essay on poor child education

A World of Hardship: Deep Poverty and the Struggle for Educational Equity

This post is part of LPI's Learning in the Time of COVID-19 blog series, which explores evidence-based and equity-focused strategies and investments to address the current crisis and build long-term systems capacity.

One day you get out there and actually see where the children you serve on a daily basis come from. Several teachers came back after delivering food and broke down in tears telling me what they saw. A student was living in a home with no roof; they’ve got a tarp for a roof kept on by bricks and tires. Homes didn’t have doors. —Principal of a rural high-poverty elementary school

As this quote powerfully conveys, families living in deep poverty face profound material, social, and emotional hardships. Households in deep poverty suffer from food shortages, unemployment, unstable housing, inadequate medical care , electrical shutoffs, and isolation.

Children living in households in deep poverty are often “invisible” to more affluent community members—and likely to many educators as well. Too often, the plight of students living in deep poverty is subsumed under the broad definition of poverty, which does not reveal the unique hardships that are endured by those families and children with virtually no material resources . For those of us who believe in educational equity, making the invisible visible is the first step in overcoming deep disadvantage.

The U.S. Census Bureau defines deep poverty as living in a household with total cash income that is below 50% of the poverty threshold. As the National Center for Children in Poverty map below indicates, no state is without children living in deep poverty. Although the percentage varies considerably across states, all states have at least 5% of their children living far below the poverty line. In total, more than 5 million children in the United States live in deep poverty, including nearly 1 in 5 Black children under the age of 5.

With the explosion of the health and economic crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, households living in deep poverty have been pushed to the edge of survival: Nearly 4 in 10 Black and Latino households with children are struggling to feed their families . These numbers will no doubt grow as job losses mount, as do the numbers of children and adults of color who are contracting—and, in a disproportionate number of cases, dying from—COVID-19.

Why Deep Poverty Matters for Educators

Recently, Stanford researcher Sean Reardon and his colleagues conducted a national study on racial segregation and achievement gaps. In describing the findings he noted, “While racial segregation is important, it’s not the race of one’s classmates that matters, per se. It’s the fact that in America today, racial segregation brings with it very unequal concentrations of students in high- and low-poverty schools.” Another recent study of poverty and its effects on learning determined that levels of poverty matter in the abilities of students to succeed in school. According to the authors, “The experiences of children living in families with incomes just below the poverty line are likely quite different from those living in extreme poverty. Parents’ struggles to provide sufficient food and shelter for children may affect child academic achievement.”

The authors go on to note that the “depth of the poverty” matters both for the day-to-day life of students and families, and for public policy. “To determine appropriate subsidy levels and the types of services needed by children and families, policymakers need detailed data about the depth of family poverty. Studies have shown that simply classifying people as ‘in poverty’ or ‘not in poverty’ is not sufficient. The diversity in access to economic resources due to the depth of poverty helps explain the gaps in family investment in children’s education.”

The impact of poverty on children’s ability to learn is profound and occurs at an early age. A recent study of the neurological effects of deep poverty on young children’s development found that “poverty is tied to structural differences in several areas of the brain associated with school readiness skills, with the largest influence observed among children from the poorest households…. As much as 20% of the gap in test scores could be explained by maturational lags in the frontal and temporal lobes.” These effects were found to be associated with the consequences of living in deep poverty at an early age, some of which include premature and low-birthweight babies; poor nutrition and living without sufficient food; exposure to toxins, such as lead paint or contaminated drinking water; and lack of access to early learning opportunities.

If we are to educate the whole child , regardless of their family’s income, it is essential to provide an array of academic and social services that ensures that equity of opportunity reaches those students living in deep poverty.

The Importance of Accurately Determining Eligibility for Increased Services

In May 2020, the Learning Policy Institute published Measuring Student Socioeconomic Status: Toward a Comprehensive Approach . This report analyzes the limitations of the current methods used by school systems for measuring students’ socioeconomic status for purposes of allocating resources to meet their needs. Noting the limitations of determining a student’s level of poverty by her or his eligibility for free and reduced-price lunch—even when this measure is enhanced through direct certification of eligibility for other poverty-related programs—the report concludes that the development of new student poverty measures is urgently needed.

Blog Series: Learning in the Time of COVID-19

This blog series explores strategies and investments to address the current crisis and build long-term systems capacity. View all blogs >

The report also notes that researchers have suggested alternative measures of student poverty, some of which include parental education, student mobility, and community income as proxy measures. These strategies, however, do not appear to be capable of capturing the depth of an individual student’s poverty with the accuracy required to create and maintain academic and social programs designed and funded to meet the needs of students living in households in deep poverty. A more robust, reliable, and valid measure of students experiencing deep poverty is needed.

For several years, researchers at the Bendheim-Thomas Center for Research on Child Wellbeing at Princeton University have felt the pressing need to “move beyond income-based measures of poverty, ” according to Center Co-Director Kathryn Edin. She and her colleagues are currently utilizing measures of hardship that are more likely to reveal depth of poverty beyond income measures alone.

While there are a number of measures that identify deep poverty, perhaps the most direct, reliable, and valid measure available is a survey of a household’s ability to take care of the basic necessities of life. Households in deep poverty regularly experience food and housing insecurity, often can’t pay their bills, and are unable to access health care when they need it. At a time when access to the internet is essential for a student’s ability to learn online, families living in deep poverty often have their electricity shut off for lack of payment.

One of the most valid and reliable of these “material hardship” types of surveys has been used by the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) and, later, the Fragile Families Challenge . Material hardship measures ask direct questions about forgone consumption—that is, what families have had to do without when they may have to live on as little as two dollars a day .

Generally, surveys of material hardship consist of 10 or more questions. Below are some of the types of questions that might be included in a school-based survey to better understand the day-to-day realities for students and families:

• In the past 12 months, were you ever hungry, but didn’t eat because you couldn’t afford enough food?
• In the past 12 months, did you move in with other people even for a little while because of financial problems?
• In the past 12 months, was there anyone in your household who needed to see a doctor or go to the hospital but couldn’t go because of the cost?
• In the past 12 months, did you receive free food or meals?
• In the past 12 months, did you not pay the full amount of a gas, oil, or electricity bill?

These measures do not replace income measures; they supplement them in order to get a fuller understanding of the lived experience of families living in deep poverty. For example, as a supplementary measure, a survey of material hardship could be incorporated into the free and reduced-price lunch forms sent to families to determine their eligibility to receive meals at school. When the material hardship surveys are returned, school administrators would have a clear indication of which students are living in deep poverty.

This recommendation can be seen as a first step in a more comprehensive approach to measuring deep poverty of students. Undocumented or mixed-status families might hesitate to complete government forms for fear of deportation; some families might not complete the material hardship survey due to privacy or other concerns. Some of these concerns could be addressed in community school settings, where the ties between families and the school are often close and continuous. The establishment of trust is a bond that can help to overcome the fear of government.

More From the Blog Series

• In the Fallout of the Pandemic, Community Schools Show a Way Forward for Education
• School-Based Health Centers: Trusted Lifelines in a Time of Crisis
• County-Level Coordination Provides Infrastructure, Funding for Community Schools Initiative

To some busy school administrators, adding any survey might seem burdensome, but the returns on a short material hardship survey are very high. With this information, schools and school systems will be able to tailor programs to meet the needs of children and young adults living in families in deep poverty. These programs should support students’ health and well-being, as well as include academic enhancement and enrichment. In the context of the COVID-19 crisis, waiting for the perfect measure could result in increased hardship for students trapped in deep poverty.

Toward Educational Equity

Since the 1990s, the social safety net has been basically shredded. As a result, in many communities, the local public school system is often the only entity situated to meet the needs of students from families in deep poverty by providing meals as well as a safe place to be during the day. Early intervention programs, such a free and high-quality early childhood programs , are a very promising approach to mitigating the effects of deep poverty on young children. Community schools , which provide students and families with a range of supports and services to mitigate the impact of deep poverty—from health and mental health care to before- and after-school care and social service supports—are another promising example. Ensuring that these services are available to children in deep poverty can literally mean the difference between life and death—and between a chance in life and none—for many of these young people.

These are just two examples of how information about students’ level of poverty can lead to improved and expanded services and supports to meet their needs. Of course, schools alone cannot reverse the impact of deep poverty on children, families, and communities. But without well-financed schools with the targeted resources needed to enable students’ learning, the negative effects of deep poverty on children will remain, now and in the future.

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How does education affect poverty?

For starters, it can help end it.

Aug 10, 2023

Access to high-quality primary education and supporting child well-being is a globally-recognized solution to the cycle of poverty. This is, in part, because it also addresses many of the other issues that keep communities vulnerable.

Education is often referred to as the great equalizer: It can open the door to jobs, resources, and skills that help a person not only survive, but thrive. In fact, according to UNESCO, if all students in low-income countries had just basic reading skills (nothing else), an estimated 171 million people could escape extreme poverty. If all adults completed secondary education, we could cut the global poverty rate by more than half. 

At its core, a quality education supports a child’s developing social, emotional, cognitive, and communication skills. Children who attend school also gain knowledge and skills, often at a higher level than those who aren’t in the classroom. They can then use these skills to earn higher incomes and build successful lives.

Here’s more on seven of the key ways that education affects poverty.

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1. Education is linked to economic growth

Education is the best way out of poverty in part because it is strongly linked to economic growth. A 2021 study co-published by Stanford University and Munich’s Ludwig Maximilian University shows us that, between 1960 and 2000, 75% of the growth in gross domestic product around the world was linked to increased math and science skills. 

“The relationship between…the knowledge capital of a nation, and the long-run [economic] rowth rate is extraordinarily strong,” the study’s authors conclude. This is just one of the most recent studies linking education and economic growth that have been published since 1990.

“The relationship between…the knowledge capital of a nation, and the long-run [economic] growth rate is extraordinarily strong.” — Education and Economic Growth (2021 study by Stanford University and the University of Munich)

2. Universal education can fight inequality

A 2019 Oxfam report says it best: “Good-quality education can be liberating for individuals, and it can act as a leveler and equalizer within society.” 

Poverty thrives in part on inequality. All types of systemic barriers (including physical ability, religion, race, and caste) serve as compound interest against a marginalization that already accrues most for those living in extreme poverty. Education is a basic human right for all, and — when tailored to the unique needs of marginalized communities — can be used as a lever against some of the systemic barriers that keep certain groups of people furthest behind. 

For example, one of the biggest inequalities that fuels the cycle of poverty is gender. When gender inequality in the classroom is addressed, this has a ripple effect on the way women are treated in their communities. We saw this at work in Afghanistan , where Concern developed a Community-Based Education program that allowed students in rural areas to attend classes closer to home, which is especially helpful for girls.

Four ways that girls’ education can change the world

Gender discrimination is one of the many barriers to education around the world. That’s a situation we need to change.

3. Education is linked to lower maternal and infant mortality rates

Speaking of women, education also means healthier mothers and children. Examining 15 countries in sub-Saharan Africa, researchers from the World Bank and International Center for Research on Women found that educated women tend to have fewer children and have them later in life. This generally leads to better outcomes for both the mother and her kids, with safer pregnancies and healthier newborns. 

A 2017 report shows that the country’s maternal mortality rate had declined by more than 70% in the last 25 years, approximately the same amount of time that an amendment to compulsory schooling laws took place in 1993. Ensuring that girls had more education reduced the likelihood of maternal health complications, in some cases by as much as 29%. 

4. Education also lowers stunting rates

Children also benefit from more educated mothers. Several reports have linked education to lowered stunting , one of the side effects of malnutrition. Preventing stunting in childhood can limit the risks of many developmental issues for children whose height — and potential — are cut short by not having enough nutrients in their first few years.

In Bangladesh , one study showed a 50.7% prevalence for stunting among families. However, greater maternal education rates led to a 4.6% decrease in the odds of stunting; greater paternal education reduced those rates by 2.9%-5.4%.  A similar study in Nairobi, Kenya confirmed this relationship: Children born to mothers with some secondary education are 29% less likely to be stunted.

What is stunting?

Stunting is a form of impaired growth and development due to malnutrition that threatens almost 25% of children around the world.

5. Education reduces vulnerability to HIV and AIDS…

In 2008, researchers from Harvard University, Imperial College London, and the World Bank wrote : “There is a growing body of evidence that keeping girls in school reduces their risk of contracting HIV. The relationship between educational attainment and HIV has changed over time, with educational attainment now more likely to be associated with a lower risk of HIV infection than earlier in the epidemic.” 

Since then, that correlation has only grown stronger. The right programs in schools not only reduce the likelihood of young people contracting HIV or AIDS, but also reduce the stigmas held against people living with HIV and AIDS.

6. …and vulnerability to natural disasters and climate change

As the number of extreme weather events increases due to climate change, education plays a critical role in reducing vulnerability and risk to these events. A 2014 issue of the journal Ecology and Society states: “It is found that highly educated individuals are better aware of the earthquake risk … and are more likely to undertake disaster preparedness.… High risk awareness associated with education thus could contribute to vulnerability reduction behaviors.”

The authors of the article went on to add that educated people living through a natural disaster often have more of a financial safety net to offset losses, access to more sources of information to prepare for a disaster, and have a wider social network for mutual support.

