How Poverty Can Follow Children Into Adulthood

How Poverty Can Follow Children Into Adulthood

At the height of the recession in 2012, nearly one in four American children were living in poverty.

Today, five years after America went through the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, children are still more likely to live in poverty than adults. In fact, while the national poverty rate sits at 14 percent, for children, it’s 18 percent.

The problem is particularly acute for children of color. While white children experience poverty at a rate of 11 percent, around 27 percent of Hispanic children, 31 percent of black children and 34 percent of Native American children in America today are growing up poor.

There are the obvious side-effects of growing up in poverty: deprivation, worry, and sometimes hunger and the risk of homelessness.

But just as troubling, experts say, is that growing up in a poor household is linked with long-term consequences in educational outcomes, physical health and brain development that can follow a child well into adulthood. Here are just a few ways how:

The longer you grow up in poverty, the harder it is to graduate

One factor at play for why poor children go on to struggle as adults is education. Whether it’s because they didn’t have access to good schools, or their parents didn’t have the time or resources to help them, children who grow up in poverty often start at a disadvantage that can make it harder to achieve later in life…

Read more about this great piece recently aired in Frontline https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/how-poverty-can-follow-children-into-adulthood/

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