others are in the front line of the difficulties that families with young children are facing. They are responding to the legacy of the Covid pandemic and the rise in cost of living, working across service boundaries and in new ways, despite budgetary pressures.

Local services are working to meet the needs of families with young children in the round – including support for maternal mental health, parental conflict, parenting and the home learning environment. There are many voluntary initiatives, such as Save the Children’s Building Blocks, which combines giving grants to reduce the impact of material deprivation with supporting parents to play and learn with their children at home, initiatives to use local authority data to increase the take-up of benefit entitlements, and thebaby bank network, providing essential products and equipment as well as practical support for parents who are struggling.

Tackling early childhood poverty rests both on public policy which takes a holistic and joined up approach, as well as action at local level, whether that’s through local authorities, early years services in health and education, local businesses and community and voluntary initiatives.

In the Nuffield Foundation’s Changing Face of Early Childhood , we set out some core principles to address early childhood poverty including:

A multi-dimensional approach that reflects the range of socioeconomic risks and intersecting needs faced by families with young children.

Money matters - a financial bedrock for families with young children living on a low income, through improved social security benefits and access to employment, which takes account of the care needs of the under-fives.

Greater attention and investment in policies to support parental mental health and parenting from the earliest stage of a child’s life.

A more coherent, joined up and effective approach to early childhood would help to address the inequalities between children by supporting them early on in life and establishing deep roots from which they can grow and flourish.

Child Poverty - Free Essay Samples And Topic Ideas

Child poverty refers to the state of children living in poverty, facing a lack of basic necessities and opportunities for development. Essays could delve into the causes, consequences, and measures to alleviate child poverty. Discussions might also explore the long-term societal implications of child poverty, the role of government and non-governmental organizations in addressing this issue, and comparisons of child poverty across different regions and countries. A substantial compilation of free essay instances related to Child Poverty you can find at Papersowl. You can use our samples for inspiration to write your own essay, research paper, or just to explore a new topic for yourself.

A Problem Child Poverty and Effects on Education

“The impact of poverty on a child’s academic achievement is significant and starts early,” – Jonah Edelman, co-founder and chief executive officer of Stand for Children (Taylor, 2017). According to the U.S. Census Bureau in 2015, around 20 percent of children in the U.S. lived in poverty (Taylor, 2017). Rather than focusing all our time, attention, and resources on rewriting standards and adding higher stakes standardized tests, are we missing a larger looming issue? Studies have shown that student poverty […]

Child Poverty in America and India

According to UN Children's Fund, approximately one billion children currently live in poverty around the world and 22,000 children die each day from it. Living in poverty means lacking the resources to live a happy and healthy life. Poverty exists on many levels and includes barriers such as education and healthcare. Poverty is often measured in terms of income which is reflected in their low living standards. Adults can fall into poverty temporarily; however, children are more likely to get […]

How Poverty Affects a Child’s Brain and Education

Although children are some of the most resilient creatures on earth. Living in poverty has risks that can cause children all types of issues. That makes you wonder, does poverty have an effect on a child's brain development? The million dollar question. How does poverty affect children's brain development? Poverty can cause health and behavioral issues. There is suggestive evidence that living in poverty may alter the way a child's brain develops and grows, which can, in turn, alter the […]

We will write an essay sample crafted to your needs.

How does Poverty Impact a Child’s Education?

Poverty can mold a child's development in result of a child's health and nutrition, parental mental and physical involvement, stimulating home environment and child care, also neighborhood and school conditions. These factors can cause a child to become self-doubting, uninterested and unable to maintain a healthy education. So how can we begin to provide an outreach for these stunted children? There are complex factors that result in the stunting in education for low-income student, require several solutions. To reduce or […]

Poverty and Early Childhood Development

Poverty is the state of one who lacks a usual or socially acceptable amount of money or material possessions. Poverty affects a child's development and educational outcomes beginning in the earliest years of life. A child's ability to profit from school has been recognized to play a role in poverty in the United States. The effect that poverty has on early childhood development is complex due to its range of diverse challenges for children and their families. More than 1 […]

Childhood Poverty and its Physical Effects

An alarming rate of children in the United States and other countries live in poverty. In fact, in 2016, the American Academy of Pediatrics stated that nearly half of the children in the United States are living at poverty level (Pediatrics, April 2016). A life of poverty not only affects their quality of life, but it has a profound effect on their physical health as well. It can directly affect things such as brain growth, diabetes, asthma, and a multitude […]

Life of Children in Poverty

Children growing up in poverty are presented with a stress that consequently effects, and interferes with successful development. Youth raised in low-income homes are more susceptible to poor health, lack of proper education, social issues, and difficulty achieving tasks and/or goals, both long-term and short-term. This research topic will discuss various underlying problems that cause and effect poverty, such as: how poverty is defined, how poverty affects childhood development, how poverty is caused, and what can be done to put […]

The Impact of the Cycle of Poverty on Children

"Poverty is not made by God, it is created by you and me when we don't share what we have" (Mother Teresa). Mother Teresa fought poverty as an evil and lived it as a virtue. Her life was a long and moving illustration of the relationship between Christianity and poverty. She fought against poverty, going out into filthy streets to serve the destitute, but also embraced it in her own life giving up all material goods and physical comfort. There […]

The Effect of Poverty on Child Development

What happens when a child enters kindergarten without being ready? Why are scores in third grade reading and eight grade math continuing to lag? Children who are inadequately ready for kindergarten have a hard time catching up over the years, and a report from the education advocacy organization Groundwork Ohio found that poverty is often tied to this insufficient kindergarten readiness. Early education is the foundation for a child's future and, according to the report, the repercussions of not being […]

Children of Poverty in the U.S.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, an estimated 39.7 million Americans lived in poverty in 2017 (15). Based on this measure, the official poverty rate in the U.S. was near 14 percent overall (15). For children, almost half in the U.S. are living in or near poverty (1). When compared to adults, 1 in 5 live in poverty, versus 1 in 8 of adults, which translates to 15.5 million impoverished kids in the U.S. (2). Poverty is defined as making […]

The Problem of Poverty and Child Development

Poverty can undermine a child's development including educational outcomes that start to take effect in the earliest stages of life, either directly and indirectly through moderated, mediated and transactional processes. Various renowned authors have come up with the definition of poverty. According to hutchison definition of poverty it is a condition in which an infant or toddler cannot get enough nutritional food, quality education, proper healthcare, access to safe water, electricity or various other much needed services. In addition to […]

Why is Poverty Increasing Among Children?

"In 1991, more than one in five children under 18 years of age lived in poverty: and among children under 6 years of age, the poverty rate was 24% almost one of every four children in this age group was poor" (198pg. Lewit). Resulted from the termination of loyal employees at several, American unemployment rates raised. The growing space between wages earnings and the cost of housing in the United States leaves millions of families and individuals unable to make […]

Literacy and Poverty Among African American Children

The United States' Declaration of Independence (US, 1776) proudly declares, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." While Americans certainly have such liberties and rights, notably the rights of free speech and assembly to protest social injustice, nearly 17 million of America's children live in abject poverty, with families whose income is […]

Poverty in Sub-Saharan Women and Children

Poverty among the woman and children in Sub-Saharan Africa has long been a topic of charities, celebrities, and governments. Seven of the ten most unequal countries in the world are in Africa, most of them southern. According to the World Bank that places the monetary level of poverty at less than $1.90 a day, there are 48.5% living on less than $1.25 a day. (Lanker, 2018) The rate of poverty decrease is among the slowest in the world. Most surveys […]

1. Tell Us Your Requirements

2. Pick your perfect writer

3. Get Your Paper and Pay

Hi! I'm Amy, your personal assistant!

Don't know where to start? Give me your paper requirements and I connect you to an academic expert.

short deadlines

100% Plagiarism-Free

Certified writers

The Poor Kids Frontline Documentary Analysis Essay (Critical Writing)

The central argument and purpose of the film Poor Kids is to highlight the issue of a child living in poverty in the United States. The film follows the stories of three children, Brittany, Kaylie, and Johnny, to provide a unique perspective of the struggles that poverty brings. It illustrates their families’ challenges and how poverty has impacted their lives. The film also analyses the importance of support systems such as the school’s “nutrition club” and the Salvation Army shelter in helping these children and their families.

The documentary follows the stories of three children, Brittany, Kaylie, and Johnny, all living in poverty in the United States. Brittany is nine years old and lives with her family of four. Her mother suffers from mental health problems, and her father lost his job, making it difficult for the family to pay the bills ( Poor kids (full documentary) | frontline 2020). They are forced to downsize to a much smaller home, and Brittany talks about being hungry and missing the healthy food that her family used to eat. She receives a bag of food from the school’s “nutrition club,” which provides poor students with food on Fridays. Kaylie is ten years old and lives with her single mother, brother, and a baby on the way. Her mother is still studying with limited time to earn a living and cannot afford to pay the bills and buy food ( Poor kids (full documentary) | frontline 2020). The family moves into a motel room, and Kaylie is not enrolled in school. Johnny is thirteen years old, and his family lives in a Salvation Army homeless shelter. His father is looking for a job to help the family get back on their feet. All the children talk about the scuffles of poverty and their hopes for their future.

The film uses rhetorical and persuasive strategies to support its argument. It presents facts about the issue, such as the statistics on child poverty in the United States, to show the magnitude of the problem. It also uses the stories of Brittany, Kaylie, and Johnny to illustrate children’s struggles living in poverty. The film does not address any counterfactual information about the issue but instead focuses on the stories of the three children and their families to illustrate the challenges of being poor ( Poor kids (full documentary) | frontline 2020).

The structure of the film helps to achieve its purpose by showing the stories of the three children in a personal and intimate way. By following the stories of Brittany, Kaylie, and Johnny, the film can demonstrate the impacts of poverty in a more personal and emotional way. It shows their challenges, hope, and resilience as they struggle to break out of poverty (Gadsden, 2021). The film’s argument is valid, as it is supported by facts and stories of the children and their families. The film does not contain any fallacies, contradictions, or inconsistencies.

The documentary affirmed my knowledge of poverty by showing these children’s difficulties due to lack of extreme neediness. It showed these families’ challenges of job loss, mental health issues, a lack of housing stability, and hunger (Van Lancker & Parolin, 2020). It also showed the resilience of these children as they tried to get a better life and follow their dreams ( Poor kids (full documentary) | frontline 2020). The documentary challenged my knowledge by showing the importance of support systems, such as the school’s “nutrition club” and the Salvation Army shelter, in helping children and their families (Van Lancker & Parolin, 2020). This emphasizes the need for more support systems to help those in poverty and shows how they can help those in need.

Frontline. (2020). Poor kids (full documentary) | frontline (video). YouTube. Web.

Gadsden, V. L. (2021). Literacy and poverty: Intergenerational issues within African American families . Children of Poverty , 85–124. Web.

Van Lancker, W., & Parolin, Z. (2020). Covid-19, school closures, and child poverty: A social crisis in the making . The Lancet Public Health , 5 (5). Web.

• Myth Analysis: "Star Wars" and "Tristan and Isolde"
• United States Department of Justice
• French Civilization: Burgundian Influence
• Global Poverty Project: A Beacon of Hope in the Fight Against Extreme Poverty
• The Causes of an Increase in Poverty in Atlanta, Georgia
• Thistle Farms: Help for Women Who Are Affected by Poverty
• Poverty Through a Sociological Lens
• "How War Fuels Poverty" Article by McCarthy
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2024, January 19). The Poor Kids Frontline Documentary Analysis. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-poor-kids-frontline-documentary-analysis/

"The Poor Kids Frontline Documentary Analysis." IvyPanda , 19 Jan. 2024, ivypanda.com/essays/the-poor-kids-frontline-documentary-analysis/.

IvyPanda . (2024) 'The Poor Kids Frontline Documentary Analysis'. 19 January.

IvyPanda . 2024. "The Poor Kids Frontline Documentary Analysis." January 19, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-poor-kids-frontline-documentary-analysis/.

1. IvyPanda . "The Poor Kids Frontline Documentary Analysis." January 19, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-poor-kids-frontline-documentary-analysis/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "The Poor Kids Frontline Documentary Analysis." January 19, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-poor-kids-frontline-documentary-analysis/.

Home — Essay Samples — Social Issues — Child Poverty — Poverty In Education: How It Affects Children

Poverty in Education: How It Affects Children

• Categories: Child Poverty Inequality in Education

About this sample

Words: 2116 |

11 min read

Published: Dec 16, 2021

Words: 2116 | Pages: 5 | 11 min read

Cite this Essay

Let us write you an essay from scratch

• 450+ experts on 30 subjects ready to help
• Custom essay delivered in as few as 3 hours

Get high-quality help

Verified writer

• Expert in: Social Issues Education

+ 120 experts online

By clicking “Check Writers’ Offers”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy . We’ll occasionally send you promo and account related email

No need to pay just yet!