Climate change is one of the biggest threats to education — and growing

Last August, UNICEF reported that half of the world’s 2.2 billion children are at “extremely high risk” for climate change, including its impact on education. Here’s why.

7. Education reduces violence at home and in communities

The same World Bank and ICRW report that showed the connection between education and maternal health also reveals that each additional year of secondary education reduced the chances of child marriage — defined as being married before the age of 18. Because educated women tend to marry later and have fewer children later in life, they’re also less likely to suffer gender-based violence , especially from their intimate partner. 

Girls who receive a full education are also more likely to understand the harmful aspects of traditional practices like FGM , as well as their rights and how to stand up for them, at home and within their community.

Fighting FGM in Kenya: A daughter's bravery and a mother's love

Marsabit is one of those areas of northern Kenya where FGM has been the rule rather than the exception. But 12-year-old student Boti Ali had other plans.

Education for all: Concern’s approach

Concern’s work is grounded in the belief that all children have a right to a quality education. Last year, our work to promote education for all reached over 676,000 children. Over half of those students were female. 

We integrate our education programs into both our development and emergency work to give children living in extreme poverty more opportunities in life and supporting their overall well-being. Concern has brought quality education to villages that are off the grid, engaged local community leaders to find solutions to keep girls in school, and provided mentorship and training for teachers.

More on how education affects poverty

6 Benefits of literacy in the fight against poverty

Child marriage and education: The blackboard wins over the bridal altar

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

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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.”

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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.

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The impact of poverty on educational outcomes for children

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1 Community Health Systems Resource Group, The Hospital for Sick Children

2 Department of Psychiatry, Psychology & Public Health Sciences, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario

Over the past decade, the unfortunate reality is that the income gap has widened between Canadian families. Educational outcomes are one of the key areas influenced by family incomes. Children from low-income families often start school already behind their peers who come from more affluent families, as shown in measures of school readiness. The incidence, depth, duration and timing of poverty all influence a child’s educational attainment, along with community characteristics and social networks. However, both Canadian and international interventions have shown that the effects of poverty can be reduced using sustainable interventions. Paediatricians and family doctors have many opportunities to influence readiness for school and educational success in primary care settings.

Depuis dix ans, l’écart des revenus s’est creusé entre les familles canadiennes, ce qui est une triste réalité. L’éducation est l’un des principaux domaines sur lesquels influe le revenu familial. Souvent, lorsqu’ils commencent l’école, les enfants de familles à faible revenu accusent déjà un retard par rapport à leurs camarades qui proviennent de familles plus aisées, tel que le démontrent les mesures de maturité scolaire. L’incidence, l’importance, la durée et le moment de la pauvreté ont tous une influence sur le rendement scolaire de l’enfant, de même que les caractéristiques de la communauté et les réseaux sociaux. Cependant, tant au Canada que sur la scène internationale, il est possible de réduire les effets de la pauvreté au moyen d’interventions soutenues. Les pédiatres et les médecins de familles ont de nombreuses occasions d’agir sur la maturité et la réussite scolaire dans le cadre des soins de premier recours.

Poverty remains a stubborn fact of life even in rich countries like Canada. In particular, the poverty of our children has been a continuing concern. In 1989, the Canadian House of Commons voted unanimously to eliminate poverty among Canadian children by 2000 ( 1 ). However, the reality is that, in 2003, one of every six children still lived in poverty. Not only have we been unsuccessful at eradicating child poverty, but over the past decade, the inequity of family incomes in Canada has grown ( 2 ), and for some families, the depth of poverty has increased as well ( 3 ). Canadian research confirms poverty’s negative influence on student behaviour, achievement and retention in school ( 4 ).

Persistent socioeconomic disadvantage has a negative impact on the life outcomes of many Canadian children. Research from the Ontario Child Health Study in the mid-1980s reported noteworthy associations between low income and psychiatric disorders ( 5 ), social and academic functioning ( 6 ), and chronic physical health problems ( 7 ). Since that time, Canada has developed systematic measures that have enabled us to track the impact of a variety of child, family and community factors on children’s well-being. The National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth (NLSCY) developed by Statistics Canada, Human Resources Development Canada and a number of researchers across the country was started in 1994 with the intention of following representative samples of children to adulthood ( 8 ). Much of our current knowledge about the development of Canadian children is derived from the analysis of the NLSCY data by researchers in a variety of settings.

One of the key areas influenced by family income is educational outcomes. The present article provides a brief review of the literature concerning the effects of poverty on educational outcomes focusing on Canadian research. Canadian data are placed in the perspective of research from other ‘rich’ countries. We conclude with some suggestions about what we can do, as advocates and practitioners, to work toward reducing the negative impact of economic disadvantage on the educational outcomes of our children.

POVERTY AND READINESS FOR SCHOOL

School readiness reflects a child’s ability to succeed both academically and socially in a school environment. It requires physical well-being and appropriate motor development, emotional health and a positive approach to new experiences, age-appropriate social knowledge and competence, age-appropriate language skills, and age-appropriate general knowledge and cognitive skills ( 9 ). It is well documented that poverty decreases a child’s readiness for school through aspects of health, home life, schooling and neighbourhoods. Six poverty-related factors are known to impact child development in general and school readiness in particular. They are the incidence of poverty, the depth of poverty, the duration of poverty, the timing of poverty (eg, age of child), community characteristics (eg, concentration of poverty and crime in neighborhood, and school characteristics) and the impact poverty has on the child’s social network (parents, relatives and neighbors). A child’s home has a particularly strong impact on school readiness. Children from low-income families often do not receive the stimulation and do not learn the social skills required to prepare them for school. Typical problems are parental inconsistency (with regard to daily routines and parenting), frequent changes of primary caregivers, lack of supervision and poor role modelling. Very often, the parents of these children also lack support.

Canadian studies have also demonstrated the association between low-income households and decreased school readiness. A report by Thomas ( 10 ) concluded that children from lower income households score significantly lower on measures of vocabulary and communication skills, knowledge of numbers, copying and symbol use, ability to concentrate and cooperative play with other children than children from higher income households. Janus et al ( 11 ) found that schools with the largest proportion of children with low school readiness were from neighbourhoods of high social risk, including poverty. Willms ( 12 ) established that children from lower socioeconomic status (SES) households scored lower on a receptive vocabulary test than higher SES children. Thus, the evidence is clear and unanimous that poor children arrive at school at a cognitive and behavioural disadvantage. Schools are obviously not in a position to equalize this gap. For instance, research by The Institute of Research and Public Policy (Montreal, Quebec) showed that differences between students from low and high socioeconomic neighbourhoods were evident by grade 3; children from low socioeconomic neighbourhoods were less likely to pass a grade 3 standards test ( 13 ).

POVERTY AND EDUCATIONAL ATTAINMENT

Studies emanating from successive waves of the NLSCY have repeatedly shown that socioeconomic factors have a large, pervasive and persistent influence over school achievement ( 14 – 16 ). Phipps and Lethbridge ( 15 ) examined income and child outcomes in children four to 15 years of age based on data from the NLSCY. In this study, higher incomes were consistently associated with better outcomes for children. The largest effects were for cognitive and school measures (teacher-administered math and reading scores), followed by behavioural and health measures, and then social and emotional measures, which had the smallest associations.

These Canadian findings are accompanied by a large number of studies in the United States that have shown that socioeconomic disadvantage and other risk factors that are associated with poverty (eg, lower parental education and high family stress) have a negative effect on cognitive development and academic achievement, smaller effects on behaviour and inconsistent effects on socioemotional outcomes ( 17 – 19 ). Living in extreme and persistent poverty has particularly negative effects ( 18 ), although the consequences of not being defined below the poverty line but still suffering from material hardship should not be underestimated ( 20 ). Furthermore, American studies found strong interaction effects between SES and exposure to risk factors. For instance, parents from disadvantaged backgrounds were not only more likely to have their babies born prematurely, but these prematurely born children were also disproportionately at higher risk for school failure than children with a similar neonatal record from higher income families ( 18 ).

It is worth noting that international studies have consistently shown similar associations between socioeconomic measures and academic outcomes. For example, the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) assessed the comprehensive literacy skills of grade 4 students in 35 countries. The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) assessed reading, math and science scores of 15-year-old children in 43 countries ( 21 ). At these two different stages of schooling, there was a significant relationship between SES and educational measure in all countries. This relationship has come to be known as a ‘socioeconomic gradient’; flatter gradients represent greater ‘equity of outcome’, and are generally associated with better average outcomes and a higher quality of life. Generally, the PISA and the NLSCY data support the conclusion that income or SES has important effects on educational attainment in elementary school through high school. Despite the results shown by the PISA and the NLSCY, schools are not the ultimate equalizer and the socioeconomic gradient still exists despite educational attainment. Test results can be misleading and can mask the gradient if the sample does not account for all children who should be completing the test. A study ( 13 ) completed by the Institute of Research and Public Policy demonstrated only small differences between low and high socioeconomic students when test results were compared in those students who sat for the examination. However, when results were compared for the entire body of children who should have written the examination, the differences between low and high socioeconomic students were staggering, mainly due to the over-representation of those who left school early in the low socioeconomic group.

Longitudinal studies carried out in the United States have been crucial in demonstrating some of the key factors in producing and maintaining poor achievement. Their findings have gone well beyond a model that blames schools or a student’s background for academic failure. Comparisons of the academic growth curves of students during the school year and over the summer showed that much of the achievement gap between low and high SES students could be related to their out-of-school environment (families and communities). This result strongly supports the notion that schools play a crucial compensatory role; however, it also shows the importance of continued support for disadvantaged students outside of the school environment among their families and within their communities ( 22 ).

A Human Resource Development Canada study ( 23 ) titled “The Cost of Dropping Out of High School” reported that lower income students were more likely to leave school without graduating, which agrees with international data. In a nonrandom sample for a qualitative study, Ferguson et al ( 24 ) reported that one-half of Ontario students leaving high school before graduating were raised in homes with annual incomes lower than $30,000. Finally, in Canada, only 31% of youth from the bottom income quartile attended postsecondary education compared with 50.2% in the top income quartile ( 25 ). Once again, the evidence indicates that students from low-income families are disadvantaged right through the education system to postsecondary training.

REVERSING THE EFFECTS OF POVERTY

The negative effects of poverty on all levels of school success have been widely demonstrated and accepted; the critical question for us as a caring society is, can these effects be prevented or reversed? A variety of data are relevant to this question, and recent research gives us reason to be both positive and proactive.

Early intervention

There is a direct link between early childhood intervention and increased social and cognitive ability ( 26 ). Decreasing the risk factors in a child’s environment increases a child’s potential for development and educational attainment. Prevention and intervention programs that target health concerns (eg, immunization and prenatal care) are associated with better health outcomes for low-income children and result in increased cognitive ability ( 27 ). However, it is the parent-child relationship that has been proven to have the greatest influence on reversing the impact of poverty. Both parenting style ( 28 ) and parental involvement, inside and outside of the school environment ( 29 ), impact on a child’s early development. Characteristics of parenting such as predictability of behaviour, social responsiveness, verbal behaviour, mutual attention and positive role modelling have been shown to have a positive effect on several aspects of child outcome. Parental involvement, such as frequency of outings ( 29 ) and problem-based play, creates greater intellectual stimulation and educational support for a child, and develops into increased school readiness ( 26 ).

Interventions act to advance a child’s development through a range of supports and services. Their underlying goal is to develop the skills lacking in children, that have already developed in other children who are of a similar age. There is general agreement that interventions should be data driven, and that assessments and interventions should be closely linked. A primary evaluation of a child and family support systems is, therefore, pivotal in the creation of individualized interventions to ensure success in placing children on a normative trajectory ( 30 ). Ramey and Ramey ( 30 ) determined that interventions have sustained success for children when they increase intellectual skills, create motivational changes, create greater environmental opportunities and/or increase continued access to supports.

Karoly et al ( 31 ) reported the magnitude of effects that early intervention programs have on children. Measured at school entry, they found a pooled mean effect size of around 0.3, with many programs having effect sizes between 0.5 and 0.97. This means that for many interventions, children in the program were, on average, one-half to a full standard deviation above their peers who were not in the program. Interestingly, they found that interventions that combined parent education programs with child programs had significantly higher effect sizes. Furthermore, interventions that continued beyond the early years showed significantly lower fade-out effects. The results strongly support the notion that early interventions should include the whole family and be continued beyond the early years. Constant evaluation of interventions should be completed to ensure that the benefits for children are maximized using these key components.

Highly regarded early interventions

The High/Scope active learning approach is a comprehensive early childhood curriculum. It uses cooperative work and communication skills to have children ‘learn by doing’. Individual, and small and large group formats are used for teacher-and-child planned activities in the key subject areas of language and literacy, mathematics, science, music and rhythmic movement. There has been ongoing evaluation of the approach since 1962 using 123 low-income African-American children at high risk of school failure ( 32 ). Fifty-eight children received high-quality early care and an educational setting, as well as home visits from the teachers to discuss their developmental progress. By 40 years of age, children who received the intervention were more likely to have graduated high school, hold a job, have higher earnings and have committed fewer crimes.