Related Essays

5 pages / 2458 words

4 pages / 1798 words

2 pages / 967 words

2 pages / 835 words

Remember! This is just a sample.

You can get your custom paper by one of our expert writers.

121 writers online

Still can’t find what you need?

Browse our vast selection of original essay samples, each expertly formatted and styled

Related Essays on Child Poverty

The lecture started with a quote: "If we can conquer space, we can conquer world hunger" - Buzz Aldrin. This quote had already got me thinking about how incredible of a feat it is that we've sent humans and animals into space. [...]

My life as a fourth-born in a poor family was not one anyone would wish to experience, especially at a young age. My parents, who were never able to attend elementary school, struggled to take care of the family. Providing meals [...]

Poverty and homelessness are pressing issues that transcend national boundaries and affect millions of people around the world. These interconnected problems are symptomatic of larger social, economic, and political issues that [...]

Poverty is defined as an individual being unable to meet one’s basic needs. Such needs include water, food, clothes, shelter, healthcare, and education. Poverty is a major influence on the failing childhood development that [...]

All across the globe, inequalities between rich and poor is steadily rising. Fewer people are becoming more productive and wealthier, while a disproportionately larger population is becoming much poorer. Poverty has been around [...]

America's Youngest Outcasts: State Report Card on Child Homelessness. (2014). National Center on Family Homelessness.Children’s Defense Fund. (2015). Child poverty in the United States 2014: National and state fact [...]

Related Topics

By clicking “Send”, you agree to our Terms of service and Privacy statement . We will occasionally send you account related emails.

Where do you want us to send this sample?

By clicking “Continue”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy.

Be careful. This essay is not unique

This essay was donated by a student and is likely to have been used and submitted before

Download this Sample

Free samples may contain mistakes and not unique parts

Sorry, we could not paraphrase this essay. Our professional writers can rewrite it and get you a unique paper.

Please check your inbox.

We can write you a custom essay that will follow your exact instructions and meet the deadlines. Let's fix your grades together!

Get Your Personalized Essay in 3 Hours or Less!

We use cookies to personalyze your web-site experience. By continuing we’ll assume you board with our cookie policy .

• Instructions Followed To The Letter
• Deadlines Met At Every Stage
• Unique And Plagiarism Free

• Vision & Mission
• 70 years in India
• Where We Work
• Global Presence
• Gender Equality
• Knowledge Management and Learning
• Disaster Relief
• Innovations
• Touching Lives
• Our Partners
• Testimonials
• Awards & Recognitions
• Individuals
• Institutional Partners

Importance of Education for Underprivileged Children

Every child must have access to quality education as it develops essential skills to earn a living and make informed decisions. An educated individual is more capable of navigating through hard times and contributing to the growth of society in comparison to an individual who never received formal education.

Quality education helps children realise their maximum potential and attain financial independence.  Education also plays a vital role in eradicating poverty and achieving social justice. India has made great strides in increasing literacy rates across the country. The Right to Education Act 2009 enabled millions of children to get formal education. But according to the 2011 Census, there are approximately 8.4 crore children in the 5-17 age group who do not go to a school . It is a matter of grave concern that such a large number of children are not getting educated.

Here are some reasons why education is important for underprivileged children:

• Education is essential for developing critical thinking.
• Education plays a pivotal role in getting higher-paying jobs.
• Kids who are educated can communicate effectively.
• Education promotes gender equality and helps create a society that empowers the underprivileged.
• Education reduces child labour.
• Education can eradicate social evils like child marriage and dowry.
• Education increases creativity and imagination.
• Education is a powerful tool to break free from generational poverty.
• Quality education about health, nutrition and hygiene and drastically reduce preventable deaths.

How CARE India Helps Underprivileged Children Get Educated?

CARE India is a not-for-profit organisation working towards empowering marginalised women and girls with our holistic interventions in Health, Livelihood, Education and Disaster Relief & Resilience . CARE India works on individual, community and systemic levels to create a lasting impact, and we are aiming to impact the lives of more than 30 million people by 2024 .

CARE India’s Girls’ Education Program (GEP) is playing an important role in girls’ education and improving the whole education system. The goal of GEP is to empower 5 million Dalit and Adivasi girls and women . Quality education builds self-esteem, leadership and confidence, and it can help marginalised women bring change in their families, schools and communities.

CARE India has reached 124,879 children, including 71,554 girls, and helped them in becoming a part of the Indian education system. More than 3590 schools across 7 states are benefiting through our 15 projects. Do read about our key programmes like Kanya Sampoorna , STEM Laboratories and Udaan . As an NGO, we rely on the generosity of our donors to fund our programmes and reach more children and women. If you want to play a part in impacting the lives of thousands of people, you can donate to CARE India .

Connect with Us

Corporate and registered office.

Support us through your Contribution

Essay on Poverty for Children and Students

Table of Contents

Essay on Poverty: Poverty is defined as the financial condition of a person, insufficient to sustain the vital needs of his/her own family. Any person of family which is unable to provide a square meal to the members or educate its children for the want of money is termed as poor and suffering from poverty. It is curse to the society and restricts the economical and social growth of a nation. Poverty eradication in a highly populous country as India could be a herculean task; though, it could be achieved through will power of the government and society. In the world scenario, poverty is great concern in the developing, under developed and the third world nations. Poverty also results in several diseases, law and order situations and very low standard of living.

Fill Out the Form for Expert Academic Guidance!

Please indicate your interest Live Classes Books Test Series Self Learning

Verify OTP Code (required)

I agree to the terms and conditions and privacy policy .

Fill complete details

Target Exam ---

Long and Short Essay on Poverty in English

We have provided below various essay on poverty in order to help students.

Now-a-days, essays or paragraphs writing are common strategy followed by the teachers in the schools and colleges in order to enhance the skill and knowledge of students about any topic.

All the poverty essay are written using very simple words under various words limit according to the need and requirement of students.

They can select any of the essays given below according to their need and requirement in the class, any competition or exam.

Poverty Essay 1 (100 words)

Poverty is the state for any person of being extremely poor. It is the extreme situation when a person feels lack of essential items required to continue the life such as shelter, adequate food, clothing, medicines, etc. Some of the common reasons of poverty are like overpopulation, lethal and epidemic diseases, natural disasters, low agricultural output, lack of employment, casteism in country, illiteracy, gender inequality, environmental problems, changing trends of economy in the country, lack of proper education, untouchability, limited or inadequate access of people to their rights, political violence, organized crime, corruption, lack of motivation, idleness, old social beliefs, etc. Poverty in India can be reduced by following effective solutions however needs individual efforts of all the citizens.

Poverty Essay 2 (150 words)

We can define poverty as the lack of food, proper shelter, clothing, medicines, education, and equal human rights. Poverty forces a person to remain hungry, without shelter, without clothes, education and proper rights. There are various causes of poverty in the country however solutions too but because of the lack of proper unity among Indian citizens to follow solutions, poverty is increasing badly day by day. Spread of epidemic diseases in any country is the reason of poverty as poor people cannot take care of their health and hygienic condition.

Poverty makes people unable to go to doctor, to go to school, how to read, to speak properly, to eat three times meal, to wear needed clothes, to purchase own house, to get paid properly for job, etc. Poverty forces a person to go towards illness as they drink unclean water, lives at dirty places, and eat improper meal. Poverty causes powerlessness and lack of freedom.

Poverty Essay 3 (200 words)

Poverty is just like a condition of slave when a person becomes unable to do anything according to his/her wish. It has many faces which changes according to the person, place and time. It can be described in many ways a person feel it or live it. Poverty is a situation which no one wants to live however has to carry it by custom, nature, natural disaster, or lack of proper education. The person lives it, generally wants to escape. Poverty is a call to action to the poor people to earn enough money to eat, have access to education, get adequate shelter, wear needed clothes, and protection from the social and political violence.

It is an invisible problem which affects a person and his/her social life very badly in many ways. Poverty is completely preventable problem however there are many reasons which carry and continue it from the past time. Poverty keeps a person lack of freedom, mental well-being, physical well-being, and security. It is very necessary for everyone to work jointly in order to remove poverty from the country and world to bring proper physical health, mental health, complete literacy, home for everyone, and other needed things to live a simple life.

Poverty Essay 4 (250 words)

Poverty is a human condition which brings despair, grief and pain in the human life. Poverty is the lack of money and all the things required to live a life in proper manner. Poverty makes a child unable to enter to the school in childhood and lives his/her childhood in an unhappy family. Poverty is the lack of few rupees to arrange bread and butter of two times daily, buy text books for kids, grief of parents responsible for the care of children, etc. We can define poverty in many ways. It is very common to see poverty in India because most people here cannot fulfill their basic necessities of the life. A huge percentage of population here is uneducated, hungry and without home and clothe. It is the main reason of the poor Indian economy. Because of the poverty, around half population in India is living a miserable life.

Poverty creates a situation in which people fail to get sufficient income so they cannot purchase necessary things. A poor man lives his/her life without any command over basic needs such as two times food, clean drinking water, clothing, house, proper education, etc. People who fail to maintain the minimum standard of living such as consumption and nutrition required for existence. There are various reasons of poverty in India however mal distribution of national income is also a reason. Low income group people are relatively poorer than the high income group. Children of the poor family never get chance of proper schooling, proper nutrition and happy childhood. The most important reasons of the poverty are illiteracy, corruption, growing population, poor agriculture, gap between poor and rich, etc.

Poverty Essay 5 (300 words)

Poverty represents poor quality of life, illiteracy, malnutrition, lack of basic needs, low human resource development, etc. It is a biggest challenge to the developing country especially in India. It is a phenomenon in which a section of people in the society cannot fulfill their basic necessities of life. It has seen some decline in the poverty level in the last five years (26.1% in 1999-2000 from 35.97% in 1993-94). It has also declined at state level such as in Orissa it has been declined to 47.15% from 48.56%, in Madhya Pradesh 37.43% from 43.52%, in UP 31.15% from 40.85%, and in West Bengal 27.02% from 35.66%. Instead of some decline in the poverty in India it is not the matter of happiness because the Indian BPL is still very large number (26 crore).

Poverty in India can be eradicated by the use of some effective programmes, however need a joint effort by everyone not by the government only. Government of India should make some effective strategies aiming to develop poor social sector through key components like primary education, population control, family welfare, job creation, etc especially in the rural areas.

What are Effects of Poverty

Some of the effects of poverty are like:

• Illiteracy: poverty makes people unable to get proper education because of the lack of money.
• Nutrition and diet: poverty causes insufficient availability of diet and inadequate nutrition which brings lots of lethal diseases and deficiency diseases.
• Child labor: it gives rise to the huge level illiteracy as the future of the country gets involved in the child labor at very low cost in their early age.
• Unemployment: unemployment causes poverty as it creates the lack of money which affects people’s daily life. It forces people to live unfulfilled life against their will.
• Social tensions: it creates social tension due to the income disparity between rich and poor.
• Housing problems: it creates the bad condition for people to live without home on the footpath, roadside, other open places, many members in one room, etc.
• Diseases: it gives rise to the various epidemic diseases as people with lack of money cannot maintain proper hygiene and sanitation. Also they cannot afford a doctor for the proper treatment of any disease.
• Feminization of poverty: poverty affects women’s life to a great extent because of the gender-inequality and keeps them deprived of the proper-diet, nutrition, medicines and treatment facility.

Poverty Essay 6 (400 words)

Introduction

Poverty is a situation in which people remain deprived of basic necessities of life such as inadequacy of food, clothes, and shelter. Most of the people in India cannot get their two times meal properly, sleep at roadside and wear dirty and old clothes. They do not get proper and healthy nutrition, medicines, and other necessary things. Poverty in the urban India is increasing because of the increase in urban population as people from rural areas like to migrate to the cities and towns to get employment or do some financial activity. The income of around 8 crore urban people is below poverty line and 4.5 crore urban people is on borderline of poverty level. A huge number of people live in slum become illiterate. In spite of some initiatives there is no any satisfactory results shown regarding reduction of poverty.

Causes of Poverty

The main causes of poverty in India are growing population, poor agriculture, corruption, old customs, huge gap between poor and rich people, unemployment, illiteracy, epidemic diseases, etc. A huge percentage of people in India depend on agriculture which is poor and cause poverty. Generally people face shortage of food because of poor agriculture and unemployment. Ever growing population is also the reason of poverty in India. More population means more food, money and houses. In the lack of basic facilities, poverty grows more rapidly. Becoming extra rich and extra poor creates a huge widening gap between the rich and the poor people. Rich people are growing richer and poor people are growing poorer which creates an economic gap between the two.

Effects of Poverty

Poverty affects people’s life in many ways. There are various effects of poverty such as illiteracy, poor diet and nutrition, child labor, poor housing, poor life style, unemployment, poor hygiene, feminization of poverty, etc. Poor people cannot arrange a healthy diet, maintain good life style, home, nice clothes, proper education, etc because of the lack of money which creates a huge difference between rich and poor. This difference leads to the undeveloped country. Poverty forces small children to do work at low cost and help their family financially instead of going to the school.

Solutions to Eradicate Poverty

It is very necessary to solve the problem of poverty on urgent basis for the goodness of humanity on this planet. Some of the solutions that can play great role in solving the problem of poverty are:

• Farmers should get proper and required facilities for good agriculture as well as to make it profitable.
• Adult people who are illiterate should be given required training for the betterment of life.
• Family planning should be followed by the people in order to check the ever-rising population and thus poverty.
• Corruption should be ended all over the world to reduce the poverty.
• Each and every child should go to the school and take proper education.
• There should be ways of employment where people of all categories can work together.

Poverty is not only the problem of a person however it is a national problem. It must be solved on urgent basis by implementing some effective solutions. Variety of steps has been taken by the government to reduce poverty however no clear results are seen. Eradication of poverty is necessary for the sustainable and inclusive growth of people, economy, society and country. Eradication of poverty can be done effectively by the unite effort of each and every person.

Related Information:

Slogans on Poverty

Paragraph on Poverty

Essay on Beggars

Essay on Food Waste

Related content

Talk to our academic expert!

Language --- English Hindi Marathi Tamil Telugu Malayalam

Get access to free Mock Test and Master Class

Register to Get Free Mock Test and Study Material

Offer Ends in 5:00

• Competition
• Inequality & Mobility
• Tax & Macroeconomics
• Value Added
• Elevating Research
• Connect with an Expert
• In the Media
• Terms of Use
• Privacy Policy

Connect with us

• Washington Center for Equitable Growth
• 740 15th St. NW 8th Floor
• Washington, D.C. 20005
• Phone: 202.545.6002

Addressing the need for affordable, high-quality early childhood care and education for all in the United States

February 18, 2020.

Childcare & Early Education

Economic Inequality

Economic Mobility

Economic Wellbeing

Economics of Place

Race & Ethnicity

Wage Stagnation

This essay is part of Vision 2020: Evidence for a stronger economy , a compilation of 21 essays presenting innovative, evidence-based, and concrete ideas to shape the 2020 policy debate. The authors in the new book include preeminent economists, political scientists, and sociologists who use cutting-edge research methods to answer some of the thorniest economic questions facing policymakers today. 

To read more about the Vision 2020 book and download the full collection of essays, click here .

In 2017–2018, most children in the United States under 6 years of age—68 percent of those in single-mother households and 57 percent in married-couple households—lived in homes in which all parents were employed . 1 Most of these families require nonparental early care and education, such as childcare centers, preschools, family childcare homes, or informal arrangements with relatives or neighbors, to care for their children while at work. In a typical week in 2011, the most recent year for which complete data are available from the U.S. Census Bureau, 12.5 million of the 20.4 million children under the age of 5 living in the United States (61 percent) attended some type of regular childcare arrangement . 2

Unfortunately, on average, the early care and education settings attended by many young children, particularly low-income children or children of color, provide quality at levels too low to adequately promote children’s learning and development. 3 This exacerbates socioeconomic and racial and ethnic inequalities. At the same time, in most regions of the country, families with young children are spending more on childcare than they are on housing, food, or healthcare. 4

In this essay, I argue that greater policy attention to early childcare and education is warranted for three reasons:

• High-quality early care and education promotes children’s development and learning, and narrows socioeconomic and racial/ethnic inequalities.
• Reliable, affordable childcare promotes parental employment and family self-sufficiency.
• Early care and education is a necessary component of the economic infrastructure.

I then provide the research underlying these three statements, and follow with a discussion of several policy solutions to address the current problems of affordability, quality, and supply of early care and education in the United States. The overwhelming evidence shows that more public investment is needed to help ease the cost burden for families and ensure that a trained, stable workforce has adequate compensation. A universal early care and education plan, particularly one with a sliding income scale to provide progressive benefits, may not pay for itself in the short term, but will very likely do so in the long term by boosting broad-based U.S. economic growth and stability while narrowing economic inequality.

High-quality early care and education promotes children’s development and learning and narrows inequality

Early childhood, especially the first 3 years of life, constitutes a sensitive period of the life course, one during which caregiver warmth, responsiveness, and developmentally appropriate stimulation are vital for development. 5 Experiences during early childhood—whether positive, such as language exposure, or negative, such as high and chronic levels of stress or deprivation— have lasting effects . 6 Research demonstrates that socioeconomic disparities in cognitive skills and physical development are apparent in infancy. 7

Over the past five decades, a wealth of research has examined how early care and education affects children’s development. Most studies find that the majority of the intensive, high-quality, at-scale model programs promote children’s academic school readiness in the short term. These include the Abecedarian project (studying a set of children born between 1972 and 1977 into their adult years), the Perry Preschool project (studying of a select group of children born between 1962 and 1967), the Infant Health and Development Program (a 1980s program that studied low birth-weight children in their first 3 years), and longstanding federal at-scale early care and education programs such as Head Start, state pre-Kindergarten programs, and high-quality center-based programs. 8 Effects are generally strongest for disadvantaged children, suggesting that early care and education may help to narrow socioeconomic, racial, and ethnic disparities in achievement. 9

Among the early care and education programs in existence long enough to have data on long-term effects, research finds substantial and lasting benefits for educational and economic outcomes, including higher rates of high school completion, college attendance, and earnings, and reduced criminal activity and public assistance reliance into adulthood. 10 There also is emerging evidence for intergenerational benefits . 11 Yet the research is somewhat mixed for the mid-term effects of early care and education programs. Research finds benefits of participation for reduced grade retention, or repeating a grade in school. 12 The short-term benefits on test scores, however, appear to “fade out” or converge with children who did not attend early care and education programs as they age. 13 But some research suggests that may be due to the quality of the schools attended after early childhood. 14

A largely separate body of research examines the health effects of early care and education. Studies find that the initial entrance of young children into group care is associated with a short-term increase in the incidence of communicable diseases. 15 But there are substantial and lasting benefits of early care and education participation for health , including increased on-time immunization rates, early screening rates, improved cardiovascular and metabolic health, and reduced smoking. 16

Reliable, affordable childcare promotes parental employment and family self-sufficiency

Early care and education provides a context for child development, as well as temporary relief to parents for childcare, allowing them to work. Indeed, increased access to affordable childcare increases parents’ labor force participation, particularly among single mothers. A recent review of the labor effects of childcare estimates that a 10 percent decrease in childcare costs would lead to a 0.25 percent to 1.25 percent increase in parental labor force participation. 17 Research finds that public preschool programs, which typically offer part-day, school-year programming, have some but potentially limited effects on parental employment. 18 But full-day, full-year early care and education—particularly for infants and toddlers for whom care is expensive and hard to find, and who are less likely to attend center-based care (See Figure 1)—would likely have larger effects on parental labor force participation. 19

Early care and education is a necessary economic infrastructure component

Childcare can be considered an infrastructure component akin to transportation. Without reliable, affordable sources, workers cannot regularly get to work or stay there. In the short term, early care and education settings support the productivity of two types of workers: employed parents and childcare workers. Research by University of Chicago economist and Nobel Laureate James Heckman and others suggests that many early childhood programs pay for themselves before children begin kindergarten via increased maternal employment, which generates both household income and tax revenue. 20 Further, research from the early 2000s suggests that investments in childcare have strong local economic development effects, or multiplier effects, because much of those dollars are spent on childcare worker wages that they, in turn, spend locally. 21

In the long term, early care and education supports the preparedness and skills development of the future workforce of the country. Benefit-cost analyses of several intensive model programs and public early care and education programs indicate that the benefits—such as improved educational, economic, and health outcomes, and reduced criminal activity and receipt of public assistance—outweigh the initial program costs, demonstrating positive returns for participants, as well as the public. 22

Barriers in accessing the promise of early care and education

Unfortunately, families with young children today face barriers in accessing and paying for the opportunities offered by early care and education. High-quality early care and education is expensive and hard to find, particularly for infants and toddlers. 23 Families with young children spend about 10 percent of their incomes on childcare expenses, but families in poverty—families below 100 percent of the Federal Poverty Level of about $12,000 per year for a family of three—spend 30 percent. 24 These expenses represent families’ actual expenses at a mix of regulated centers and homes and informal lower-cost arrangements with relatives, not necessarily what they may choose to spend if more options were available.

In 2017, infant childcare at centers or licensed homes cost an average of $9,000 to $12,000 per year across the country, more than public college tuition in most states. 25 These high childcare costs accrue during a period when parents are at the lowest earning years of their careers and when the financing mechanisms of grants and low-interest loans are unavailable. 26 The public programs that exist to help families access early care and education—namely the Early Head Start/Head Start program and childcare subsidies provided under the federal and state Child Care and Development Block Grant program—serve a small fraction of those eligible. In 2016–2017, 35 percent of 3- to 5-year-old children in poverty attended Head Start, and 10 percent of children under age 3 in poverty attended Early Head Start. 27 In 2015, of the 13.5 million children eligible for childcare subsidies under federal rules, only 15 percent received them. 28

Public investments in preschool contribute to dramatic increases in participation in early learning programs in the year or two prior to children’s entry into kindergarten. Whereas in 1970, about 1.09 million (27 percent) 3- to 5-year old children in the United States attended preschool, by 2016, 4.701 million (60 percent) were enrolled . 29 Yet these overall rates mask disparities in attendance. While income-based gaps in enrollment in preschool narrowed in recent decades, children in low-income families continue to be less likely to attend center-based care than their higher-income peers. 30 As shown in Figure 1, among children under age 5 with employed mothers, only 28 percent of those in homes under the poverty line attend center-based care, versus 39 percent of those above the poverty line. This is problematic, as center-based settings tend to provide higher-quality, more stable care, on average, than unregulated arrangements. 31

Further, centers that low-income children attend provide lower quality care, on average, than those attended by their higher-income peers. 32 Research shows that higher-income families are enrolling children in formal early care and education programs at increasingly younger ages. 33 In 2005, for example , 22 percent of 1-year-olds from families with incomes above 200 percent of the federal poverty line (at that time, about $32,000 per year for a family of three) attended center-based settings, compared to just 11 percent of 1-year-olds from families with incomes below 200 percent of the federal poverty line. 34 Our system’s reliance on private family investment in early childhood is a driver of inequality, putting children on unequal playing fields well before they walk through the doors of their kindergarten classrooms. 35

Despite their high expense, early care and education programs should actually cost more, not less. The quality of early care and education depends on the warmth and responsiveness of teachers and caregivers and on the strength and consistency of caregiver-child relationships, which means economies of scale do not apply to childcare in the same way as with other economic sectors. For good reason, state and local regulations set child-adult ratios and group sizes and teacher training requirements. In turn, most childcare costs are directed to labor expenses. 36

Yet, despite parents paying as much (or more) than they can afford, childcare workers are paid little. In 2018, the median hourly wage for childcare workers was $11.17 ($23,240 per year). 37 This is considerably less than the $16.56 median hourly wage for bus drivers ($34,450 per year). 38 What’s more, there are wide racial and ethnic gaps in teacher pay and benefits such as health insurance coverage or paid sick leave. 39 Many workers earn so little that they rely on public assistance. Between 2014 and 2016, more than half (53 percent) of childcare workers lived in families that participated in one or more of four public programs. 40 This compares to 21 percent in the general population . 41

Low pay and few benefits present barriers in attracting and retaining a skilled early care and education workforce. Teacher educational qualifications and stability are associated with the quality of early childhood settings and, in turn, a wide range of children’s outcomes. 42 In 2012, 25 percent of childcare centers had turnover rates of 20 percent or higher. 43 A 2018 study found that 10 percent of children in Head Start (whose teachers average lower pay than those at public preschool programs) had a teacher who left Head Start entirely during the program year, with harmful consequences for children’s outcomes. 44 Adequate caregiver and teacher compensation and training is necessary for supporting quality and stability in, and augmenting the supply of, early care and education.