Similar positive effects of preschool intervention were found in the evaluation of the Abecedarian project ( 33 ). This project enlisted children between infancy and five years of age from low-income families to receive a high-quality educational intervention that was individualized to their needs. The intervention used games focused on social, emotional and cognitive areas of development. Children were evaluated at 12, 15 and 21 years of age, and those who had received the intervention had higher cognitive test scores, had greater academic achievement in reading and math, had completed more years of education and were more likely to have attended a four-year college. Interestingly, the mothers of children participating in the program also had higher educational and employment status after the intervention.

One of the oldest and most eminent early intervention programs is the Chicago Child Parent Center program. The intervention targets students who are between preschool and grade 3 through language-based activities, outreach activities, ongoing staff development and health services. Importantly, there is no set curriculum; the program is tailored to the needs of each child ( 34 ). One crucial feature of the program is the extensive involvement of parents. Multifaceted parental programs are offered to improve parental knowledge, their engagement in their children’s education and their parental skills. An evaluation of the Chicago Child Parent Center Program was completed by Reynolds ( 34 ) using a sample of 1106 black children from low-income families. They were exposed to the intervention in preschool, kindergarten and follow-up components. Two years after the completion of the intervention, the results indicated that the duration of intervention was associated with greater academic achievement in reading and mathematics, teacher ratings of school adjustment, parental involvement in school activities, grade retention and special education placement ( 34 ). Evaluation of the long-term effects of the intervention was completed by Reynolds ( 35 ) after 15 years of follow-up. Individuals who had participated in the early childhood intervention for at least one or two years had higher rates of school completion, had attained more years of education, and had lower rates of juvenile arrests, violent arrests leaving school early.

Later intervention

A common question concerns the stage at which it is too late for interventions to be successful. Recent findings (N Rowen, personal communication) from an uncontrolled community study in Toronto, Ontario, have suggested that a multisys-temic intervention as students transition to high school can produce dramatic results. The Pathways to Education project began because of a community (parents) request to a local health agency to help their children succeed in high school. The community consisted mainly of people from a public housing complex, with the majority of families being poor, immigrants and from visible minority groups. The Pathways project grew out of a partnership between the community, the health centre and the school board, and was funded by a variety of sources. The core elements of the program include a contract between the student, parents and project; student-parent support workers who advocate for the student at school and connect parents to the project and/or school; four nights a week of tutoring (by volunteers) in the community; group and career mentoring located in the community; and financial support, such as money for public transit and scholarship money for postsecondary education dependent on successful academic work and graduation. The Pathways project has been running for six years, and the results for the first five cohorts of students have been exciting. In comparison to a preproject cohort, the absentee and academic ‘at-risk’ rate (credit accumulation) has fallen by 50% to 60%, the ‘dropout’ rate has fallen by 80% to a level below the average for the board of education and the five-year graduation rate has risen from 42% to 75%. Of the graduates, 80% go on to college or university, compared with 42% before the Pathways project. While these initial results must be replicated in other communities, they suggest that, even at the high school level, interventions can be startlingly effective, even in a community with a long history of poverty, recent immigration and racism. As the proponents of Pathways move to replication, they will need to be careful to untangle the effects of community commitment, school board collaboration and the rich set of collaborations that have been a hallmark of this first demonstration project. Nevertheless, Pathways has made it clear that Canadian communities possess the capacity to change the education outcomes of their children and youth. While it takes resolve and resources to achieve such effects, initial analysis suggests that over the lifetime of the students, each dollar invested will be returned to Canada more than 24 times ( 36 )!

Schools make a difference

Canadian and international research on educational outcomes has revealed important data on the effects of schools and classrooms. Frempong and Willms ( 37 ) used complex analyses of student performance in mathematics to demonstrate that Canadian schools, and even classrooms, do make a difference in student outcomes (ie, students from similar home backgrounds achieve significantly different levels of performance in different schools). Furthermore, schools and classrooms differ in their SES gradients (ie, some schools achieve not just higher scores, but more equitable outcomes than others). These general findings were corroborated by Willms ( 38 ) using reading scores from children in grade 4 and those 15 years of age from 34 countries. Once again, it was demonstrated that schools make a difference and that some schools are more equitable than others. According to Thomas ( 10 ), activities other than academics, such as sports and lessons in the arts, have been shown to increase student’s school readiness despite SES. These activities should be encouraged in all schools to maximize school readiness. A key to making schools more effective at raising the performance of low SES students is to keep schools heterogeneous with regard to the SES of their students (ie, all types of streaming result in markedly poor outcomes for disadvantaged children and youth).

WHAT CAN WE DO?

Balancing the consistent evidence about the pervasive negative impact of poverty on educational outcomes with the hopeful positive outcomes of intervention studies, what can we do in our communities to attenuate the effects of poverty and SES on academic success? Here are some important actions:

• Advocate for and support schools which strive to achieve equity of outcomes;
• Advocate for and support intervention programs that provide academic, social and community support to raise the success of disadvantaged children and youth;
• Make others aware of the short-, medium- and long-term costs of allowing these children and youth to fail or leave school;
• Never miss a personal opportunity to support the potential educational success of the children and youth who we come into contact with;
• Advocate for system changes within schools to maximize educational attainment (eg, longer school days and shorter summer vacations); and
• Advocate for quality early education and care to minimize differences between children’s school readiness before entering school.

Paediatricians and family doctors have many opportunities to influence readiness for school and educational success in primary care settings. Golova et al ( 39 ) reported intriguing results from a primary care setting. They delivered a literacy promoting intervention to low-income Hispanic families in health care settings. At the initial visit (average age 7.4 months), parents received a bilingual handout explaining the benefits of reading aloud to children, literacy-related guidance from paediatric providers or an age-appropriate bilingual children’s board book. Control group families received no handouts or books. At a 10-month follow-up visit (mean age 17.7 months), there was no difference between groups on a screening test for language scores; however, intervention families read more often to their children, reported greater enjoyment of reading to children and had more children’s books in their homes. Given this suggestive finding, there are a number of points that paediatricians and family doctors should consider as they deliver primary care:

• Observe and encourage good parenting – mutual attention and contingency of interaction (taking turns and listening to each other), verbal behaviour (amount of talking and quality), sensitivity and responsiveness (awareness to signs of hunger, fatigue, boredom and providing an appropriate response), role modelling and reading to their children;
• Encourage parents to increase their knowledge of child development, particularly age-appropriate needs of and activities for their children. Explain to them, for instance, how ear infections can severely affect a student’s language development, and that good nutrition and hygiene can lower the frequency and severity of infections;
• Encourage parents who do not have their children in institutionalized care to attend parent-child centres and programs. These programs usually do not charge fees and require no formal arrangements. Examples are the Ontario Early Years Centres, the Aboriginal Head Start Program in Northern communities, and programs related to the Alberta Children and Youth Initiative;
• Indicate the importance of parental support and networks – keep a message board in your office and post a list of community-based organizations in your neighborhood; and
• Keep in mind that poverty is not always obvious. One in five low-income families is headed by a parent who works full-time all year; thus, it is often difficult to tell if a family is in need ( 40 ).

Informing and Advancing Effective Policy

• Newsletters
• Education Gap Grows Between Rich and Poor, Studies Say

By SABRINA TAVERNISE

Education was historically considered a great equalizer in American society, capable of lifting less advantaged children and improving their chances for success as adults. But a body of recently published scholarship suggests that the achievement gap between rich and poor children is widening, a development that threatens to dilute education’s leveling effects.

It is a well-known fact that children from affluent families tend to do better in school. Yet the income divide has received far less attention from policy makers and government officials than gaps in student accomplishment by race.

Now, in analyses of long-term data published in recent months, researchers are finding that while the achievement gap between white and black students has narrowed significantly over the past few decades, the gap between rich and poor students has grown substantially during the same period.

“We have moved from a society in the 1950s and 1960s, in which race was more consequential than family income, to one today in which family income appears more determinative of educational success than race,” said Sean F. Reardon, a Stanford University sociologist. Professor Reardon is the author of a study that found that the gap in standardized test scores between affluent and low-income students had grown by about 40 percent since the 1960s, and is now double the testing gap between blacks and whites.

In another study, by researchers from the University of Michigan , the imbalance between rich and poor children in college completion — the single most important predictor of success in the work force — has grown by about 50 percent since the late 1980s.

The changes are tectonic, a result of social and economic processes unfolding over many decades. The data from most of these studies end in 2007 and 2008, before the recession’s full impact was felt. Researchers said that based on experiences during past recessions, the recent downturn was likely to have aggravated the trend.

“With income declines more severe in the lower brackets, there’s a good chance the recession may have widened the gap,” Professor Reardon said. In the study he led, researchers analyzed 12 sets of standardized test scores starting in 1960 and ending in 2007. He compared children from families in the 90th percentile of income — the equivalent of around $160,000 in 2008, when the study was conducted — and children from the 10th percentile, $17,500 in 2008. By the end of that period, the achievement gap by income had grown by 40 percent, he said, while the gap between white and black students, regardless of income, had shrunk substantially.

The connection between income inequality among parents and the social mobility of their children has been a focus of President Obama as well as some of the Republican presidential candidates.

One reason for the growing gap in achievement, researchers say, could be that wealthy parents invest more time and money than ever before in their children (in weekend sports, ballet, music lessons, math tutors, and in overall involvement in their children’s schools), while lower-income families, which are now more likely than ever to be headed by a single parent, are increasingly stretched for time and resources. This has been particularly true as more parents try to position their children for college, which has become ever more essential for success in today’s economy.

A study by Sabino Kornrich, a researcher at the Center for Advanced Studies at the Juan March Institute in Madrid, and Frank F. Furstenberg, scheduled to appear in the journal Demography this year, found that in 1972, Americans at the upper end of the income spectrum were spending five times as much per child as low-income families. By 2007 that gap had grown to nine to one; spending by upper-income families more than doubled, while spending by low-income families grew by 20 percent.

“The pattern of privileged families today is intensive cultivation,” said Dr. Furstenberg, a professor of sociology at the University of Pennsylvania.

The gap is also growing in college. The University of Michigan study, by Susan M. Dynarski and Martha J. Bailey, looked at two generations of students, those born from 1961 to 1964 and those born from 1979 to 1982. By 1989, about one-third of the high-income students in the first generation had finished college; by 2007, more than half of the second generation had done so. By contrast, only 9 percent of the low-income students in the second generation had completed college by 2007, up only slightly from a 5 percent college completion rate by the first generation in 1989.

James J. Heckman, an economist at the University of Chicago, argues that parenting matters as much as, if not more than, income in forming a child’s cognitive ability and personality, particularly in the years before children start school.

“Early life conditions and how children are stimulated play a very important role,” he said. “The danger is we will revert back to the mindset of the war on poverty, when poverty was just a matter of income, and giving families more would improve the prospects of their children. If people conclude that, it’s a mistake.”

Meredith Phillips, an associate professor of public policy and sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles, used survey data to show that affluent children spend 1,300 more hours than low-income children before age 6 in places other than their homes, their day care centers, or schools (anywhere from museums to shopping malls). By the time high-income children start school, they have spent about 400 hours more than poor children in literacy activities, she found.

Charles Murray, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute whose book, “Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010,” was published Jan. 31, described income inequality as “more of a symptom than a cause.”

The growing gap between the better educated and the less educated, he argued, has formed a kind of cultural divide that has its roots in natural social forces, like the tendency of educated people to marry other educated people, as well as in the social policies of the 1960s, like welfare and other government programs, which he contended provided incentives for staying single

“When the economy recovers, you’ll still see all these problems persisting for reasons that have nothing to do with money and everything to do with culture,” he said.

There are no easy answers, in part because the problem is so complex, said Douglas J. Besharov, a fellow at the Atlantic Council. Blaming the problem on the richest of the rich ignores an equally important driver, he said: two-earner household wealth, which has lifted the upper middle class ever further from less educated Americans, who tend to be single parents.

The problem is a puzzle, he said. “No one has the slightest idea what will work. The cupboard is bare.”

Mentioned Publications

The widening academic achievement gap between the rich and the poor: new evidence and possible explanations.

Sean F. Reardon

In this chapter I examine whether and how the relationship between family socioeconomic characteristics and academic achievement has changed during the last fifty years. In particular, I investigate the extent to which the rising income inequality of the last four decades has been paralleled by a similar increase in the income achievement gradient. As the income gap between high- and low-income families has widened, has the achievement gap between children in high- and low-income families also widened?

The answer, in brief, is yes. The achievement gap between children from high- and low-income families is roughly 30 to 40 percent larger among children born in 2001 than among those born twenty-five years earlier. In fact, it appears that the income achievement gap has been growing for at least fifty years, though the data are less certain for cohorts of children born before 1970. In this chapter, I describe and discuss these trends in some detail. In addition to the key finding that the income achievement gap appears to have widened substantially, there are a number of other important findings.