This lack of reliable, affordable childcare has reverberating effects for parents, employers, and the U.S. economy. Interrupting a career due to a lack of adequate childcare—something more often done by mothers—has both short- and long-term economic ramifications for families in terms of lost wages, retirement savings, and other benefits, with an estimated average reduction of 19 percent in lifetime earnings. 45 Even when maintaining labor force participation, working parents and their employers feel the economic consequences of childcare inadequacy. A 2018 survey found that workers with children under the age of 3 lose an average of 2 hours per week of work time due to childcare problems, such as leaving early or arriving late. One-quarter of respondents reported they reduced regular work hours, turned down further education or training, or turned down a job offer due to childcare problems. 46 One recent study estimated that the childcare crisis results in $57 billion in lost earnings, productivity, and revenue each year. 47

Policy solutions

Most early care and education policies are designed for one or both of two purposes: to provide care while parents work or to promote children’s readiness to enter kindergarten by supporting cognitive, social-emotional, and behavioral development. This is a false dichotomy. As detailed above, high-quality, affordable, reliable programs accomplish both purposes. Yet there are simply too few high-quality, affordable, reliable programs in the United States today, and most are out of reach for low- and middle-income families.

In order to address families’ and employers’ early care and education needs, policies must address the affordability, quality, and supply problems in our current system. More public investment is needed to help ease the cost burden for families and ensure that a trained, stable workforce has adequate compensation, which will promote affordability and quality. Low-income families disproportionately shoulder the economic and other burdens caused by the lack of childcare, although middle-income families are also economically squeezed during the years in which their children are young.

A universal plan, particularly one with a sliding income scale to provide progressive benefits, may not pay for itself in the short term, but will likely do so in the long term. 48 A universal plan that offers benefits such as mixed-income classrooms may have beneficial peer effects . 49 And these kinds of plans have fewer administrative barriers and stigma, and a broader base of political support. 50 Further, an analysis of the Infant Health and Development Program estimates that socioeconomic achievement gaps would be substantially narrowed from universal programs. 51 Policies should be flexible enough to meet families’ diverse needs, address the overall supply of early care and education, and cope with the gaps that are particularly troublesome for families today, such as care during nonstandard hours and for children with special needs. 52

Two examples of universal policy solutions that would improve affordability, quality, and supply are the Child Care for Working Families Act and the Universal Child Care and Early Learning Act. Both of these proposed bills would increase public investment in early care and education to limit families’ out-of-pocket payments to 7 percent of family income (the threshold recommended by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services), increase childcare worker compensation and training, and expand public preschool and the supply of childcare for infants and toddlers. The Child Care for Working Families Act does so by expanding childcare subsidies, nearly doubling the number of children eligible. 53 The Universal Child Care and Early Learning Act relies more on public provision, expanding a network of early care and education options through federal-state or federal-local partnerships. 54

Both bills, if passed by Congress and signed into law, would lead to substantial increases in the availability of high-quality, affordable early care and education programs. An analysis of the Child Care for Working Families Act estimated that, at full implementation, the availability of new childcare subsidies and reduced childcare costs would lead to 1.6 million more parents joining the labor force, the bill would create 700,000 new jobs in the childcare sector, and pay among teachers and caregivers would increase by 26 percent. 55

The recent increases in state and local paid family leave programs in a handful of states and cities are laudable and help parents manage their own health and their newborns’ needs, while maintaining their jobs and a basic income. 56 Likewise, federal and state public preschool programs and Head Start serve increasing numbers of children, with 44 percent of 4-year-olds and 16 percent of 3-year-olds enrolled in public programs across the country. 57 But in the years following the (relatively brief) period of paid leave and preceding the availability of preschool, families require affordable, high-quality, stable early care and education arrangements that match their working hours.

To ignore early care and education policy means to ignore a major expense and pressing concern for families and employers across the nation. Moreover, the research shows that early care and education can promote children’s cognitive and other outcomes, narrowing disparities and leading to greater economic growth. 58 Our nation’s current lack of investment in early care and education—unique among our peer countries—constitutes a lost economic opportunity to enhance our global competitiveness, as well as a lost opportunity for narrowing pervasive social and economic inequalities among families today.

— Taryn Morrissey is an associate professor at the School of Public Affairs at American University.

Back to Vision 2020 full essay list .

1. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Employment Characteristics of Families Summary,” Economic News Release (2019), available at https://www.bls.gov/news.release/famee.nr0.htm .

2. Lynda Laughlin, “Who’s Minding the Kids? Child Care Arrangements” (U.S. Census Bureau, 2013), available at https://www.census.gov/prod/2013pubs/p70-135.pdf .

3. S.W. Helburn and C. Howes, “Child Care Cost and Quality,” The Future of Children / Center for the Future of Children, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation 6 (2) (1996): 62–82, available at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18582984 ; National Survey of Early Care and Education, “Measuring Predictors of Quality in Early Care and Education Settings in the National Survey of Early Care and Education” (2015); A. Chaudry and others, Cradle to Kindergarten: A New Plan to Combat Inequality (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2017).

4. Child Care Aware of America, “The US and the High Cost of Child Care” (2018), available at https://cdn2.hubspot.net/hubfs/3957809/costofcare2018.pdf?__hstc=&__hssc=&hsCtaTracking=b4367fa6-f3b9-4e6c-acf4-b5d01d0dc570%7C94d3f065-e4fc-4250-a163-bafc3defaf20 .

5. Board on Children, Youth, and Families and the National Academies of Science, From Neurons to Neighborhoods: The Science of Early Childhood Programs , J.P. Shonkoff and Deborah A. Phillips, eds. (Washington: National Academies Press, 2000); Douglas E. Sperry, Linda L. Sperry, and Peggy J. Miller, “Reexamining the Verbal Environments of Children From Different Socioeconomic Backgrounds,” Child Development 00 (0) (2018): 1–16, available at https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.13072 ; Ruth Feldman and Arthur I. Eidelman, “Biological and Environmental Initial Conditions Shape the Trajectories of Cognitive and Social-Emotional Development across the First Years of Life,” Developmental Science 12 (1) (2009): 194–200, available at https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-7687.2008.00761.x .

6. Ariel Kalil, “Early Childhood Development.” In Delivering Equitable Growth: Strategies for the next Administration (Washington: Washington Center for Equitable Growth, 2016), available at https://equitablegrowth.org/how-economic-inequality-affects-childrens-outcomes/ ; Jack P. Shonkoff and Andrew S. Garner, “The Lifelong Effects of Early Childhood Adversity and Toxic Stress,” Pediatrics 129 (1) (2012): e232–46, available at https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2011-2663 ; Jack P. Shonkoff, “Capitalizing on Advances in Science to Reduce the Health Consequences of Early Childhood Adversity,” JAMA Pediatrics 170 (10) (2016): 1003–7, available at https://doi.org/10.1001/jamapediatrics.2016.1559 ; Greg J. Duncan, Katherine Magnuson, and Elizabeth Votruba-Drzal, “Moving Beyond Correlations in Assessing the Consequences of Poverty,” Annual Review of Psychology 68 (2017): 413–34, available at https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-010416-044224 ; Greg J. Duncan, Kathleen M. Ziol-Guest, and Ariel Kalil, “Early-Childhood Poverty and Adult Attainment, Behavior, and Health,” Child Development 81 (1) (2010): 306–25, available at https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8624.2009.01396.x .

7. Tamara Halle and others, “Disparities in Early Learning and Development: Lessons from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study – Birth Cohort (ECLS-B)” (Washington: Child Trends, 2009), available at http://www.childtrends.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/2009-52DisparitiesELExecSumm.pdf ; Lindsey Hutchison, Taryn W. Morrissey, and Kimberly Burgess, “The Early Achievement and Development Gap” (Washington: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2014), available at http://aspe.hhs.gov/hsp/14/achievementgap/rb_AchievementGap.pdf ; Katherine Magnuson, Jane Waldfogel, and E. Washbrook, “The Development of SES Gradients in Skills during the School Years: Evidence from the United States and England.” In J. Ermisch, M. Jantti, and T. Smeeding, eds., From Parents to Children: The Intergenerational Transmission of Advantage (New York: Russell Sage, 2012); Sean F. Reardon, “The Widening Academic Achievement Gap Between the Rich and the Poor: New Evidence and Possible Explanations.” In Greg J. Duncan and Richard Murnane, eds., Whither Opportunity? Rising Inequality, Schools, and Children’s Life Chances (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2011); Anne Fernald, Virginia A. Marchman, and Adriana Weisleder, “SES Differences in Language Processing Skill and Vocabulary Are Evident at 18 Months,” Developmental Science 16 (2) (2013): 234–48, available at https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.12019 .

8. Greg J Duncan and Katherine Magnuson, “Investing in Preschool Programs,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 27 (2) (2013), available at https://doi.org/10.1257/jep.27.2.109 ; Deborah A. Phillips and others, “Puzzling It out: The Current State of Scientific Knowledge on Pre-Kindergarten Effects.” In The Current State of Scientific Knowledge on Pre-Kindergarten Effects (Washington: The Brookings Institution, 2017); Hirokazu Yoshikawa and others, “Investing in Our Future: The Evidence Base on Preschool Education Investing in Our Future: The Evidence Base on Preschool Education” (Washington: Society for Research in Child Development, 2013); Pamela A. Morris and others, “New Findings on Impact Variation From the Head Start Impact Study: Informing the Scale-Up of Early Childhood Programs,” AERA Open 4 (2) (2018): 1–16, available at https://doi.org/10.1177/2332858418769287 ; William T. Gormley, Deborah A. Phillips, and Sara Anderson, “The Effects of Tulsa’s Pre-K Program on Middle School Student Performance,” Journal of Policy Analysis and Management 37 (1) (2018): 63–87, available at https://doi.org/10.1002/pam.22023 ; Deborah A. Phillips, William T. Gormley, and Sara Anderson, “The Effects of Tulsa’s CAP Head Start Program on Middle-School Academic Outcomes and Progress,” Developmental Psychology 52 (8) (2016): 1247–61, available at https://doi.org/10.1037/dev0000151 ; Christina Weiland and Hirokazu Yoshikawa, “Impacts of a Prekindergarten Program on Children’s Mathematics, Language, Literacy, Executive Function, and Emotional Skills,” Child Development 84 (6) (2013): 2112–30, available at https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.12099 ; D.S. Ronsaville and R.B. Hakim, “Child Outcomes When Child Care Center Classes Meet Recommended Standards for Quality. NICHD Early Child Care Research Network Child Care in the United States: Racial Differences in Compliance with Guidelines,” Am J Public Health 89 (7) (1999): 1072–77, available at https://doi.org/10.2105/ajph.89.7.107210.2105/ajph.90.9.1436 ; Nichd Early Child Care Research Network, “Does Quality of Child Care Affect Child Outcomes at Age 41/2?” Developmental Psychology 39 (3) (2003): 451–69, available at http://ovidsp.ovid.com.proxyau.wrlc.org/ovidweb.cgi?T=JS&CSC=Y&NEWS=N&PAGE=fulltext&D=ovftf&AN=00063061-200305000-00009 ; National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Early Child Care Research Network, “Child Care Effect Sizes for the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development,” American Psychologist 61 (2006): 99–116.

9. William T. Gormley, “The Effects of Oklahoma’s Pre-K Program on Hispanic Children,” Social Science Quarterly 89 (4) (2008); Greg J Duncan and Aaron J. Sojourner, “Can Intensive Early Childhood Intervention Programs Eliminate Income-Based Cognitive and Achievement Gaps?” Journal of Human Resources 48 (4) (2013): 945–68; Phillips and others, “Puzzling It out: The Current State of Scientific Knowledge on Pre-Kindergarten Effects”; Katherine Magnuson and Greg J. Duncan, “Can Early Childhood Interventions Decrease Inequality of Economic Opportunity?” RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences 2 (2) (2017): 123, available at https://doi.org/10.7758/rsf.2016.2.2.05 ; Daphna Bassok, “Do Black and Hispanic Children Benefit More from Preschool? Understanding Differences in Preschool Effects across Racial Groups,” Child Development 81 (6) (2010): 1828–45, available at https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8624.2010.01513.x ; Yoshikawa and others, “Investing in Our Future: The Evidence Base on Preschool Education”; Taryn W. Morrissey, Lindsey Hutchison, and Kimberly Burgess, “The Short- and Long-Term Impacts of Large Public Early Care and Education Programs” (Washington: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2014), available at http://aspe.hhs.gov/hsp/14/longtermimpact/rb_longTermImpact.pdf ; Marianne P. Bitler and others, “Experimental Evidence on Distributional Effects of Head Start.” Working Paper (National Bureau of Economic Research, 2016), available at http://www.nber.org/papers/w20434.pdf .

10. David Deming, “Early Childhood Intervention and Life-Cycle Skill Development: Evidence from Head Start,” American Economic Journal: Applied Economics 1 (3) (2009): 111–34, available at https://doi.org/10.1257/app.1.3.111 ; Rucker C. Johnson, “The Health Returns of Education Policies from Preschool to High School and Beyond,” American Economic Review: Papers and Proceedings 100 (2) (2010): 188–94; E. I. Knudsen and others, “Economic, Neurobiological, and Behavioral Perspectives on Building America’s Future Workforce,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 103 (27) (2006): 10155–62; Flavio Cunha and James J. Heckman, “The Technology of Skill Formation,” American Economic Review 97 (2) (2007): 31–47, available at https://doi.org/10.1257/aer.97.2.31 ; Jens Ludwig and Deborah A. Phillips, “Long-Term Effects of Head Start on Low-Income Children,” Annals Of The New York Academy Of Sciences 1136 (1) (2008): 257–68, available at https://doi.org/10.1196/annals.1425.005 ; Eliana Garces, Duncan Thomas, and Janet Currie, “Longer-Term Effects of Head Start,” American Economic Review 92 (4) (2002): 999–1012, available at https://search.proquest.com/openview/466c6163e16cd99af4b4a38f4e0442e3/1.pdf?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=42182 .

11. James Heckman and Ganesh Karapakula, “Intergenerational and Intragenerational Externalities of the Perry Preschool Project.” Working Paper (National Bureau of Economic Research, 2019), available at https://doi.org/10.3386/w25889 ; Andrew Barr and Chloe R. Gibbs, “Breaking the Cycle? The Intergenerational Effects of Head Start” (2017).

12. Dana Charles Mccoy and others, “Impacts of Early Childhood Education on Medium- and Long-Term Educational Outcomes,” Educational Researcher 46 (8) (2017), available at https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X17737739 ; Mariana Zerpa, “Short and Medium Run Impacts of Preschool Education: Evidence from State Pre-K Programs” (Washington: Washington Center for Equitable Growth, 2018).

13. Yoshikawa and others, “Investing in Our Future: The Evidence Base on Preschool Education”; Arya Ansari, “The Persistence of Preschool Effects From Early Childhood,” Journal of Educational Psychology 110 (7) (2018): 952–73; Greg J. Duncan and Katherine Magnuson, “Investing in Preschool Programs,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 27 (2) (2013): 109–32, available at https://doi.org/10.1257/jep.27.2.109 .

14. Janet Currie and Duncan Thomas, “School Quality and the Longer-Term Effects of Head Start,” The Journal of Human Resources 35 (4) (2000): 755, available at https://doi.org/10.2307/146372 ; Arya Ansari and Robert Pianta, “The Role of Elementary School Quality in the Persistence of Preschool Effects,” Children and Youth Services Review 86 (2018): 120–27, available at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2018.01.025 .

15. Robert H. Bradley and NICHD Early Child Care Research Network, “Child Care and Common Communicable Diseases in Children Aged 37 to 54 Months,” Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med 157 (2) (2003): 196–200; Taryn W. Morrissey, “Multiple Child Care Arrangements and Common Communicable Illnesses in Children Aged 3 to 54 Months,” Maternal and Child Health Journal 17 (7) (2013), available at https://doi.org/10.1007/s10995-012-1125-5 .

16. Taryn W. Morrissey, “The Effects Of Early Care And Education On Children’s Health,” Health Affairs (2019), available at https://www.healthaffairs.org/do/10.1377/hpb20190325.519221/full/ ; Gabriella Conti, James J. Heckman, and Rodrigo Pinto, “The Effects of Two Influential Early Childhood Interventions on Health and Healthy Behavior,” Econ J 91 (2) (2016): 165–71, available at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chemosphere.2012.12.037.Reactivity ; Frances Campbell and others, “Early Childhood Investments Substantially Boost Adult Health,” Science 343 (6178) (2014): 1478–85, available at http://science.sciencemag.org/content/343/6178/1478 ; Pedro Carneiro and Rita Ginja, “Long-Term Impacts of Compensatory Preschool on Health and Behavior: Evidence from Head Start,” American Economic Journal of Economic Policy 6 (4) (2014): 135–73, available at https://doi.org/10.1257/pol.6.4.135 ; Jens Ludwig and Douglas L. Miller, “Does Head Start Improve Children’s Life Chances? Evidence From a Regression Discontinuity Design,” The Quarterly Journal of Economics 122 (1) (2007): 159–208; Garces, Thomas, and Currie, “Longer-Term Effects of Head Start”; Kai Hong, Kacie Dragan, and Sherry A. Glied, “Seeing and Hearing: The Impacts of New York City’s Universal Pre-Kindergarten Program on the Health of Low-Income Children,” Journal of Health Economics (2019), available at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhealeco.2019.01.004 ; Terri J. Sabol and Lindsay Till Hoyt, “The Long Arm of Childhood: Preschool Associations with Adolescent Health,” Developmental Psychology 53 (4) (2017): 752–63, available at https://doi.org/10.1037/dev0000287 .

17. Taryn W. Morrissey, “Child Care and Parent Labor Force Participation: A Review of the Research Literature,” Review of Economics of the Household 15 (1) (2017): 1–24, available at https://doi.org/10.1007/s11150-016-9331-3 .

18. Rasheed Malik, “The Effects of Universal Preschool in Washington, DC: Children’s Learning and Mothers’ Earnings” (Washington: Center for American Progress, 2018), available at https://cdn.americanprogress.org/content/uploads/2018/09/14125635/Children-Learning-Mothers-Earning-report.pdf ; Maria Donovan Fitzpatrick, “Preschoolers Enrolled and Mothers at Work? The Effects of Universal Prekindergarten,” Journal of Labor Economics 28 (1) (2010): 51–85, available at https://doi.org/10.1086/648666 ; Elizabeth U. Cascio and Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach, “The Impacts of Expanding Access To High-Quality Preschool,” Brookings Papers on Economic Activity (2013): 127–78.

19. Steven Jessen-Howard and others, “Understanding Infant and Toddler Child Care Deserts” (Washington: Center for American Progress, 2018), available at https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/early-childhood/reports/2018/10/31/460128/understanding-infant-toddler-child-care-deserts/ ; Child Care Aware of America, “The US and the High Cost of Child Care.”

20. James J. Heckman, “Return on Investment in Birth-to-Three Early Development Programs,” webinar on September 6, 2018, available at https://heckmanequation.org/www/assets/2018/09/F_ROI-Webinar-Deck_birth-to-three_091818.pdf (last accessed July 16, 2019).

21. Taryn W. Morrissey and Mildred E. Warner, “Why Early Care and Education Deserves as Much Attention, or More, than Prekindergarten Alone,” Applied Developmental Science 11 (2) (2007): 57–70, available at https://doi.org/10.1080/10888690701384897 .

22. Jill S. Cannon and others, “Investing Early,” RAND Health Quarterly 7 (4) (2018): 6; Knudsen and others, “Economic, Neurobiological, and Behavioral Perspectives on Building America’s Future Workforce.”

23. R. Malik and others, “Child Care Deserts: An Analysis of Child Care Centers by ZIP Code in 8 States” (Washington: Center for American Progress, 2016), available at https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/early-childhood/reports/2016/10/27/225703/child-care-deserts/ ; Jessen-Howard and others, “Understanding Infant and Toddler Child Care Deserts”; R. Malik and others, “America’s Child Care Deserts in 2018” (Washington: Center for American Progress, 2018), available at https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/early-childhood/reports/2018/12/06/461643/americas-child-care-deserts-2018/ ; NSECE, “Households’ Geographic Access to Center – Based Early Care and Education: Estimates and Methodology from the National Survey of Early Care and Education” (2016), available at http://www.acf.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/opre/hh_geoaccessto_cb_ece_toopre_042916_b508.pdf ; Deborah A. Phillips and Gina Adams, “Child Care and Our Youngest Children,” The Future of Children 11 (2001): 34–51; Chaudry and others, Cradle to Kindergarten: A New Plan to Combat Inequality .

24. Laughlin, “Who’s Minding the Kids ? Child Care Arrangements.”

25. Child Care Aware of America, “The US and the High Cost of Child Care.”

26. Amy Traub, Robert Hiltonsmith, and Tamara Draut, “The Parent Trap: The Economic Insecurity of Families with Young Children” (New York: Demos, 2016), available at http://www.demos.org/sites/default/files/publications/Parent Trap.pdf .

27. “Head Start,” available at https://www.childtrends.org/indicators/head-start (last accessed August 30, 2019).

28. Eligibility determined using federal rules. Nina Chien, “Factsheet: Estimates of Child Care Eligibility & Receipt for Fiscal Year 2015” (Washington: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2019), available at https://aspe.hhs.gov/system/files/pdf/260361/CY2015ChildCareSubsidyEligibility.pdf .

29. NCES IES, “Enrollment of 3-, 4-, and 5-Year-Old Children in Preprimary Programs, by Age of Child, Level of Program, Control of Program, and Attendance Status: Selected Years, 1970 through 2016” (2017), available at https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d17/tables/dt17_202.10.asp .

30. Katherine Magnuson and Jane Waldfogel, “Trends in Income-Related Gaps in Enrollment in Early Childhood Education: 1968 to 2013,” AERA Open 2 (2) (2016): 1–13, available at https://doi.org/10.1177/2332858416648933 ; Magnuson and Duncan, “Can Early Childhood Interventions Decrease Inequality of Economic Opportunity?”

31. Chaudry and others, Cradle to Kindergarten: A New Plan to Combat Inequality ; Daphna Bassok and others, “Within- and Between-Sector Quality Differences in Early Childhood Education and Care,” Child Development 87 (5) (2016): 1627–45, available at https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.12551 ; Rachel A. Gordon and Robin S. Högnäs, “The Best Laid Plans: Expectations, Preferences, and Stability of Child-Care Arrangements,” Journal of Marriage and Family 68 (2) (2006): 373–93, available at https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1741-3737.2006.00259.x .

32. Chaudry and others, Cradle to Kindergarten: A New Plan to Combat Inequality .

33. Magnuson and Duncan, “Can Early Childhood Interventions Decrease Inequality of Economic Opportunity?”; Chaudry and others, Cradle to Kindergarten: A New Plan to Combat Inequality .

34. Kimberly Burgess and others, “Trends in the Use of Early Care and Education, 1995-2011” (Washington: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2014), available at http://aspe.hhs.gov/hsp/14/EarlyCareEducation/rb_ece.pdf .

35. Chaudry and others, Cradle to Kindergarten: A New Plan to Combat Inequality .

36. Simon Workman, “Where Does Your Child Care Dollar Go? Understanding the True Cost of Quality Early Childhood Education” (Washington: Center for American Progress, 2018)

37. “Childcare Workers,” available at https://www.bls.gov/ooh/personal-care-and-service/childcare-workers.htm (last accessed August 30, 2019).

38. “Bus Drivers,” https://www.bls.gov/ooh/transportation-and-material-moving/bus-drivers.htm (last accessed August 30, 2019).

39. Rebecca Ullrich, Katie Hamm, and Rachel Herzfeldt-Kamprath, “Underpaid and Unequal: Racial Wage Disparities in the Early Childhood Workforce” (Washington: Center for American Progress, 2016), available at https://cdn.americanprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/01073800/NSECE-report2.pdf .

40. The Earned Income Tax Credit, or EITC; Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Program, or CHIP; the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP; or Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF.

41. Marcy Whitebook and others, “Early Childhood Workforce Index 2018” (Berkeley, CA: University of California, Berkeley, 2018), available at https://cscce.berkeley.edu/early-childhood-workforce-2018-index/ .