First, the income achievement gap (defined here as the average achievement difference between a child from a family at the 90th percentile of the family income distribution and a child from a family at the 10th percentile) is now nearly twice as large as the black-white achievement gap. Fifty years ago, in contrast, the black-white gap was one and a half to two times as large as the income gap. Second, as Greg Duncan and Katherine Magnuson note in chapter 3 of this volume, the income achievement gap is large when children enter kindergarten and does not appear to grow (or narrow) appreciably as children progress through school. Third, although rising income inequality may play a role in the growing income achievement gap, it does not appear to be the dominant factor. The gap appears to have grown at least partly because of an increase in the association between family income and children's academic achievement for families above the median income level: a given difference in family incomes now corresponds to a 30 to 60 percent larger difference in achievement than it did for children born in the 1970s. Moreover, evidence from other studies suggests that this may be in part a result of increasing parental investment in children's cognitive development. Finally, the growing income achievement gap does not appear to be a result of a growing achievement gap between children with highly and less-educated parents. Indeed, the relationship between parental education and children's achievement has remained relatively stable during the last fifty years, whereas the relationship between income and achievement has grown sharply. Family income is now nearly as strong as parental education in predicting children's achievement.

This chapter is now published in the book Whither Opportunity: https://www.russellsage.org/publications/whither-opportunity

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• Sean Reardon

What is Poverty?

What is education, how does poverty impact education, how can we reduce the ill effects, role of government, the solutions for reducing the impact of poverty.

Lack of resources to meet necessities like food, clothing, and housing is what is meant by poverty. Not having enough money is only one aspect of poverty; there are many more. Along with financial problems, poverty also refers to being unable to engage in leisure activities, send kids on field trips with their classmates or to birthday parties, or afford to buy medicine for illnesses. Being impoverished comes with a lot of expenses. People who are struggling to make ends meet simply can’t think about these other costs. They can’t even think about buying food and housing. There are negative effects on society when people are marginalized from society, when they are undereducated, and when they are more prone to illness. Our economy is impacted by the rising costs placed on the health care, justice, and other systems that serve those who live in poverty. The World Bank is working harder to find indicators for the other aspects of poverty, even though there has been significant progress in measuring and studying poverty. This job entails identifying social indicators to monitor social exclusion, vulnerability, access to resources, and health and education. Poverty has numerous causes, and each one has a unique set of effects. The degree of poverty varies greatly depending on the circumstances. Within a nation’s borders, there can also be significant disparities between the rich and the poor. There are various ways to define poverty, but one thing is clear: it is a complicated social problem. Regardless of how poverty is defined, it is clear that it is a problem that needs to be addressed by everyone. To ensure that every person in our society has the chance to realize their full potential, it is crucial that everyone works together. We can all benefit from one another’s assistance.   Top  

Everybody can benefit from education, which is a crucial instrument. We are unique among earth’s inhabitants because of our education. As a result, man is the most intelligent being on the planet. Humans are empowered by it and are more equipped to handle life’s obstacles. Despite this, education is still viewed in our nation as a luxury rather than a necessity. Spreading educational awareness across the nation is necessary to make education more widely available. Without initially considering the value of education, however, this stays unfinished. People can only view something as necessary for a good existence after they understand the significance it has. People frequently conflate education and schooling while discussing the two topics. While hearing or seeing the word, many people envision locations like schools or colleges. They may also consider specific positions like tutor or teacher. The issue with this is that, despite efforts to aid in learning, the way many schools and teachers conduct themselves is not often what we would rightly refer to as education. The idea of embracing truth and possibility, encouraging and allowing time for exploration, is what we mean by education in this country.   Top  

Education along with food, shelter, and clothes has become a fundamental human need. However, the majority of poor families’ children do not receive an education because they are poverty stricken. As a result, the impact of poverty on education is a crucial essay topic for both academic and competitive exams. One of the main areas where family money has a big impact is educational outcomes. Compared to their counterparts who come from more privileged families, students from poor families enter school late. The majority of low-income households don’t understand the value of education and put their kids to daily chores instead of sending them to schools. Some of them make an effort to enroll their kids in school, but they are unable to pay for a good education. Because most of them seem to be illiterate, they are also unable to assist their kids with their education. Even though it is a basic human right, many children from underprivileged and deprived backgrounds nevertheless dream of going to school. Historically, many people and communities have been denied access to education. The government now offers free education to all children between the ages of 6 and 14 and promotes school attendance. This endeavor also results in a rise in enrollment, but everyone is aware of the government school’s high standard of instruction. Most students from low-income families who have taken advantage of these free educational opportunities have since stopped their studies since they are no longer able to pay their tuition and other related costs. Some people stop studying after finishing their 10th or 12th-grade exams because the costs of higher education are so high that low-income families cannot afford it. Admission to IIT and MBBS is already out of range also for middle-class people in India because of the expensive tuition and other costs. After food, shelter, and clothing, education is one of the most important requirements, however most pupils from low-income families are unable to attend school as a result of the family’s low income. It is also the most effective strategy for lowering unemployment and poverty. The government should prioritize education for the poor because it serves as a catalyst for societal growth on all fronts, that are, economic, social, cultural, and technological.   Top  

Poverty can be lessened by providing cash transfers to low-income families whose eligibility is based on their children’s attendance at school. Such a scheme has been used successfully in Mexico, where it increased enrollment and the typical number of years spent in school.  Early nutrition education programmes help guarantee that kids are physically ready for school. Malnourished children are more likely to enter school later, learn less, and drop out of school. For instance, a relatively inexpensive deworming programme in Kenya increased students’ attendance in school by 7%. It is crucial to make sure that classrooms have the staff, materials, and facilities they require. An initiative in Colombia that aimed to raise the standard and importance of education drastically decreased dropout rates. Flexible class schedules can also cut down on the indirect expenditures associated with sending kids to school. Education has proven to be a potent weapon for reducing poverty in nations that have been capable of improving educational access and quality.    Top  

The efforts adopted by the government to fight poverty in India are as follows:

• By fostering faster economic growth:

The government attempted to spread several strategies for fostering faster economic growth. They genuinely believed that the different growth strategies would enable the poor to rise beyond the poverty level. Although initiatives to speed up economic growth have been made, they have been unsuccessful because they have used capital-intensive technologies from Western nations. More than any other country, we are moving toward a labor-intensive path of economic development. As a result, financial and fiscal policies that offer incentives for utilizing labor-intensive procedures were adopted.

• By reducing poverty and promoting agriculture:

According to reports from the Montek Ahluwalia Commission (a former member of the Planning Commission), it was made very apparent that the growth of agriculture and poverty are mutually dependent and inversely related. As agricultural growth increases, the poverty rate decreases.

• By accelerating infrastructure development:

Construction of buildings, highways, roads, docks, telecommunications, power, and irrigation systems are all part of infrastructure development. It primarily includes construction work, which is another labor-intensive activity.

• By increasing the development of human resources:

In addition to infrastructural development, human resource development can also help to eliminate poverty. Better investments are needed for HRD in areas of educational infrastructures, such as schools to increase literacy and technical training centers and vocational colleges to provide skills to the populace.

• By hastening the expansion of non-farm employment:

Rural areas are particularly crucial for the eradication of poverty and the expansion of non-farm job prospects. In sales, advertising, logistics, handicrafts, dairy production, forestry, food manufacturing and other agricultural goods, repair shops, etc., this form of employment can be developed.

• By granting access to assets:

After independence, the population grew at a faster rate, which caused agricultural holdings to be more subdivided and fragmented. The working circumstances for agricultural laborers and small-scale independent farmers have gotten worse due to a lack of employment options in factories, industries, and non-agricultural sectors.

• By providing credit:

Providing easy access to credit for the underprivileged and poor helps improve living conditions. Small farmers have access to cutting-edge resources like superior seeds, high-quality fertilizers, etc. It is possible to speed up the construction of small irrigation channels like wells and tube wells.

• By an efficient PDS (public distribution system):

According to the surveys, households spend close to 80% of their income on food. As a result, the government should work on an assured supply of an acceptable quantity of food grains in order to raise rural earnings and ensure food security for poor households.

• By taking direct aim at poverty:

The government acknowledged in the early 1970s that it would take quite some time for economic expansion to create enough job possibilities for the unemployed in our nation.   Top  

• The authorities must take prompt, appropriate action to address the issue of poverty.
• Providing adequate amenities to the underprivileged is one method to address these issues, so that they can earn a living from their job and avoid moving to cities in search of work. 
• Additionally, illiterate persons need to receive the necessary training in order to improve their quality of life. 
• Family planning should be practiced to stop the population from growing. 
• Additionally, steps should be taken to eradicate corruption so that we can address the wealth disparity.

In summary, poverty is a national issue rather than a personal one. Additionally, it should be addressed immediately by putting in place appropriate countermeasures. Furthermore, the elimination of poverty is now essential for the inclusive and sustainable development of the population, society, nation, and economy.   Top  

Poverty and educational success have a subtle and complex relationship. Despite numerous initiatives to lessen the negative effects of low levels of education, it is now recognised that the treatments have not been as successful as had been anticipated. The body of research presently suggests that a number of activities must be designed and carried out as coherent, temporally complete interventions. It is a difficult task for policymakers to simultaneously recognise and address factors which function at the mini level of the individual, the mid level of peer groups, families, and neighborhoods, and the macro level of social structures, such as housing, health care, and educational opportunities. Since all students should be provided the same independence and opportunity to find a fulfilling career that will allow them to support themselves, the standard of education is crucial. The quality of education is just as essential as how many students are receiving it, despite the widespread belief that everyone should have access to it.   Top   Recommended Read

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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.

Mental health effects of poverty, hunger, and homelessness on children and teens

Rising inflation and an uncertain economy are deeply affecting the lives of millions of Americans, particularly those living in low-income communities. It may seem impossible for a family of four to survive on just over $27,000 per year or a single person on just over $15,000, but that’s what millions of people do everyday in the United States. Approximately 37.9 million Americans, or just under 12%, now live in poverty, according to the U.S. Census Bureau .

Additional data from the Bureau show that children are more likely to experience poverty than people over the age of 18. Approximately one in six kids, 16% of all children, live in families with incomes below the official poverty line.

Those who are poor face challenges beyond a lack of resources. They also experience mental and physical issues at a much higher rate than those living above the poverty line. Read on for a summary of the myriad effects of poverty, homelessness, and hunger on children and youth. And for more information on APA’s work on issues surrounding socioeconomic status, please see the Office of Socioeconomic Status .

Who is most affected?

Poverty rates are disproportionately higher among most non-White populations. Compared to 8.2% of White Americans living in poverty, 26.8% of American Indian and Alaska Natives, 19.5% of Blacks, 17% of Hispanics and 8.1% of Asians are currently living in poverty.

Similarly, Black, Hispanic, and Indigenous children are overrepresented among children living below the poverty line. More specifically, 35.5% of Black people living in poverty in the U.S. are below the age of 18. In addition, 40.7% of Hispanic people living below the poverty line in the U.S. are younger than age 18, and 29.1% of American Indian and Native American children lived in poverty in 2018. In contrast, approximately 21% of White people living in poverty in the U.S. are less than 18 years old.

Furthermore, families with a female head of household are more than twice as likely to live in poverty compared to families with a male head of household. Twenty-three percent of female-headed households live in poverty compared to 11.4% of male-headed households, according to the U.S. Census Bureau .

What are the effects of poverty on children and teens?

The impact of poverty on young children is significant and long lasting. Poverty is associated with substandard housing, hunger, homelessness, inadequate childcare, unsafe neighborhoods, and under-resourced schools. In addition, low-income children are at greater risk than higher-income children for a range of cognitive, emotional, and health-related problems, including detrimental effects on executive functioning, below average academic achievement, poor social emotional functioning, developmental delays, behavioral problems, asthma, inadequate nutrition, low birth weight, and higher rates of pneumonia.

Psychological research also shows that living in poverty is associated with differences in structural and functional brain development in children and adolescents in areas related to cognitive processes that are critical for learning, communication, and academic achievement, including social emotional processing, memory, language, and executive functioning.

Children and families living in poverty often attend under-resourced, overcrowded schools that lack educational opportunities, books, supplies, and appropriate technology due to local funding policies. In addition, families living below the poverty line often live in school districts without adequate equal learning experiences for both gifted and special needs students with learning differences and where high school dropout rates are high .

What are the effects of hunger on children and teens?

One in eight U.S. households with children, approximately 12.5%, could not buy enough food for their families in 2021 , considerably higher than the rate for households without children (9.4%). Black (19.8%) and Latinx (16.25%) households are disproportionately impacted by food insecurity, with food insecurity rates in 2021 triple and double the rate of White households (7%), respectively.

Research has found that hunger and undernutrition can have a host of negative effects on child development. For example, maternal undernutrition during pregnancy increases the risk of negative birth outcomes, including premature birth, low birth weight, smaller head size, and lower brain weight. In addition, children experiencing hunger are at least twice as likely to report being in fair or poor health and at least 1.4 times more likely to have asthma, compared to food-secure children.

The first three years of a child’s life are a period of rapid brain development. Too little energy, protein and nutrients during this sensitive period can lead to lasting deficits in cognitive, social and emotional development . School-age children who experience severe hunger are at increased risk for poor mental health and lower academic performance , and often lag behind their peers in social and emotional skills .

What are the effects of homelessness on children and teens?

Approximately 1.2 million public school students experienced homelessness during the 2019-2020 school year, according to the National Center for Homeless Education (PDF, 1.4MB) . The report also found that students of color experienced homelessness at higher proportions than expected based on the overall number of students. Hispanic and Latino students accounted for 28% of the overall student body but 38% of students experiencing homelessness, while Black students accounted for 15% of the overall student body but 27% of students experiencing homelessness. While White students accounted for 46% of all students enrolled in public schools, they represented 26% of students experiencing homelessness.