42. Matthew Manning and others, “Is Teacher Qualification Associated With the Quality of the Early Childhood Education and Care Environment? A Meta-Analytic Review,” Review of Educational Research 89 (3) (2019), available at https://doi.org/10.3102/0034654319837540 . See also Tran Henry and Weinraub Marsha, “Child Care Effects in Context: Quality, Stability, and Multiplicity in Nonmaternal Child Care Arrangements During the First 15 Months of Life,” Developmental Psychology 42 (3) (2006): 566, available at http://proquest.umi.com.proxyau.wrlc.org/pqdweb?did=1154133501&Fmt=7&clientId=31806&RQT=309&VName=PQD ; S. Loeb and others, “Child Care in Poor Communities: Early Learning Effects of Type, Quality, and Stability,” Child Development 75 (2004): 47–65; Martha Zaslow and others, “Quality Thresholds, Features, and Dosage in Early Care and Education: Introduction and Literature Review,” Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development 81 (2016): 7–27, available at https://doi.org/10.1111/mono.12236 ; Taryn W. Morrissey, “Multiple Child-Care Arrangements and Young Children’s Behavioral Outcomes,” Child Development 80 (1) (2009), available at https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8624.2008.01246.x ; Alejandra Ros Pilarz and Heather D. Hill, “Unstable and Multiple Child Care Arrangements and Young Children’s Behavior,” Early Childhood Research Quarterly 29 (4) (2014): 471–83, available at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecresq.2014.05.007 ; Mary E. Bratsch-Hines and others, “Child Care Instability from 6 to 36 Months and the Social Adjustment of Children in Prekindergarten,” Early Childhood Research Quarterly (2015), available at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecresq.2014.09.002 ; Taryn W. Morrissey, “Sequence of Child Care Type and Child Development: What Role Does Peer Exposure Play?” Early Childhood Research Quarterly 25 (1) (2010), available at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecresq.2009.08.005 ; NICHD Early Child Care Research Network, “Direct and Indirect Influences of Child Care Quality on Young Children’s Development,” Psychological Science 13 (2002): 199–206; Zaslow and others, “Quality Thresholds, Features, and Dosage in Early Care and Education: Introduction and Literature Review.”

43. Marcy Whitebook, Deborah Phillips, and Carollee Howes. “Worthy Work, STILL Unlivable Wages: The Early Childhood Workforce 25 Years after the National Child Care Staffing Study” (Berkeley, CA: University of California, Berkeley, 2014), available at https://cscce.berkeley.edu/files/2014/ReportFINAL.pdf .

44. Anna J. Markowitz and Daphna Bassok, “Teacher Turnover and Child Development in Head Start” (2018).

45. Michael Madowitz, Alex Rowell, and Katie Hamm, “Calculating the Hidden Cost of Interrupting a Career for Child Care” (Washington: Center for American Progress, 2016), available at https://cdn.americanprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/17091517/ChildCareCalculator-methodology.pdf .

46. Clive R. Belfield, “The Economic Impacts of Insufficient Child Care on Working Families” (Washington: ReadyNation, 2018), available at https://strongnation.s3.amazonaws.com/documents/522/3c5cdb46-eda2-4723-9e8e-f20511cc9f0f.pdf?1542205790&inline; filename=%22The Economic Impacts of Insufficient Child Care on Working Families.pdf%22 .

47. ReadyNation, “Want to Grow the Economy? Fix the Child Care Crisis” (2019), available at https://strongnation.s3.amazonaws.com/documents/602/83bb2275-ce07-4d74-bcee-ff6178daf6bd.pdf?1547054862&inline; filename=%22Want to Grow the Economy? Fix the Child Care Crisis.pdf%22 .

48. William T. Gormley, “Universal vs. Targeted Prekindergarten: Reflections for Policymakers.” In The Current State of Scientific Knowledge on Pre-Kindergarten Effects (Washington: The Brookings Institution, 2017), pp. 51–56.

49. Christina Weiland and Hirokazu Yoshikawa, “Does Higher Peer Socio-Economic Status Predict Children’s Language and Executive Function Skills Gains in Prekindergarten?” Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology 35 (5) (2014), available at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appdev.2014.07.001 .

50. Elizabeth U. Cascio, “Does Universal Preschool Hit the Target? Program Access and Preschool Impacts.” Working Paper 23215 (National Bureau of Economic Research, 2017), available at https://doi.org/10.3386/w23215 ; Gormley, “Universal vs. Targeted Prekindergarten: Reflections for Policymakers.”

51. Greg Duncan and Aaron Sojourner, “Can Intensive Early Childhood Intervention Programs Eliminate Income-Based Cognitive and Achievement Gaps?” Journal of Human Resources 48 (4) (2013): 945–968.

52. Dani Carrillo and others, “Instability of Work and Care: How Work Schedules Shape Child-Care Arrangements for Parents Working in the Service Sector,” Social Service Review 91 (3) (2017): 422–55, available at https://doi.org/10.1086/693750 .

53. “Child Care for Working Families Act of 2019: Fact Sheet,” available at https://www.help.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/CCFWFA Fact Sheet 116th Congress FINAL.pdf (last accessed August 30, 2019).

54. “S. 1878: Universal Child Care and Early Learning Act,”available at https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/116/s1878/text (last accessed July 16, 2019).

55. Ajay Chaudry and Katie Hamm, “The Child Care for Working Families Act Will Boost Employment and Create Jobs” (Washington: Center for American Progress, 2017), available at https://cdn.americanprogress.org/content/uploads/2017/12/06070052/ChildCareWorkforce-brief.pdf .

56. Maya Rossin-Slater, “Maternity and Family Leave Policy.” In Susan L. Averett, Laura M. Argys, and Saul D. Hoffman, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Women and the Economy (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2017), available at https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190628963.013.23 ; Christopher J. Ruhm, “Policies to Assist Parents with Young Children.,” The Future Of Children 21 (2) (2011): 37–68, available at https://doi.org/10.1353/foc.2011.0015 ; Charles L. Baum and Christopher J. Ruhm, “The Effects of Paid Family Leave in California on Labor Market Outcomes,” Journal of Policy Analysis and Management 35 (2) (2016), available at https://doi.org/10.1002/pam.21894 ; Lindsey Rose Bullinger, “The Effect of Paid Family Leave on Infant and Parental Health in the United States,” Journal of Health Economics 66 (2019): 101–16, available at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhealeco.2019.05.006 ; Alexandra B. Stanczyk, “Does Paid Family Leave Improve Household Economic Security Following a Birth ? Evidence from California,” Social Service Review (2019); Shirlee Lichtman-Sadot and Neryvia Pillay Bell, “Child Health in Elementary School Following California’s Paid Family Leave Program,” Journal of Policy Analysis and Management 36 (4) (2017): 790–827, available at https://doi.org/10.1002/pam.22012 .

57. Allison H. Friedman-Krauss and others, “The National Institute for Early Education Research: The State of Preschool 2018” (New Brunswick, NJ: NIEER, 2018), available at http://nieer.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/YB2018_Full-ReportR2.pdf .

58. Yoshikawa and others, “Investing in Our Future: The Evidence Base on Preschool Education”; Phillips and others, “Puzzling It out: The Current State of Scientific Knowledge on Pre-Kindergarten Effects”; Duncan and Magnuson, “Investing in Preschool Programs.” See also Pau Balart, Matthijs Oosterveen, and Dinand Webbink, “Test Scores, Noncognitive Skills and Economic Growth,” Economics of Education Review 63 (2018): 134–53, available at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.econedurev.2017.12.004 ; Katherine A. Magnuson and Jane Waldfogel, “Early Childhood Care and Education: Effects on Ethnic and Racial Gaps in School Readiness,” The Future of Children / Center for the Future of Children, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation 15 (1) (2005): 169–96; Magnuson and Duncan, “Can Early Childhood Interventions Decrease Inequality of Economic Opportunity?”

Extensive nonstandard work hours among U.S. low-income mothers hinder their kids’ enrollment in center-based childcare

August 12, 2019

Economist Currie’s research on early childhood care and education highlights the need for a national childcare policy

April 2, 2019

Who Cares if Parents have Unpredictable Work Schedules?: The Association between Just-in-Time Work Schedules and Child Care Arrangements

October 16, 2019

Short and medium run impacts of preschool education: Evidence from state pre-k programs

December 4, 2018

Equity, efficiency and education spending in the United States

June 27, 2017

Public investment is crucial to strengthening U.S. economic growth and tackling inequality

September 23, 2019

Explore the Equitable Growth network of experts around the country and get answers to today's most pressing questions!

• Get Involved
• Our Approach
• Orphan Train

Annual Report

Explore the heartwarming victories and transformative journeys within our 2023 Annual Report, 'For the Win!' Join us as we celebrate resilience, community, and the countless ways Children's Aid empowers lives.

• Our Stories
• Public Policy
• Media Center

An Incredible Honor

Children’s Aid wins prestigious Nonprofit Excellence Award.

• Education and Leadership
• Summer Enrichment
• College and Career Readiness
• Health and Well-Being
• Sexual Health and Education
• Fitness and Recreation
• Family Supports
• Community Building
• Advocacy and Public Policy
• Volunteerism and Giving
• Site Locations
• Become a Corporate Partner
• Host a Fundraiser
• Sponsor an Event
• Learn about Planned Giving
• Join the Young Professionals Group

Take Action

Golf Classic

Join us on May 6 for our 25th Annual Golf Classic.

What Do You Know About Poverty in NYC?

The impact of poverty on health.

Poverty is a significant determinant of health outcomes, influencing various aspects of physical, mental, and social well-being. Individuals living in poverty face numerous challenges that adversely affect their health, often leading to a cycle of poor health and persistent poverty.

One of the most direct impacts of poverty on health is the limited access to healthcare services. Low-income individuals often lack health insurance, making it difficult to afford necessary medical treatments, preventive care, and medications. This can lead to untreated illnesses and conditions that worsen over time, increasing the risk of severe health problems.

Nutrition and Diet

Economic constraints can severely limit access to nutritious food. People living in poverty may rely on cheaper, less nutritious options, leading to poor diet and associated health issues such as obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular diseases.

Psychiatric hospitalization

The highest poverty neighborhoods have over twice as many psychiatric hospitalizations per capita as the lowest poverty neighborhoods in New York City.  

Work-limiting health conditions

Work-limiting health conditions are roughly twice as common among low-income New Yorkers and those in poverty versus higher-income New Yorkers.  

Poor Mental Health

More than half (57.4%) of food-insufficient New Yorkers had poor mental health—nearly twice the rate of food-sufficient New Yorkers (29.2%).  

Why Our Work at Children’s Aid is Crucial

The statistics above illustrate the critical importance of the work we do at Children’s Aid. We believe all children have limitless potential. However, for those surrounded by poverty and instability, the barriers to success can seem insurmountably high.

Poverty is a social determinant of health that can affect mental health throughout a person's life. It can limit access to:

• Safe neighborhoods
• Clean air and water
• Family and neighborhood resources

Additionally, poverty can lead to mental health issues through environmental stresses such as pollution, temperature extremes, and challenging sleep environments. 

Our Commitment to Breaking the Cycle

For 170 years, Children’s Aid has been dedicated to helping children and families thrive by providing comprehensive support. Our staff—comprising teachers, social workers, coaches, and healthcare providers—are committed to ensuring that children grow up healthy and strong. We are making a significant impact on the 50,000 children, youth, and families we serve. Read more about our work and see how we are making a difference in the lives of those affected by poverty.

How We Tackle Health Disparities

Nurses Month Spotlight: Barbara Doherty

Nurse Administrator Barbara Doherty cares for our medically fragile children in foster care.

School-Based Health Centers Provide Essential Care to Communities

Our school-based health centers serve students and their families, creating the foundations for healthy communities.

Meet Dr. Justin Kopa: Leading Clinical Care at Children's Aid

Dr. Justin Kopa has dedicated more than two decades to a medical career marked by compassion, innovation, and a steadfast commitment to underserved communities.

Get Updates!

Do you want to join us in making a meaningful impact in the lives of 50,000 children, youth, and families in new york city here are ways you can support our mission:.

Follow us on social media.

Work with us. Learn more about our current job openings.

Your donation can ensure that children affected by poverty have the opportunity to reach their full potential.

Did you take our quiz on poverty in NYC?

See below for the correct answers:, how does poverty affect a child’s development.

All of the above. Poverty can significantly impact a child's development, leading to speech, learning, and emotional issues. It also increases the risk of health problems, including heart disease, hypertension, stroke, obesity, and certain cancers. Children in poverty often face environmental risks such as pollution, food insecurity, housing instability, and crime, which can cause stress, behavioral problems, and substance abuse later in life.

New Yorkers facing poverty were how many times more likely to have serious psychological distress?

Among New Yorkers who experienced poverty or material hardship, 48% had high healthcare needs, 1.5 times more likely than those not facing economic disadvantage (31%). This increased need was primarily due to significantly higher rates of serious psychological distress (18% vs. 5%), in this case 3.6 times more likely than those not facing economic disadvantage.

Those facing economic disadvantage were how many times more likely to delay/forgo care due to cost?

Individuals experiencing economic disadvantage were 7.8 times more likely to delay or forgo medical care due to cost.

Black and Latino children in NYC make up what percentage of asthma hospitalization?

According to research released by Columbia University's School of Public Health, Black and Latino children made up 80% of asthma cases that require hospitalization. 

• Topics ›
• Poverty and income in the United States ›

1 in 7 Children Live in Poverty in the U.S.

Child poverty.

More than 11 million children were estimated to be living in poverty in 2021, according to U.S. Census Bureau data published by the Children’s Defense Fund. That equates to around one in seven children in the U.S., or 15.3 percent. It’s a high toll, and one even higher than the adult population, which was 10.5 percent for 19-64 year olds that year and 10.3 percent for adults aged 65+. According to an analysis by the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, this difference is due to factors such as the “cost of caregiving and its responsibilities, transitions to a single parenthood household, unemployment of parents, and disabilities of family members.”

As this chart shows, poverty levels are disproportionately higher among non-White populations. American Indian/Alaska Native children were particularly overrepresented, with 29.1 percent of this group living in poverty in 2021, followed closely behind by Black children at 27.1 percent, versus a comparatively low 8.8 percent of white children. In terms of absolute numbers, Hispanic children were the biggest group, with 4,168,000 registered as poor in 2021, according to the source, or 37.4 percent of all children who were in poverty.

Other patterns in the data highlighted by the Childrens’ Defense Foundation include the regional divide, with the South showing a child poverty prevalence of nearly 20 percent, or one in five children. This drops to below 15 percent in the Northeast, Midwest and West (closer to one in seven). Perhaps the starkest figure though, is for children living in a single female-headed household, where nearly four in ten (37.1 percent) were living in poverty in 2021.

Description

This chart shows the share of children who are categorized as poor in the United States in 2021, by census group.

Can I integrate infographics into my blog or website?

Yes, Statista allows the easy integration of many infographics on other websites. Simply copy the HTML code that is shown for the relevant statistic in order to integrate it. Our standard is 660 pixels, but you can customize how the statistic is displayed to suit your site by setting the width and the display size. Please note that the code must be integrated into the HTML code (not only the text) for WordPress pages and other CMS sites.

Infographic Newsletter

Statista offers daily infographics about trending topics, covering: Economy & Finance , Politics & Society , Tech & Media , Health & Environment , Consumer , Sports and many more.

Related Infographics

Land inequality, the global land squeeze, hate crimes, how common are hate crimes against queer people, agriculture is the biggest employer in india, who owns electric cars, africa wealth report 2024, where wealth is concentrated in africa, robotics and automation, asia races ahead in industrial robot installations, skin cancer awareness month, chances of getting melanoma of the skin, skin cancer awareness month, melanoma death rate falls in u.s. despite rising cases, china trade, china's most important export partners, movie industry, what are the best-known movie franchises in the u.s., shein in rank 3 of biggest u.s. online fashion retailers, interest rates, latest economic data throws cold water on rate cut hopes.

• Who may use the "Chart of the Day"? The Statista "Chart of the Day", made available under the Creative Commons License CC BY-ND 3.0, may be used and displayed without charge by all commercial and non-commercial websites. Use is, however, only permitted with proper attribution to Statista. When publishing one of these graphics, please include a backlink to the respective infographic URL. More Information
• Which topics are covered by the "Chart of the Day"? The Statista "Chart of the Day" currently focuses on two sectors: "Media and Technology", updated daily and featuring the latest statistics from the media, internet, telecommunications and consumer electronics industries; and "Economy and Society", which current data from the United States and around the world relating to economic and political issues as well as sports and entertainment.
• Does Statista also create infographics in a customized design? For individual content and infographics in your Corporate Design, please visit our agency website www.statista.design

Any more questions?

Get in touch with us quickly and easily. we are happy to help.

Feel free to contact us anytime using our contact form or visit our FAQ page .

Statista Content & Design

Need infographics, animated videos, presentations, data research or social media charts?

More Information

The Statista Infographic Newsletter

Receive a new up-to-date issue every day for free.

• Our infographics team prepares current information in a clear and understandable format
• Relevant facts covering media, economy, e-commerce, and FMCG topics
• Use our newsletter overview to manage the topics that you have subscribed to

Band 5+: Children brought up by poor family will struggle less, in the adult life, than who was brought up by wealthy parents

Being raised by parents who do not own lots of money prepares better to the struggles of life after the end of the studies, compare to being brought up by a rich family. A agree with this statement because children who had more difficulties growing up will be less scared and overwhelmed by adults’ problems. However, having wealthy patents provides economic security, which can make life a lot easier.

I believe that a child who has lived a more modest life, will soffer less in case of financial instability after graduation, than someone who has always got everything. For example, if you take a young adult grown up in a poor family and one from a rich household, and you put them in the shoes of a single parent struggling to arrive at the end of the month, the first would probably make better financial decision, and he or she would deal better with the stress than the second one. The reason is that he or she has already lived this kind of reality in the past, so he or she knows what to do to survive.

In the worst scenarios, who was brought up in poverty would do a better job. Having said this, it is also true that rich patents usually give their children better possibilities. For example paying their studies in a good university and helping them economically until they find a good job. As a result, you are more likely to find the child of an unwealthy family in trouble than the son or daughter of a doctor or a lawyer.

In conclusion, children brought up with less financial possibility are more flexible to solve problems than who have always got anything without any effort. At the same time, having parents with a lot of money can make life a less tedious travel.

Check Your Own Essay On This Topic?

Generate a band-9 sample with your idea, overall band score, task response, coherence & cohesion, lexical resource, grammatical range & accuracy, essays on the same topic:, children brought up by poor family will struggle less, in the adult life, than who was brought up by wealthy parents.

Being raised by parents who do not own lots of money prepares better to the struggles of life after the end of the studies, compare to being brought up by a rich family. A agree with this statement because children who had more difficulties growing up will be less scared and overwhelmed by adults’ problems. […]

Other Topics:

Advantages and disadvantages of using technology in education.

In recent years, technology has revolutionised the education sector, providing both benefits and drawbacks. This essay will discuss the advantages and disadvantages of incorporating technology into education and argue that the benefits outweigh the drawbacks. One major advantage of technology in education is enhanced learning opportunities. With the help of interactive multimedia tools, students can […]

It is the responsibility of schools to teach children good behavior in addition to providing formal education. To what extent do you agree or disagree?

In today’s world, self-awareness of one’s behaviors and personalities is often overshadowed by the pursuit of social recognition due to a lack of personal responsibility. This issue arises from deficiencies in the educational system, which significantly shapes children’s minds and attitudes. Recently, there has been a growing emphasis on teaching civics and behavior management in […]

People born today can expect to live longer than people in previous generations. What are some of the positive and negative implications of this phenomenon? Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own knowledge or experience.

Being able to live longer, is one the finest perks people have in this generation. In the previous centuries, people sought to live a little less, due to the factors like healthcare and medical facilities. In the 21st century due to the advancement of the medical world, this has been changed completely. I believe there […]

Some people say that punishment is the best way to teach children to behave well, while others disagree and point out that rewarding and praising them is better. Discuss both views and give your own opinion

A number of people argue that teaching children by punishing to behave them well, while others think rewarding is the best way. I absolutely disagree with that point of view. Although punishing is good way to make them study well, however rewarding is important to make good relationships with children that is why it is […]

Despite huge improvements in healthcare, the overall standard of physical health in many developed countries is now falling. What are the reasons for this and how can the problem be tackled?

In these recent years, the affair of physical health in several developed nations is now decreasing day by day. I, however, believe that there have been numerous reason for his trend, and many essential steps can be done to reverse it. Perhaps the main reason why various developed countries is now decreasing to maintain of […]

Plans & Pricing

A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

A lock ( ) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

• About Adverse Childhood Experiences
• Risk and Protective Factors
• Program: Essentials for Childhood: Preventing Adverse Childhood Experiences through Data to Action
• Adverse childhood experiences can have long-term impacts on health, opportunity and well-being.
• Adverse childhood experiences are common and some groups experience them more than others.

What are adverse childhood experiences?

Adverse childhood experiences, or ACEs, are potentially traumatic events that occur in childhood (0-17 years). Examples include: 1

• Experiencing violence, abuse, or neglect.
• Witnessing violence in the home or community.
• Having a family member attempt or die by suicide.

Also included are aspects of the child’s environment that can undermine their sense of safety, stability, and bonding. Examples can include growing up in a household with: 1

• Substance use problems.
• Mental health problems.
• Instability due to parental separation.
• Instability due to household members being in jail or prison.

The examples above are not a complete list of adverse experiences. Many other traumatic experiences could impact health and well-being. This can include not having enough food to eat, experiencing homelessness or unstable housing, or experiencing discrimination. 2 3 4 5 6

Quick facts and stats

ACEs are common. About 64% of adults in the United States reported they had experienced at least one type of ACE before age 18. Nearly one in six (17.3%) adults reported they had experienced four or more types of ACEs. 7

Preventing ACEs could potentially reduce many health conditions. Estimates show up to 1.9 million heart disease cases and 21 million depression cases potentially could have been avoided by preventing ACEs. 1

Some people are at greater risk of experiencing one or more ACEs than others. While all children are at risk of ACEs, numerous studies show inequities in such experiences. These inequalities are linked to the historical, social, and economic environments in which some families live. 5 6 ACEs were highest among females, non-Hispanic American Indian or Alaska Native adults, and adults who are unemployed or unable to work. 7

ACEs are costly. ACEs-related health consequences cost an estimated economic burden of $748 billion annually in Bermuda, Canada, and the United States. 8

ACEs can have lasting effects on health and well-being in childhood and life opportunities well into adulthood. 9 Life opportunities include things like education and job potential. These experiences can increase the risks of injury, sexually transmitted infections, and involvement in sex trafficking. They can also increase risks for maternal and child health problems including teen pregnancy, pregnancy complications, and fetal death. Also included are a range of chronic diseases and leading causes of death, such as cancer, diabetes, heart disease, and suicide. 1 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17

ACEs and associated social determinants of health, such as living in under-resourced or racially segregated neighborhoods, can cause toxic stress. Toxic stress, or extended or prolonged stress, from ACEs can negatively affect children’s brain development, immune systems, and stress-response systems. These changes can affect children’s attention, decision-making, and learning. 18

Children growing up with toxic stress may have difficulty forming healthy and stable relationships. They may also have unstable work histories as adults and struggle with finances, jobs, and depression throughout life. 18 These effects can also be passed on to their own children. 19 20 21 Some children may face further exposure to toxic stress from historical and ongoing traumas. These historical and ongoing traumas refer to experiences of racial discrimination or the impacts of poverty resulting from limited educational and economic opportunities. 1 6

Adverse childhood experiences can be prevented. Certain factors may increase or decrease the risk of experiencing adverse childhood experiences.

Preventing adverse childhood experiences requires understanding and addressing the factors that put people at risk for or protect them from violence.

Creating safe, stable, nurturing relationships and environments for all children can prevent ACEs and help all children reach their full potential. We all have a role to play.