Homelessness can have a tremendous impact on children, from their education, physical and mental health, sense of safety, and overall development. Children experiencing homelessness frequently need to worry about where they will live, their pets, their belongings, and other family members. In addition, homeless children are less likely to have adequate access to medical and dental care, and may be affected by a variety of health challenges due to inadequate nutrition and access to food, education interruptions, trauma, and disruption in family dynamics.

In terms of academic achievement, students experiencing homelessness are more than twice as likely to be chronically absent than non-homeless students , with greater rates among Black and Native American or Alaska Native students. They are also more likely to change schools multiple times and to be suspended—especially students of color.

Further, research shows that students reporting homelessness have higher rates of victimization, including increased odds of being sexually and physically victimized, and bullied. Student homelessness correlates with other problems, even when controlling for other risks. They experienced significantly greater odds of suicidality, substance abuse, alcohol abuse, risky sexual behavior, and poor grades in school.

What can you do to help children and families experiencing poverty, hunger, and homelessness?

There are many ways that you can help fight poverty in America. You can:

• Volunteer your time with charities and organizations that provide assistance to low-income and homeless children and families.
• Donate money, food, and clothing to homeless shelters and other charities in your community.
• Donate school supplies and books to underresourced schools in your area.
• Improve access to physical, mental, and behavioral health care for low-income Americans by eliminating barriers such as limitations in health care coverage.
• Create a “safety net” for children and families that provides real protection against the harmful effects of economic insecurity.
• Increase the minimum wage, affordable housing and job skills training for low-income and homeless Americans.
• Intervene in early childhood to support the health and educational development of low-income children.
• Provide support for low-income and food insecure children such as Head Start , the National School Lunch Program , and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) .
• Increase resources for public education and access to higher education.
• Support research on poverty and its relationship to health, education, and well-being.
• Resolution on Poverty and SES
• Pathways for addressing deep poverty
• APA Deep Poverty Initiative

A Problem Child Poverty and Effects on Education

How it works

“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 is a largely misidentified problem being overlooked in United States schools (Strauss, 2013).

Several decades ago we were educating privileged and working-class children, but now we are required to educate all students; among these are some of the poorest and otherwise disadvantaged. Yet despite these roadblocks we expect them all to graduate (Strauss, 2013).

Among the 6.8 million children raised in poverty about 30% do not finish high school and are at a disadvantage for earning a much lower income (Child Fund International). This dropout rate is nearly five times more than that of students being raised above the poverty line (Taylor, 2017). Without a proper educational foundation college is out of reach for most of these children. In fact, the percentage of students from low-income families who attended college right after high school dropped to less than 50 percent in the last decade (Taylor, 2017). If by some chance these children do succeed and continue to college the lack of college preparedness and financial pressure is crippling. Research indicates that by 2020, nearly two-third of jobs in the U.S. will require postsecondary education or training (Taylor, 2017). “No longer can we consider the problems and needs of low-income students simply a matter of fairness… their success or failure in the public schools will determine the entire body of human capital and education potential that the nation will possess in the future” – Southern Education Foundation (Child Fund International, 2013).

Unfortunately that is not where this issue ends, there is another aspect that has not yet been addressed. Based on a report released by the U.S. Department of Education, more than 40 percent of low-income schools do not get the appropriate amount of state and local funding (U.S. Department of Education, 2011). So students in areas of higher poverty are suffering from a lack of resources at home, and their schools are also having a hard time providing adequate resources. Arne Duncan, former U.S. Secretary of Education, said that educators realize low-income students need more resources, but policies for allocating those resources are perpetuating the problem instead of solving it (U.S. Department of Education, 2011). Funding to low-income Title I schools has decrease since 2010 and some states are cutting pre-K funding per student, or decreasing enrollment numbers (Lynch, 2016). In a 2016 paper written by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) showed that investing more money in low-income districts led to significant improvements in student outcomes; which then lead to higher levels of education and income for those students (Taylor, 2017).

While the current U.S. economy is improving, child poverty and public school funding are still large issues plaguing children in the United States school system. We need to allow students the opportunity for advancement, despite their socioeconomic status. Because how can we expect children to succeed or close the achievement gap without the necessary resources to do so? It is time to get back to what matter the most, the education of our future world leaders. “There are school that teach us every day that these children absolutely can achieve at the same high levels as anybody else … however, everyone involved has to organize around that mission.” – Kati Haycock, president and CEO of The Education Trust (Taylor, 2017).

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Essay on Importance of Education for the Poor

Importance of education for poor.

Let’s start the essay on importance of education.. ..

Outlines of the Essay

Importance of Education

The poor class struggling.

• Education would uplift the poor, the deprived class
• Education, the golden treasure

Conclusion of the Essay

Education is a very vital thing for the productive development of a being. One can’t neglect the essentiality of education. From learning the alphabet and recognising animals to knowing the world around, building pillars in technology and science, or say even bringing political social reforms, yes, Education is the key.

It’s one of the necessities, education is so important that leading a life without it might sound futile and baseless. Education gives a base to your identity, it transforms you, defines you, elevates you.

Keep Reading this Beautiful essay on importance of education.. ..

India is a developing country, like many others in the world. With the second-largest population, it’s getting trapped into dangers of even more stringent captures of poverty and pressure. The way Indian Population is increasing is threatening, though there are initiatives to redeem India of such ailments, poverty still exists. Very evidently and sadly.

India claims to be a $3 trillion economy, but the gap between the poor and the rich is disturbing and true. There’s only one tool that can help poor bridge the gap, that is education . Education can make anyone transform his/her life.

Similarly, for poor people education can change their lives, not immediately but gradually with time. They could get themselves employed and explore their potentials to make money and bridge the gap.

Well, it’s not just about money, but education would also give them a sense of being, and they might start identifying themselves with something more substantial than poverty. Education makes mobility within the hierarchy easier.

Education would uplift the poor

Education uplifts everyone who becomes a part of it. Your personality gets moulded with your disciplines and thoughts. And attaining knowledge anyway makes you superior, capable and worthy. The poor could also find jobs, secure good positions in society and then fight the ailments that poverty always posed him with.

Though the Indian government is trying to make initiatives that all children have access to school and knowledge, the actual result of it is likely to take pretty much time.

There are still lacunae in how things are working. With the government, with the executioners, with the schools, the education system and very important- with people.

Education has to be made accessible to everyone and hence help the deprived class grow with its support. The reservation system in India has a very similar resonance with the same. The reservation favours the deprived more than the other candidates.

Golden Treasure- Education

Well, not just poor but even well to do people need to have access to it. Education is now a thing in class. People now take pride in their degrees, disciplines and college brand.

It’s a free treasure, though a hard thing to acquire.

The present society should endorse the idea of Education’ s importance and its relevance, which is everywhere.

Education is going to uplift all the people, and especially they would help the poor class bridge the gap between rich and poor, give poor people a sense of being, which is a very pertinent factor behind one’s performance and personality.

I hope, you like this essay ( importance of education ) Please share it with your friends and family.

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अगर आपको ये आर्टिकल (Importance of education) पसन्द आया हो, तो इसे अपने दोस्तों के साथ WhatsApp, Facebook आदि पर शेयर जरूर करिएगा। Thank you! – Aditya sir

4 thoughts on “Essay on Importance of Education for the Poor”

For poor, there is much importance of education. There is a huge and important importance of education. It makes a human to think about our regular life and in our work too. Subscribed your blog for more updates.

A poor can stand and build it’s great fool life with help of a good education. Education is very important and can only help to solve issues of poor life. You have described it well. Subscribed your blog.

Education is most important for everyone not only poor.We can solve our problems with logically and able to understand the situation and it’s also help how to take action against our problems and teach us to live better life

Thank you sir

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Home — Essay Samples — Social Issues — Poverty — Child Poverty

Essays on Child Poverty

Child poverty essay, types of child poverty essays.

• Argumentative Essay: This type of essay requires you to take a stance on the issue of child poverty and provide evidence to support your argument. The goal is to persuade the reader to take action against child poverty and advocate for policy changes that can alleviate it.
• Cause and Effect Essay: This type of essay explores the causes and effects of child poverty. It can delve into topics such as the impact of economic policies, lack of access to education, and inadequate healthcare on children's well-being.
• Solution Essay: This type of essay focuses on providing practical solutions to child poverty. It can examine successful poverty reduction programs, innovative policies, and initiatives that have worked in different contexts.

Child Poverty: Argumentative Essay

• Conduct thorough research: Collect data and statistics on child poverty rates and its impact on children's health, education, and well-being. It is essential to have accurate information to support the argument and persuade the reader effectively.
• Choose a clear stance: Decide on a clear position on the issue and develop a thesis statement that outlines the writer's argument.
• Address counterarguments: Anticipate counterarguments and address them in the essay to show that the writer has considered other perspectives and is confident in their position.
• Provide evidence: Use statistics, case studies, and real-life examples to support the argument and provide evidence of the impact of child poverty.
• Use persuasive language: Use persuasive language to convince the reader of the importance of the issue and the urgency of taking action to address it.

Cause and Effect on Poverty Essay

• Identify the causes of child poverty: Before writing the essay, research and identify the various factors that contribute to child poverty. Some of the factors to consider include income inequality, unemployment, lack of access to education, healthcare, and social services, among others.
• Analyze the effects of child poverty: Once you have identified the causes of child poverty, analyze the effects it has on children's lives. This may include poor health outcomes, limited educational opportunities, and increased rates of social and emotional problems.
• Use statistical data and research: To support your arguments, use credible sources such as academic articles, reports, and statistics to provide evidence of the prevalence and impact of child poverty.
• Provide possible solutions: In addition to analyzing the causes and effects of child poverty, suggest possible solutions to address the issue. This may include policies and programs that can provide economic and social support to families living in poverty.
• Use a clear and concise language: Avoid using jargon or complex language. Write in a clear and concise language that is easy to understand for a broad audience.

Child Poverty: Solution Essay

• Research the topic: Before you start writing, make sure you research the topic thoroughly. This will help you understand the causes and effects of child poverty, as well as existing solutions and initiatives.
• Identify the root causes: Identify the root causes of child poverty and how they contribute to the problem. Common causes of child poverty include lack of access to education, inadequate employment opportunities, low family income, and insufficient social services.
• Propose practical solutions: Develop practical and effective solutions to mitigate child poverty. These may include initiatives such as increasing access to education, creating employment opportunities, providing social services, and developing support programs for low-income families.
• Provide evidence: Support your proposed solutions with evidence, data, and statistics to demonstrate their feasibility and effectiveness.
• Address potential objections: Anticipate and address potential objections to your proposed solutions. This will help strengthen your argument and demonstrate that your proposed solutions are viable.
• Use a clear and concise writing style: Use a clear and concise writing style to effectively communicate your ideas and arguments.

Tips for Choosing a Topic:

• Focus on a specific aspect of child poverty: Narrowing down your topic will help you to stay focused and provide a more in-depth analysis of the issue. For example, you can focus on the impact of poverty on children's education or health.
• Use recent statistics: Using recent data and statistics can help you provide a clear picture of the magnitude of the problem. For example, you can use data from the United Nations or the World Bank to support your argument.
• Find real-life examples: Providing real-life examples of children living in poverty can help create an emotional connection with your reader and add depth to your essay. For example, you can talk about the experiences of children living in poverty in your community or country.

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Essay on Education for School Students and Children

500+ words essay on education.

Education is an important tool which is very useful in everybody’s life. Education is what differentiates us from other living beings on earth. It makes man the smartest creature on earth. It empowers humans and gets them ready to face challenges of life efficiently. With that being said, education still remains a luxury and not a necessity in our country. Educational awareness needs to be spread through the country to make education accessible. But, this remains incomplete without first analyzing the importance of education. Only when the people realize what significance it holds, can they consider it a necessity for a good life. In this essay on Education, we will see the importance of education and how it is a doorway to success.

Importance of Education

Education is the most significant tool in eliminating poverty and unemployment . Moreover, it enhances the commercial scenario and benefits the country overall. So, the higher the level of education in a country, the better the chances of development are.

In addition, this education also benefits an individual in various ways. It helps a person take a better and informed decision with the use of their knowledge. This increases the success rate of a person in life.

Subsequently, education is also responsible for providing with an enhanced lifestyle. It gives you career opportunities that can increase your quality of life.

Similarly, education also helps in making a person independent. When one is educated enough, they won’t have to depend on anyone else for their livelihood. They will be self-sufficient to earn for themselves and lead a good life.

Above all, education also enhances the self-confidence of a person and makes them certain of things in life. When we talk from the countries viewpoint, even then education plays a significant role. Educated people vote for the better candidate of the country. This ensures the development and growth of a nation.

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Doorway to Success

To say that education is your doorway to success would be an understatement. It serves as the key which will unlock numerous doors that will lead to success. This will, in turn, help you build a better life for yourself.

An educated person has a lot of job opportunities waiting for them on the other side of the door. They can choose from a variety of options and not be obligated to do something they dislike. Most importantly, education impacts our perception positively. It helps us choose the right path and look at things from various viewpoints rather than just one.

With education, you can enhance your productivity and complete a task better in comparison to an uneducated person. However, one must always ensure that education solely does not ensure success.

It is a doorway to success which requires hard work, dedication and more after which can you open it successfully. All of these things together will make you successful in life.

In conclusion, education makes you a better person and teaches you various skills. It enhances your intellect and the ability to make rational decisions. It enhances the individual growth of a person.

Education also improves the economic growth of a country . Above all, it aids in building a better society for the citizens of a country. It helps to destroy the darkness of ignorance and bring light to the world.

FAQs on Education

Q.1 Why is Education Important?

A.1 Education is important because it is responsible for the overall development of a person. It helps you acquire skills which are necessary for becoming successful in life.

Q.2 How does Education serve as a Doorway to Success?

A.2 Education is a doorway to success because it offers you job opportunities. Furthermore, it changes our perception of life and makes it better.

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390 Poverty Essay Topic Ideas & Examples

• 📑 Aspects to Cover in a Poverty Essay

Students who learn economics, politics, and social sciences are often required to write a poverty essay as part of their course. While everyone understands the importance of this topic, it can be hard to decide what to write about. Read this post to find out the aspects that you should cover in your essay on poverty.

🏆 Best Poverty Topics & Free Essay Examples

👍 powerful topics on poverty and inequality, 🎓 simple & easy topics related to poverty, 📌 interesting poverty essay examples, ⭐ strong poverty-related topics, 🥇 unique poverty topics for argumentative essay, ❓ research questions about poverty.

Topics related to poverty and inequality might seem too broad. There are so many facts, factors, and aspects you should take into consideration. However, we all know that narrowing down a topic is one of the crucial steps when working on an outline and thesis statement. You should be specific enough to select the right arguments for your argumentative essay or dissertation. Below, you will find some aspects to include in your poverty essay.

Poverty Statistics

First of all, it would be beneficial to include some background information on the issue. Statistics on poverty in your country or state can help you to paint a picture of the problem. Look for official reports on poverty and socioeconomic welfare, which can be found on government websites. While you are writing this section, consider the following:

• What is the overall level of poverty in your country or state?
• Has the prevalence of poverty changed over time? If yes, how and why?
• Are there any groups or communities where poverty is more prevalent than in the general population? What are they?

Causes of Poverty

If you look at poverty essay titles, the causes of poverty are a popular theme among students. While some people may think that poverty occurs because people are lazy and don’t want to work hard, the problem is much more important than that. Research books and scholarly journal articles on the subject with these questions in mind:

• Why do some groups of people experience poverty more often than others?
• What are the historical causes of poverty in your country?
• How is poverty related to other social issues, such as discrimination, immigration, and crime?
• How do businesses promote or reduce poverty in the community?

Consequences of Poverty

Many poverty essay examples also consider the consequences of poverty for individuals and communities. This theme is particularly important if you study social sciences or politics. Here are some questions that may give you ideas for this section:

• How is the psychological well-being of individuals affected by poverty?
• How is poverty connected to crime and substance abuse?
• How does poverty affect individuals’ access to high-quality medical care and education?
• What is the relationship between poverty and world hunger?

Government Policies

Governments of most countries have policies in place to reduce poverty and help those in need. In your essay, you may address the policies used in your state or country or compare several different governments in terms of their approaches to poverty. Here is what you should think about:

• What are some examples of legislation aimed at reducing poverty?
• Do laws on minimum wage help to prevent and decrease poverty? Why or why not?
• How do governments help people who are poor to achieve higher levels of social welfare?
• Should governments provide financial assistance to those in need? Why or why not?

Solutions to Poverty

Solutions to poverty are among the most popular poverty essay topics, and you will surely find many sample papers and articles on this subject. This is because poverty is a global issue that must be solved to facilitate social development. Considering these questions in your poverty essay conclusion or main body will help you in getting an A:

• What programs or policies proved to be effective in reducing poverty locally?
• Is there a global solution to poverty that would be equally effective in all countries?
• How can society facilitate the reduction of poverty?
• What solutions would you recommend to decrease and prevent poverty?

Covering a few of these aspects in your essay will help you demonstrate the in-depth understanding and analysis required to earn a high mark. Before you start writing, have a look around our website for more essay titles, tips, and interesting topics!