• Merrick MT, Ford DC, Ports KA, et al. Vital Signs: Estimated Proportion of Adult Health Problems Attributable to Adverse Childhood Experiences and Implications for Prevention — 25 States, 2015–2017. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep 2019;68:999-1005. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.15585/mmwr.mm6844e1 .
• Cain KS, Meyer SC, Cummer E, Patel KK, Casacchia NJ, Montez K, Palakshappa D, Brown CL. Association of Food Insecurity with Mental Health Outcomes in Parents and Children. Science Direct. 2022; 22:7; 1105-1114. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.acap.2022.04.010 .
• Smith-Grant J, Kilmer G, Brener N, Robin L, Underwood M. Risk Behaviors and Experiences Among Youth Experiencing Homelessness—Youth Risk Behavior Survey, 23 U.S. States and 11 Local School Districts. Journal of Community Health. 2022; 47: 324-333.
• Experiencing discrimination: Early Childhood Adversity, Toxic Stress, and the Impacts of Racism on the Foundations of Health | Annual Review of Public Health https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-publhealth-090419-101940 .
• Sedlak A, Mettenburg J, Basena M, et al. Fourth national incidence study of child abuse and neglect (NIS-4): Report to Congress. Executive Summary. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Health an Human Services, Administration for Children and Families.; 2010.
• Font S, Maguire-Jack K. Pathways from childhood abuse and other adversities to adult health risks: The role of adult socioeconomic conditions. Child Abuse Negl. 2016;51:390-399.
• Swedo EA, Aslam MV, Dahlberg LL, et al. Prevalence of Adverse Childhood Experiences Among U.S. Adults — Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, 2011–2020. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep 2023;72:707–715. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.15585/mmwr.mm7226a2 .
• Bellis, MA, et al. Life Course Health Consequences and Associated Annual Costs of Adverse Childhood Experiences Across Europe and North America: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. Lancet Public Health 2019.
• Adverse Childhood Experiences During the COVID-19 Pandemic and Associations with Poor Mental Health and Suicidal Behaviors Among High School Students — Adolescent Behaviors and Experiences Survey, United States, January–June 2021 | MMWR
• Hillis SD, Anda RF, Dube SR, Felitti VJ, Marchbanks PA, Marks JS. The association between adverse childhood experiences and adolescent pregnancy, long-term psychosocial consequences, and fetal death. Pediatrics. 2004 Feb;113(2):320-7.
• Miller ES, Fleming O, Ekpe EE, Grobman WA, Heard-Garris N. Association Between Adverse Childhood Experiences and Adverse Pregnancy Outcomes. Obstetrics & Gynecology . 2021;138(5):770-776. https://doi.org/10.1097/AOG.0000000000004570 .
• Sulaiman S, Premji SS, Tavangar F, et al. Total Adverse Childhood Experiences and Preterm Birth: A Systematic Review. Matern Child Health J . 2021;25(10):1581-1594. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10995-021-03176-6 .
• Ciciolla L, Shreffler KM, Tiemeyer S. Maternal Childhood Adversity as a Risk for Perinatal Complications and NICU Hospitalization. Journal of Pediatric Psychology . 2021;46(7):801-813. https://doi.org/10.1093/jpepsy/jsab027 .
• Mersky JP, Lee CP. Adverse childhood experiences and poor birth outcomes in a diverse, low-income sample. BMC pregnancy and childbirth. 2019;19(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12884-019-2560-8 .
• Reid JA, Baglivio MT, Piquero AR, Greenwald MA, Epps N. No youth left behind to human trafficking: Exploring profiles of risk. American journal of orthopsychiatry. 2019;89(6):704.
• Diamond-Welch B, Kosloski AE. Adverse childhood experiences and propensity to participate in the commercialized sex market. Child Abuse & Neglect. 2020 Jun 1;104:104468.
• Shonkoff, J. P., Garner, A. S., Committee on Psychosocial Aspects of Child and Family Health, Committee on Early Childhood, Adoption, and Dependent Care, & Section on Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics (2012). The lifelong effects of early childhood adversity and toxic stress. Pediatrics, 129(1), e232–e246. https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2011-2663
• Narayan AJ, Kalstabakken AW, Labella MH, Nerenberg LS, Monn AR, Masten AS. Intergenerational continuity of adverse childhood experiences in homeless families: unpacking exposure to maltreatment versus family dysfunction. Am J Orthopsych. 2017;87(1):3. https://doi.org/10.1037/ort0000133 .
• Schofield TJ, Donnellan MB, Merrick MT, Ports KA, Klevens J, Leeb R. Intergenerational continuity in adverse childhood experiences and rural community environments. Am J Public Health. 2018;108(9):1148-1152. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2018.304598 .
• Schofield TJ, Lee RD, Merrick MT. Safe, stable, nurturing relationships as a moderator of intergenerational continuity of child maltreatment: a meta-analysis. J Adolesc Health. 2013;53(4 Suppl):S32-38. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jadohealth.2013.05.004 .

Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs)

ACEs can have a tremendous impact on lifelong health and opportunity. CDC works to understand ACEs and prevent them.

Interesting Facts

19 Telltale Signs of a Humble Upbringing That Wasn’t Realized Until Adulthood

Posted: May 23, 2024 | Last updated: May 23, 2024

Thankfully, kids rarely think or worry about how much money they have—that’s their parents’ job. Many parents do a great job of keeping money anxieties away from their kids despite the hardships they may have faced.

Children delight in simple joys, needing little to experience contentment. Even children who grew up quite poor are often oblivious because their parents helped them focus on what they did have (and they didn’t know any other way).

However, as our perspectives broaden and we meet more people from various backgrounds, we become aware of the privileges and luxuries that may have escaped our notice during childhood. At some point, you may have finally realized that your life looks quite different from others who have more money than you.

Thankfully, growing up “poor” doesn’t necessarily mean one had a bad childhood. It simply means they experienced the world differently. Someone asked online, “What’s something a poor kid would understand but would utterly confuse a rich kid?”

1. Not Being in a School with Trips And Vacations

Some schools were the complete package, with trips and vacations; some kids couldn’t afford it. Others didn’t even know such things were available for school-going kids.

A user says, “Watching the rest of the class go on class trips or vacations while you stay home and/or work.”

Someone adds, “Going to a school that even offered this in the first place, lol. I had no idea this was even a thing until I was in my 20s.”

2. The Real Meaning Of New

Individuals who didn’t have much during their upbringing often received many “new” clothes and toys, even though they were handed down or from the local thrift shop. It wasn’t until many of them reached adulthood that they realized “new” meant unused, not just something they hadn’t possessed before, but rather something that someone else hadn’t used either.

3. Internet at The Library

There was internet in the library, and that’s the only place some people could access it. They may not have known it, but wealthier people had the internet at home.

4. Checking Prices Isn’t “Normal”

Some people are never bothered by the price tags; they just pick and drop things into the cart. That’s one way to know if you’re rich or not. (Although it’s always good to be aware of our spending habits, no matter how much or little we make.)

A user says, “My cousins are upper middle class, and I went shopping with them during one of the only times I spent the night at their house. Not only were these 12-year-old girls astounded that my mom only gave me $10 to spend while there, but they couldn’t at all understand why I was checking the prices on everything we saw. Their parents just bought them whatever they wanted most of the time.”

5. Food is Your Love Language

You haven’t known real poverty until eating when hungry isn’t an option. Many adults who grew up struggling to get food (or at least the food they craved) are now very wary of hunger and will do anything to make sure other people don’t experience it.

A user states, “My entire identity revolves around food. I use my spare “fun” money on food now. I give gifts of food, I take friends out to eat; I give people their [favorite] snacks and candy bars as little surprises. We never had enough as a kid, we went hungry every da*n day. And now, I express myself through food.”

6. Helping Paying Bills

The concept of bills typically doesn’t enter most kids’ lives until well into adulthood, but some begin learning about bill payments before turning 18.

One user commented, “‘Getting a job before the age of 18 to help pay the rent’ was a clear sign that they weren’t from an affluent background.”

7. Caring About The Height Of Your Gas Tank Line

Some people have never had their car filled to a full tank or above the half-tank line. For the most part, the car would be sustained by prayers in the race to the fueling station from when the fuel light comes on.

A full gas tank was too expensive to cover regularly, so getting by on a few dollars of gas and fumes had to be sufficient until the next payday (the parents or teens).

8. Parents Helping With Bills After 18

For some people in the US, 18 is the age cap when parents stop sorting out their bills for them. Some are even required to move out and be independent. Imagine growing up and discovering that some people still get their bills paid by their parents, sometimes for as long as they want.

9. What Informs Your Choice Of Food

You buy food today because you love it (and need to eat), but for some people, food choice is based entirely on the price and its ability to fill your tummy.

One user says his poverty measure was “Buying food, not for taste or preference, but for the price point and how filling it is.”

10. Getting Clothes A Size Bigger

Poor families always got clothes they could grow into, not particularly fitting ones.

An online contributor says, “I remember when we would go shopping for school clothes, it was at Walmart or Kmart and it was always the sale items and 1 size up so we could grow into it.”

11. Where Do You Find Hamburgers?

Some people are so rich that they have hamburgers in their houses. Not everyone could afford this, as one user narrates. Meat is often a high priced commodity that no everyone can afford to have at home regularly, or at all.

They say, “When I was a kid, I thought hamburger buns were available only at places like McDonald’s.”

12. Laundromat Boredom

Spending hours at the laundromat on the occasional weekend when everyone’s clothes were ripe and ready for a good rinse is something rich kids will never understand.

Finding something to do at a laundromat before phones and the internet was quite the task, too. A deck of cards or a large dose of imagination was necessary to pass the time.

13. Constant Money Anxiety

Always being one step away from financial ruin is a feeling many families deal with on the regular, barely making it from paycheck to paycheck.

One user shares, “Every time you get a little bit ahead, an extra $100 dollars or so, and being able to relax and breathe a bit. Next day something goes catastrophically wrong with the car, or an appliance, or an unexpected late charge on something you forgot about. It never ends. One step forward, two steps back.”

14. “Sandwiches” for Dinner

Parents have to be creative when their bank account is at zero. One writer recalls, “Sugar sandwiches for dinner. Butter, sugar and bread. We thought it was like dessert for dinner but my mom told us recently it was because we didn’t have any food.”

15. Powdered Milk

Fresh milk in a jug can be too expensive on a strict budget; many poor families settle for instant carnation milk, which can last a long time in the pantry. If you grew up drinking this, your family probably struggled with finances on some level.

16. Candle Nights

Not being able to pay the bills and getting utilities cut is a surefire sign of money struggles that kids may not realize until they’re older.

A user writes, “Being really young and getting excited about the “power cut”, lighting candles etc. when really it was because we couldn’t afford electricity.”

17. Buying Your Own Shoes

One man recalls a friend’s confusion when he explained that he couldn’t afford a new pair of shoes at the moment, even though his current ones were “ugly.” His friend wondered why his parents couldn’t just buy him a pair.

18. Missing Out on Adventures

Oblivious rich privilege can make kids with less money realize they’re missing out on a lot of fun and activities.

A user shares, ”How bad it feels when a non-poor kid (even up to adulthood) mentions doing something expensive casually or worse, makes a big deal about you never doing it.”

19. Watered Down Shampoo

Need toiletries to last longer? Try watering them down like some families did to stretch their dollars. The same goes for other other household items like fruit juice (if there’s any in the house).

20 Things Poor People Waste Money on, According to Suze Orman

If you’ve ever watched her show, you know Suze Orman pulls no punches. She’s all about calling out bad money choices, urging people to take control of their financial destinies and ditch those pesky spending habits that derail progress. While her advice can be blunt, she aims to empower folks to build wealth and protect their financial futures.

It’s important to note, Suze Orman gets flak sometimes for being too harsh. She’s not shaming people, but highlighting how certain expenses can sabotage big goals like homeownership or a comfortable retirement.

12 Traits of Unsuccessful People Who Never Do Anything with Their Lives

Scared of lagging behind or staying in the same position? Well, let’s talk about it! In this article, we’ll find 12 common traits of unsuccessful people who never do anything with their lives so that you won’t be one of them. 

12 Culturally Acceptable Habits That Leave Americans Drowning in Debt

The  average  American household carries over $103,000 in debt, including mortgages, credit cards, and car loans. While there are various factors that contribute to this staggering number, there are also certain culturally acceptable habits that have played a major role in leaving America drowning in debt.

More for You

20 Hollywood Stars Who Disappeared from Sight

Here’s How Often You Should Really Shower

Taylor Swift fixes wardrobe malfunction during 'Eras Tour'

16 Coolest Small Towns in the U.S. You’ve Never Heard Of

We may have found a new telltale sign of alien life

Stephen King's Book Is Already Getting Rave Reviews

Sondra Locke, Clint Eastwood and the tragic disappearance of a Hollywood trailblazer

‘Old People Smell’ Is Real, Here’s What Causes It and How To Avoid It

A 50-year-old man used an obscure IRS rule to withdraw $20K a year from his retirement savings — without any penalty. Here's how

Priyanka Chopra Proves Peplum Can Be Glamorous in Two Major Gowns

Yellowstone coyote not alone; can you spot the other mammal?

I was fired from my new job after 3 days. It taught me that mental health is more important than earning money.

Tony Goldwyn Says Robert De Niro's Relationship with His Daughter Helen Is 'Beautiful to See' (Exclusive)

“Everybody fell on the floor in hysterics”: Steven Spielberg Couldn’t Cut the Best Unscripted Moment From Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

Angel Reese clotheslined as WNBA veteran gets ejected: 'I kept going and kept pushing'

Anne Hathaway’s Button-Down Shirt Dress Is Actually Custom Gap

Wash Your Hands Immediately After Touching These 10 Things

The Mamas & the Papas: What Happened To The Members?

This U.S. State Is One of the Best Places to Retire for Low Crime, Taxes, and an Affordable Cost of Living

Don't even think about retiring until you have these 3 things paid off — and no, your mortgage isn't one of them