• Poverty Research Proposal To justify this, the recent and most current statistics from the Census Bureau shows that the level and rate of poverty in USA is increasing, with minority ethnic groups being the most disadvantaged.
• Wordsworth’s Vision of Childhood in His Poems “We Are Seven” and “Alice Fell or Poverty” Specifically, the joint publication he released in 1798 known as “Lyrical Ballads” are considered the most important publications in the rise of the Romantic literature in the UK and Europe.
• What Causes Poverty in the World One of the major factors that have contributed to poverty in given areas of the world is overpopulation. Environmental degradation in many parts of the world has led to the increase of poverty in the […]
• Poverty: A Sociological Imagination Perspective I was raised in a nuclear family, where my mum was a housewife, and my father worked in a local hog farm as the overall manager.
• Poverty in Africa These pictures have been published online to show the world the gravity of the poverty situation in the African continent. The pictures represent the suffering of majority of the African people as a result of […]
• Relationship Between Crime Rates and Poverty This shows that the strength of the relationship between the crime index and people living below the line of poverty is.427.
• Analysis of Theodore Dalrymple’s “What Is Poverty?” With ethical arguments from Burnor, it can be argued that Dalrymple’s statements are shallow and based on his values and not the experience of those he is judging.
• “The Singer Solution to World Poverty” by Peter Singer The article “The Singer Solution to World Poverty” by author Peter Singer attempts to provide a workable solution to the world poverty problem.
• Max Weber’s Thoughts on Poverty Weber has contributed to the exploration of the origins of poverty and the impact of religions on the attitude to it.
• Poverty and the Environment The human population affects the environment negatively due to poverty resulting to environmental degradation and a cycle of poverty. Poverty and the environment are interlinked as poverty leads to degradation of the environment.
• Children Living in Poverty and Education The presence of real subjects like children is a benefit for the future of the nation and a free education option for poor families to learn something new and even use it if their children […]
• The Problem of Poverty in Bob Marley’s “No Woman, No Cry” To see the situation from the perspective of its social significance, it is necessary to refer to Mills’ concept of sociological imagination and to the division of problems and issues into personal and social ones.
• Poverty in Bambara’s The Lesson and Danticat’s A Wall of Fire Rising It is important to note the fact that culture-based poverty due to discrimination of the past or political ineffectiveness of the nation can have a profound ramification in the lives of its victims.
• The Singer Solution to World Poverty: Arguments Against The article compares the lives of people in the developed world represented by America and that of developing world represented by Brazil; It is about a school teacher who sells a young boy for adoption […]
• Poverty Alleviation and Sustainable Development The research focuses on the causes of poverty and the benefits of poverty alleviation in achieving sustainable development. One of the causes of poverty is discrimination and social inequality.
• The End of Poverty Philippe Diaz’s documentary, The End of Poverty, is a piece that attempts to dissect the causes of the huge economic inequalities that exist between countries in the Northern Hemisphere and the Southern Hemisphere.
• Poverty Effects on Child Development and Schooling To help children from low-income families cope with poverty, interventions touching in the child’s development and educational outcomes are essential. Those programs campaign against the effects of poverty among children by providing basic nutritional, academic, […]
• Global Poverty: Famine, Affluence, and Morality In the article Famine, Affluence, and Morality, Michael Slote contends that rich people have a moral obligation to contribute more to charities.
• The Problems of Poverty and Hunger Subsequently, the cause in this case serves as a path to a solution – more social programs are needed, and wealthy citizens should be encouraged to become beneficiaries for the hungry.
• Poverty and Wealth in “The Lesson” by Toni Cade Bambara This theme contributes to the meaning of “The Lesson” because the narrator illustrates the differences that exist amid the prosperous and poor kids in the fictitious story.
• Community Work: Helping People in Poverty The first project would be water project since you find that in most villages water is a problem, hence $100 would go to establishing this project and it’s out of these water then the women […]
• Social Issues of Families in Poverty With the tightened budget, parents of the families living in poverty struggle to make ends meet, and in the course of their struggles, they experience many stresses and depressions.
• Poverty and Diseases A usual line of reasoning would be that low income is the main cause of health-related problems among vulnerable individuals. Such results that the relationship between mental health and poverty is, in fact, straightforward.
• Poverty Areas and Effects on Juvenile Delinquency The desire to live a better life contributes to the youths engaging in crimes, thus the increase in cases of juvenile delinquencies amid low-income families. The studies indicate that the fear of poverty is the […]
• Poverty in Urban Areas The main reason for escalation of the problem of poverty is urban areas is because the intricate problems of urban poverty are considered too small to attract big policies.
• Poverty and Global Food Crisis: Food and Agriculture Model Her innovative approach to the issue was to measure food shortages in calories as opposed to the traditional method of measuring in pounds and stones.
• Consumerism: Affecting Families Living in Poverty in the United States Hence, leading to the arising of consumerism protection acts and policies designed to protect consumers from dishonest sellers and producers, which indicates the high degree of consumer’s ignorance, and hence failure to make decisions of […]
• The Causes of Poverty Concentration in the Modern World Even though the average income of people living in developed countries is above the poverty line, the nations still experience concentrations of poverty especially when it comes to income inequality.
• Poverty and Its Effects on Childhood Education The foremost strength of Guo’s study is that in it, author succeeded with substantiating the full soundness of an idea that children’s exposure to poverty cannot possibly be thought of as only the factor that […]
• Poverty in the World In this paper, we will be looking at the situation of poverty in the world, its causes and the efforts of the international organizations to manage the same.
• Poverty as a Great Social Problem and Its Causes The human capital model assumes that the inadequate incomes of the working poor are the result of characteristics of the labor market rather than the inadequacy of the poor.
• Environmental Degradation and Poverty It is however important to understand the causes of the environmental degradation and the ways to reduce them, which will promote the improvement of the environmental quality.
• Global Poverty: The Ethical Dilemma Unfortunately, a significant obstacle to such global reforms is that many economic systems are based on the concept of inequality and exploitation.
• Poverty in Rural and Urban Areas My main focus is on articles explaining the sources of poverty in rural and urban areas and the key difference between the two.
• Poverty Simulation Reflection and Its Influence on Life Something that stood out to me during the process is probably the tremendous emotional and psychological impact of poverty on a person’s wellbeing.
• Reflective Analysis of Poverty It can be further classified into absolute poverty where the affected do not have the capability to make ends meet, and relative poverty which refer to the circumstances under which the afflicted do not have […]
• Poverty and Hip-Hop: Notorious B.I.G.’s “Juicy” Notorious B.I.G.’s music video for the song “Juicy” was chosen for the analysis because the rapper explored the theme of poverty that deeply affected his life.
• Freedom from Poverty as a Human Right and the UN Declaration of Human Rights This reveals the nature of the interrelatedness of the whole boy of human rights and the need to address human rights in that context.
• Aspects of Global Poverty There are arguments that have been put forth in regard to the causes of poverty in various nations with some people saying that the governments in various nations are there to be blamed for their […]
• Poverty Through a Sociological Lens Poverty-stricken areas, such as slums, rural villages, and places hit by disasters, lack the required economic activities to improve the employment and wealth status of the people.
• Inequality and Poverty Relationship To begin with, it is necessary to define the concepts of poverty and inequality. As of inequality, it is the difference in access to income, power, education, and whatever.
• Concept of Poverty The main difference between this definition and other definitions of poverty highlighted in this paper is the broad understanding of the concept.
• The Myth of the Culture of Poverty Unfortunately, rather all of the stereotypes regarding poor people are widespread in many societies and this has served to further increase the problem of generational poverty. Poor people are regarded to be in the state […]
• Poverty in Saudi Arabia It is expected that through the various facts and arguments presented in this paper.the reason behind the high poverty rate within Saudi Arabia despite its oil wealth as compared to its neighbors will become clear […]
• Poverty: The Main Causes and Factors Because of the constant process of societal development, the concept of poverty changes rapidly, adapting to the new standards of modern human life.
• Poverty in New York City, and Its Reasons The poverty rate for seniors in New York is twice the poverty rate in the United States. New York City’s blacks and Hispanics have a much higher poverty rate than whites and Asians in the […]
• Dependency Theory and “The End of Poverty?” It is also reflected in the film “The End of Poverty?” narrating the circumstances of poor countries and their precondition. It started at the end of the fifteenth century and marked the beginning of the […]
• Global Health Governance and Poverty The aim of this paper is to outline the importance of health in global governance and discuss the issue of poverty in less-developed nations as a significant challenge to the global health system.
• Cause and Effect of Poverty For example, the disparities in income and wealth are considered as a sign of poverty since the state is related to issues of scarcity and allocation of resources and influence.
• Poverty in America Rural and Urban Difference (Education) The understanding of the needs of the poverty American rural and urban schools is the first step on the way to reforming the system of elementary and secondary education.
• The Poverty Issue From a Sociological Perspective The core of the perspective is the idea that poverty is a system in which multiple elements are intertwined and create outcomes linked to financial deficits.
• Poverty Effects and How They Are Handled Quality jobs will provide income to the younger people and women in the community. The focus on developing and facilitating small and medium-sized enterprises is a great strategy but more needs to be done in […]
• Analysis of a Social Problem: Poverty Furthermore, the World Bank predicts that both the number of people and the percentage of the population living in extreme poverty will increase in 2020 and 2021 due to the coronavirus outbreak.
• Wealth and Poverty: The Christian Teaching on Wealth and Poverty To illustrate the gap between the world’s richest and the world’s poorest, a recent UN publication reported that the wealth of the three richest persons in the world is greater than the combined wealth of […]
• Poverty, Government and Unequal Distribution of Wealth in Philippines The author of the book Poverty And The Critical Security Agenda, Eadie, added: Quantitative analyses of poverty have become more sophisticated over the years to be sure, yet remain problematic and in certain ways rooted […]
• We Can Stop Poverty in Ghana Today One of the main disadvantages of the document is that the problem of poverty is not considered separately, but only as a part of other economic and social problems.
• How Poverty Contributes to Poor Heath The results show that poverty is the main cause of poor health. The study was purposed to assess the effect of poverty in determining the health status of households.
• Global Poverty Project: A Beacon of Hope in the Fight Against Extreme Poverty The organization works with partners worldwide to increase awareness and understanding of global poverty and inspire people to take action to end it.
• The Causes of an Increase in Poverty in Atlanta, Georgia The key causes of the high poverty rise in the city include housing policies and instabilities, the lack of transit services and public transportation infrastructure in suburban areas, and childhood poverty.
• Thistle Farms: Help for Women Who Are Affected by Poverty As I said in the beginning, millions of women need help and assistance from the community to overcome poverty and heal emotional wounds caused by abuse. You can purchase a variety of its home and […]
• Median Household Incomes and Poverty Levels The patterns of poverty in the Denver urban area show that rates are higher in the inner suburb and the core city and lower in the outer suburb.
• Poverty: The American Challenge One of the main problems in the world is the problem of poverty, which means the inability to provide the simplest and most affordable living conditions for most people in a given country.
• Saving the Planet by Solving Poverty The data is there to make the necessary links, which are needed when it comes to the economic variations and inadequate environmental impacts of climate change can be distinguished on a worldwide scale.
• Anti-Poverty Programs From the Federal Government The programs provide financial assistance to low-income individuals and families to cover basic needs like housing and food. The anti-poverty programs that have been most effective in reducing poverty rates in the United States are […]
• Rural Development, Economic Inequality and Poverty The percentage of the rural population is lower for developed countries, including the United States and the United Kingdom. Thus, the objective of the proposal is to determine how the inhabitants of the country in […]
• Global Poverty: Ways of Combating For example, one of such initiatives is social assistance and social protection programs, which ensure the safety and creation of various labor programs that will help increase the number of the working population.
• Poverty and Homelessness as a Global Social Problem What makes the task of defining poverty particularly difficult is the discrepancy in the distribution of social capital and, therefore, the resulting differences in the understanding of what constitutes poverty, particularly, where the line should […]
• Poverty: Aspects of Needs Assessment The target neighborhood and population for the following analysis are women of reproductive age, defined as 15 to 49 years, in Elmhurst and Corona, Queens. 2, and the percentage of births to women aged over […]
• What Is Poverty in the United States? Estimates of the amount of income required to meet necessities serve as the foundation for both the official and supplemental poverty measurements.
• The Caribbean Culture: Energy Security and Poverty Issues Globally, Latin American and the Caribbean also has the most expensive energy products and services because of fuel deprivation in the Caribbean and the Pacific regions.
• How to Overcome Poverty and Discrimination As such, to give a chance to the “defeated” children and save their lives, as Alexie puts it, society itself must change the rules so that everyone can have access to this ticket to success. […]
• Poverty and Homelessness in American Society It is connected with social segregation, stigmatization, and the inability of the person to improve their conditions of life. The problem of affordable housing and poverty among older adults is another problem that leads to […]
• Private Sector’s Role in Poverty Alleviation in Asia The ambition of Asia to become the fastest-growing economic region worldwide has led to a rapid rise of enterprises in the private sector.
• Connection of Poverty and Education The economy of the United States has been improving due to the efforts that have been made to ensure that poverty will not prevent individuals and families from having access to decent education.
• The Opportunity for All Program: Poverty Reduction The limiting factors of the program may be the actions of the population itself, which will not participate in the employment program because of the realized benefits.
• Early Childhood Financial Support and Poverty The mentioned problem is a direct example of such a correlation: the general poverty level and the well-being of adults are connected with the early children’s material support.
• Discussion: Poverty and Healthcare One of the research questions necessary to evaluate this issue is “How do ethical theories apply to the issue?” Another critical research question worth exploring is “Which cultural values and norms influence the problem?” These […]
• Explosive Growth of Poverty in America The three richest Americans now own 250 billion USD, approximately the same amount of combined wealth as the bottom 50 percent of the country. Wealth inequality is a disturbing issue that needs to be at […]
• “Life on a Shoestring – American Kids Living in Poverty” by Claycomb Life on a Shoestring – American Kids Living in Poverty highlights the widening disparity between the poor and the wealthy in America and how the economic systems are set up to benefit the rich and […]
• Decreasing Poverty With College Enrollment Program In order to achieve that, it is necessary, first and foremost, to increase the high school students’ awareness of the financial aid programs, possibilities of dual enrollment, and the overall reality of higher education.
• Reducing Poverty in the North Miami Beach Community The proposed intervention program will focus on the students in the last semester of the 9th and 10th grades and the first semester of the 11th and 12th grades attending the client schools.
• Food Banks Board Members and Cycle of Poverty What this suggests is that a large portion of the leadership within these collectives aim to provide assistance and food but not to challenge the current system that fosters the related issues of poverty, unemployment, […]
• Poverty as a Social Problem in Burundi The rationale for studying poverty as a social problem in Burundi is that it will help to combat poverty through the advocacy plan at the end of this paper.
• Poverty: Subsidizing Programs Subsidizing programs are considered welfare and net initiatives that the government takes to aid low-income families and individuals affected by poverty.
• Is Globalization Reducing Poverty and Inequality? & How to Judge Globalism The article Is Globalization Reducing Poverty and Inequality by Robert Hunter Wade explores the phenomenon of globalization and its influence on the poverty and inequality ratios all over the world.
• The Problem of Poverty in Chad Thus, the study of the causes of poverty in the Republic of Chad will help to form a complete understanding of the problem under study and find the most effective ways to solve it.
• “Poverty, Toxic Stress, and Education…” Study by Kelly & Li Kelly and Li are concerned with the lack of research about poverty and toxic stress affecting the neurodevelopment of preterm children.
• Is Poverty a Choice or a Generational Curse? The assumption that poverty is a choice persists in public attitudes and allows policy-makers to absolve themselves of any responsibility for ensuring the well-being of the lower socioeconomic stratum of society.
• Poverty in “A Modest Proposal” by Swift The high number of children born to poor families presents significant problems for a country.”A Modest Proposal” is a satirical essay by Jonathan Swift that proposes a solution to the challenge facing the kingdom.
• Life Below the Poverty Line in the US The major problem with poverty in the US is that the number of people living below the poverty threshold is gradually increasing despite the economic growth of the country. SNAP is not considered to be […]
• The Relationship Between Single-Parent Households and Poverty The given literature review will primarily focus on the theoretical and empirical aspects of the relationship between single-parent households and poverty, as well as the implications of the latter on mental health issues, such as […]
• Poverty and Its Effect on Adult Health Poverty in the UK is currently above the world average, as more than 18% of the population lives in poverty. In 2020, 7% of the UK population lived in extreme poverty and 11% lived in […]
• Child Poverty in the United States The causes of child poverty in the United States cannot be separated from the grounds of adult poverty. Thus, it is essential to take care of the well-being of children living in poverty.
• “The Hidden Reason for Poverty…” by Haugen It is also noteworthy that some groups of people are specifically vulnerable and join the arrays of those living in poverty.
• Juvenile Violent Crime and Children Below Poverty The effect of this trend is that the number of children below poverty will continue to be subjected to the juvenile and criminal justice systems.
• Poverty and Homelessness as Social Problem The qualifications will include a recommendation from the community to ensure that the person is open to help and willing to be involved in the neighborhood of Non-Return.
• Feminization of Poverty and Governments’ Role in Solving the Problem However, women form the greatest percentage of the poor, and the problem continues to spread. Furthermore, the public supports available are inaccessible and inadequate to cater for women’s needs.
• Free-Trade Policies and Poverty Level in Bangladesh The purpose of this paper is to examine the way in which the end of the quota system and introduction of a free-trade system for the garment industry in Bangladesh has impacted on poverty in […]
• Poverty and Risks Associated With Poverty Adolescents that are at risk of being malnourished can be consulted about the existing programs that provide free food and meals to families in poverty.
• Poverty and Inequality Reduction Strategies Thus, comprehending the causes of poverty and inequalities, understanding the role of globalization, and learning various theoretical arguments can lead to the establishment of appropriate policy recommendations.
• International Aid – Poverty Inc This film, the research on the impact of aid on the states receiving it, and the economic outcomes of such actions suggest that aid is a part of the problem and not a solution to […]
• Poverty Effects on American Children and Adolescents The extent to which poor financial status influences the wellbeing of the young children and adolescents is alarming and needs immediate response from the community.
• Progress and Poverty Book by Henry George George wrote the book following his recognition that poverty is the central puzzle of the 20th century. Thus, George’s allegation is inconsistent with nature because the number of living organisms can increase to the extent […]
• Vicious Circle of Poverty in Brazil The vicious circle of poverty is “a circular constellation of forces that tend to act and react on each other in such a way that the country in poverty maintains its poor state”.
• Global Education as the Key Tool for Addressing the Third World Poverty Issue Global education leads to improvements in the state economy and finances. Global education helps resolve the unemployment problem.
• Poverty, Partner Abuse, and Women’s Mental Health In general, the study aimed at investigating the interaction between poverty and the severity of abuse in women. The research question being studied in this article is how income intersects with partner violence and impacts […]
• America’s Shame: How Can Education Eradicate Poverty The primary focus of the article was global poverty, the flaws in the educational system, as well as the U.S.government’s role in resolving the problem.
• Global Poverty and Ways to Overcome It These are some of the strategies, the subsequent application of which would significantly reduce the level of poverty around the world.
• Social Work at Acacia Network: Poverty and Inequality Around the 1980s, the number of older adults was significantly increasing in society; the local government of New York established a home for the aged and was named Acacia Network. The supporting staff may bond […]
• Poverty and Sex Trafficking: Qualitative Systematic Review The proposed research question is to learn how the phenomenon of poverty is connected to sex trafficking. To investigate the relationship between the phenomenon of poverty and sex trafficking.
• Political Economy: Relationship Between Poverty, Inequality, and Nationalism The prevalence of nationalism leads to changes in the education system, as the government tries to justify the superiority of the country by altering the curriculum.
• End of Extreme Poverty Importantly, the ability to remain the owners of a substantial amount of accumulated wealth is the primary motivation for such individuals.
• The Problem of Poverty in the United States The problem of increasing poverty is one of the major political issues in the United States, which became especially agile after the appearance of the COVID-19 pandemic due to the difficult economic situation all over […]
• Poverty and Unemployment Due to Increased Taxation The government on its side defended the move while trying to justify the new measures’ benefits, a move that would still not benefit the country.
• Poverty as a Global Social Problem For example, the research shows that Kibera is the largest slum in the country, and this is where many people move to settle after losing hope of getting employed in towns.
• Researching the Problem of Poverty However, the rich people and the rich countries reduce poverty to some extent by providing jobs and markets to the poor, but the help is too little compared to the benefits they get thus accelerating […]
• Poverty, Social Class, and Intersectionality I prefer the structural approach to the issue as I believe the created structures are responsible for the existence of diverse types of oppression.
• Guns Do Not Kill, Poverty Does It is widely accepted that stricter gun control policies are instrumental in alleviating the problem, as they are supposed to reduce the rate of firearm-related deaths, limiting gun access to individuals at-risk of participating in […]
• Poverty’s Effects on Delinquency The economic status of people determines their social class and the manner in which they get their basic needs. Seeing these things and the kind of life rich people lead motivates the poor to commit […]
• The Criminalization of Poverty in Canada In this regard, with a special focus on Canada, the objective of this essay is to investigate how public policy has transformed alongside the public perception of social welfare reform.
• The Issue of Vicious Circle of Poverty in Brazil The persistence of poverty, regardless of the many shocks that every state receives in the normal course of its survival, raises the feeling that underdevelopment is a condition of equilibrium and that there are pressures […]
• Community Health Needs: Poverty Generally, the higher the level of poverty, the worse the diet, and hence the higher the chances of developing diabetes. Consequently, a considerable disparity in the prevalence of diabetes occurs between communities with high levels […]
• “Poverty, Race, and the Contexts of Achievement” by Maryah Stella Fram et al. The article “Poverty, race, and the contexts of achievement: examining the educational experience of children in the U.S. Multilevel models were then applied in the analyses of how children varied in their reading scores depending […]
• Microeconomic Perspective on Poverty Evolution in Pakistan The periodic spike in poverty levels, notwithstanding economic growth, implies incongruous policy functionality in relation to drivers of poverty and the subsequent failure to improve the indicators.
• The Impact of Poverty on Children Under the Age of 11 The strengths of the Marxist views on poverty are in the structural approach to the problem. Overall, the Marxist theory offers a radical solution to the problem of child poverty.
• Poverty Policy Recommendations Different leaders have considered several policies and initiatives in the past to tackle the problem of poverty and empower more people to lead better lives.
• Poverty Reduction and Natural Assets Therefore, the most efficient way to increase the efficiency of agriculture and reduce its environmental impacts is ensuring the overall economic growth in the relevant region.
• Corporate Social Responsibility & Poverty Alleviation Researchers state that “preventing and managing the negative impacts of the core business on the poor” are essential indicators of the social responsibility of the company.
• Children in Poverty in Kampong Ayer, Brunei Part of the reason is likely malnutrition that results from the eating or consumption patterns of the families and also dependency on the children to help out with the family or house chores.
• Health, Poverty, and Social Equity: The Global Response to the Ebola Outbreak Canada and Australia, as well as several countries in the Middle East and Africa, were the most active proponents of this ban, halting the movements for both people and goods from states affected by the […]
• Health, Poverty, and Social Equity: Indigenous Peoples of Canada Another problem that much of northern Canada’s Indigenous Peoples face is the availability of healthcare services and people’s inability to access medical help.
• The Problem of Childhood Poverty Unequal income distribution, adult poverty, government policies that exclude children and premature pregnancy are some of the items from the long list of childhood poverty causes. Before discussing the causes and effects of childhood poverty, […]
• Individualistic Concepts and Structural Views on Poverty in American Society The concepts presented in the book Poverty and power help to better understand the content of the article and the reasons for such a different attitude of people to the same problem.
• Poor Kids: The Impact of Poverty on Youth Nevertheless, the environment of constant limitations shapes the minds of children, their dreams and the paths they pursue in life, and, most importantly, what they make of themselves.
• Poverty: Causes and Effects on the Population and Country Thesis: There are a great number of factors and issues that lead a certain part of the population to live in poverty and the input that such great numbers of people could provide, would be […]
• The Internet and Poverty in Society The information that can be found on the web is a very useful resource but at the same time it is important to consider several things with the treatment and examination of the presented information.
• Poverty in Africa: Impact of the Economy Growth Rate Thus, a conclusion can be made that economic growth in Africa will result in the social stability of the local population.
• Poverty and Disrespect in “Coming of Age in Mississippi” by Anne Moody Life was not fair to a little Anne the chapters about her childhood are alike to a chain of unfortunate events that happened to her and her relatives.
• Vietnam’s Economic Growth and Poverty & Inequality A significant part of the population was active in employment, and this means that the numerous income-generating activities improved the economy of this country.
• Poverty and Disasters in the United States Focusing on the precaution measures and the drilling techniques that will help survive in case of a natural disaster is one of the most common tools for securing the population.
• Intro to Sociology: Poverty It is challenging to pinpoint the actual and not mythological reasons for the presence of poverty in America. The former can be summed up as a “culture of poverty”, which suggests that the poor see […]
• The Notion of “Poverty” Is a Key Word of a Modern Society As far as the countries of the Third World are deprived of these possibilities, their development is hampered and the problem of poverty has become a chronic disease of the society.
• The Problem of Poverty in Africa The major aim of the study is to identify the causes of poverty and propose best strategies that can help Africans come out of poverty.
• Poverty Sustainability in Sub-Saharan Countries: The Role of NGOs The position of research and statistics in undertaking social-counting work is not queried. It is after the research method is used in other tribulations of the charity that gaps emerge between management and research.
• “The End of Poverty” by Phillipe Diaz In the film End of Poverty, the filmmaker tries to unravel the mystery behind poverty in the world. The film is arranged in such a way that the author has persuasively argued his case that […]
• The Effects of Poverty Within Criminal Justice The approach used in this study is deductive since the reasoning in the study proceeds from the general principle regarding the fact that poverty has a role to play in the administering of fairness in […]
• The Poverty Rates in the USA Poverty in the U. Officially the rate of poverty was at14.3%.
• Poverty in America: A Paradox Many people especially the young people living in other countries and more so in developed countries wish to immigrate to America instead of working hard to achieve the dream of better opportunities.
• Values and Ethics: Poverty in Canada The case study1 has indicated for instance, that the number of people living in poverty in 2003 is at 4. A group of individuals would therefore be granted the mandate to lead the others in […]
• War and Poverty Connection in Developing Countries The scholars claim that conflict and war in most nations have been found to exacerbate the rate of poverty in the affected nations.
• Poverty and Criminal Behavoiur Relation The level of accuracy that the data collected holds cannot be 100%; there is a level of error that affects the reliability of the data collected.
• Urban Relationship Between Poverty and Crime The areas with high poverty level in the US urban areas have the highest cases of crime but this is inadequate to justify that poverty is the cause of crime.
• Social and Economic Policy Program: Globalization, Growth, and Poverty Topic: Sustainable approaches to poverty reduction through smallholder agricultural development in rural South Africa and Kenya The majority of the poor in Africa, and indeed the whole world, live in rural areas.
• Is Poverty From Developing Countries Imagined? That is why concepts like the “Third World Countries”, the “Second World Countries”, the “First World Countries” and now the “Developing Countries” has been coined.
• How Gender and Race Structure Poverty and Inequality Connected? In essence, feminization of poverty has been constructed in the context of the rise in households headed by female and the family participation in the low income generating activities, thus creating three distinct areas of […]
• Poverty by Anarchism and Marxism Approaches It is important to note that the very different ways in which social scientists approach the study of social phenomena depend to a great extent upon their particular philosophical view of the social world, a […]
• Environmental Deterioration and Poverty in Kenya Poverty is the great cause and consequence or effect of the degradation of the environment and depletion of the resources that pose threats to the present and future growth of the economy.
• Marginalization and Poverty of Rural Women The women are left to take care of the economic welfare of the households. I will also attempt to propose a raft of recommendations to alleviate poverty and reduce marginalization of women in the rural […]
• Pockets of Poverty Mar the Great Promise of Canada For Canadians generally, at the risk of being repetitious, the proportion falling in the low-income brackets worsened between 1988 and 1998 but retreated at a 15% pace to “just” 9% by 2007.
• The Underclass Poverty and Associated Social Problems From the reading what comes out clearly is that all the authors allude to the fact that the issue of discrimination is still evident and is partly to blame for the problems of the underclass.
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Essay on Child Education

Students are often asked to write an essay on Child Education in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Child Education

Importance of child education.

Education is a key to success. It gives us knowledge of the world around us. For children, it is even more important as it is the building block of their future. It helps them become good citizens.

Role of Schools

Parents and education.

Parents are the first teachers of a child. Their role in child education is crucial. They can motivate their children to learn and explore. They can also help them with their studies.

In conclusion, child education is a combined effort of schools, parents, and society. It is essential for the growth and development of a child and the nation.

250 Words Essay on Child Education

Introduction, the importance of child education.

Child education is not merely about imparting knowledge but also about cultivating character and fostering critical thinking. It equips children with the tools necessary to navigate the world, make informed decisions, and contribute to society. Furthermore, it is a crucial tool for eradicating poverty and achieving economic growth.

Challenges in Child Education

Despite its importance, child education faces numerous challenges. These include inadequate resources, lack of access, and inequalities based on gender, socioeconomic status, and geographical location. Additionally, the quality of education is often compromised, with an emphasis on rote learning rather than critical thinking.

The Role of Technology

Technology can play a pivotal role in addressing these challenges. Digital learning platforms can make education more accessible and engaging, promoting self-paced and personalized learning. However, the digital divide must be addressed to prevent further inequalities in education.

In conclusion, child education is a complex issue that requires concerted efforts from all stakeholders. By addressing the challenges and harnessing the potential of technology, we can ensure that every child has access to quality education, paving the way for a brighter future.

500 Words Essay on Child Education

Child education forms the foundation of a prosperous society. It is the process of nurturing and facilitating the physical, social, emotional, and cognitive development of a child from birth to adulthood. The significance of child education cannot be overemphasized, as it is a primary determinant of a child’s future and, by extension, the future of a nation.

Moreover, child education is integral to the eradication of social evils like poverty, child labor, and social discrimination. It paves the way for social mobility, gender equality, and economic development. It also promotes peace, tolerance, and understanding among different societies and cultures.

Despite its importance, child education faces numerous challenges worldwide. These include inadequate resources, lack of access to quality education, socio-economic disparities, gender discrimination, and cultural barriers.

The Role of Technology in Child Education

Digital platforms can provide access to quality education for children in remote or conflict-ridden areas. They can also help in bridging the gender gap in education by providing a safe and accessible learning environment for girls. Moreover, adaptive learning technologies can cater to the individual learning needs of each child, thereby improving learning outcomes.

If you’re looking for more, here are essays on other interesting topics:

Apart from these, you can look at all the essays by clicking here .

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Poor Black Kids Are Doing Better. Poor White Kids Are Doing Worse.

A major study reports good and bad news.

Produced by ElevenLabs and News Over Audio (NOA) using AI narration.

This is Work in Progress, a newsletter about work, technology, and how to solve some of America’s biggest problems. Sign up here .

The yawning gap between the mobility of white children and Black children growing up in low-income families has narrowed sharply, according to a major new study released today , based on tens of millions of anonymized census and tax records. Yet the findings are not entirely comforting. Inequality narrowed not just because poor Black kids have grown up to earn more as adults but also because poor white kids are earning less.

Children born in lower-income white families did not fall behind just relative to the gains made by their higher-income white peers or their peers in Black families across the income spectrum. They fell behind in absolute terms. Poor white kids born in 1992 were earning $1,530 less at age 27 than poor white kids born in 1978, after accounting for inflation. Fewer were married, fewer had graduated from college, and more were incarcerated too. Poor Black kids born in 1992, on the other hand, were making $1,607 more than those born in ’78. As a result of these simultaneous shifts, the chance of Black and white kids leaving the lowest-earning income quintile and reaching the middle class converged.

From the August 2019 issue: The economist who would fix the American dream

The rising inequality among white families and the entrenchment of poverty in low-income white communities is sobering. Yet the gains among Black families are remarkable, given how deep-rooted and long-standing racial inequality is in American life. The study’s takeaway is that opportunity is “malleable” in a short time frame, Raj Chetty, an economist and one of the paper’s authors, told me. “The reason the U.S. has had such persistent gaps by race in terms of income, wealth, health—whatever disparity you’re interested in—is because we basically have had no change in terms of rates of mobility,” he told me. But if the trends in this paper continue, within a few generations, Black families “will see a catch-up phenomenon.”

There is a lot of catching up to do: The United States is an intensely unequal place, and as a result, its rates of intergenerational mobility are low. Americans in the top 1 percent of the earnings spectrum make 22 times as much as those in the bottom 10 percent. The disparity is even greater in terms of wealth: The top decile of households accounts for 67 percent of the country’s net worth, and the bottom 50 percent just 2.5 percent.

Class is strongly heritable : A kid born in the bottom quintile of the earnings distribution has a 43 percent chance of remaining there; a kid born in the top quintile has a 40 percent chance of staying there. The top of the income distribution remained ossified in the new study: Rich white kids are overwhelmingly likely to remain rich, and rich Black kids somewhat less so.

“Change in these sorts of fundamental, structural problems is glacial,” David Grusky of Stanford, who was not involved in the study but reviewed the findings, told me. The change found in this study—both the “important” narrowing of the racial gap and the “horrible” expansion of the class gap—“is not glacial. It’s quite prominent.”

Earlier studies by Chetty and others have shown that upward mobility is much likelier for Hispanic and white kids than for Black and Native American kids, and downward mobility much likelier for Black and Native kids than for white and Hispanic kids. Inequality on class and racial lines remains a central feature of American economic life, the new paper finds: “Black children born in 1992 in counties with the highest levels of upward mobility for Black children still have poorer outcomes in adulthood on average than white children born in counties with the lowest levels of upward mobility for white children.”

Still, some large and persistent gaps are closing, and fast. The new study—by Chetty, Sonya Porter of the Census Bureau, and Will Dobbie, Benjamin Goldman, and Crystal Yang, all of Harvard—finds that kids born in low-income Black families in 1978 were 14.7 percentage points likelier to remain low-income than their white peers. In the 1992 cohort, they were just 4.1 percentage points likelier to do so.

Neither governmental programs nor labor-market conditions precipitated the mobility changes among low-income households, the paper finds. The changes seemed to have little to do with choices made by families themselves, either. Much of the data “can be explained by a single variable,” Chetty told me. “White kids were increasingly growing up in communities where low-income parents were not working.” That was not true of Black kids, who in both cohorts were growing up in neighborhoods where parents might not be earning much but were likely to be employed.

Read: The secret to reclaiming the American dream

The paper shows the employment rate of low-income white parents dropped from 66.2 percent to 55.8 percent between the 1978 and 1992 cohorts; for low-income Black parents, it declined a far smaller amount, from 74.9 percent to 71.3 percent. (The study finds that it was not just kids whose parents were unemployed who had lower earnings at age 27; kids with employed parents did as well. In other words, the issue was the neighborhood, not the specific family circumstances.) The authors also found a sharp increase in the rate at which poor white parents were dying, from 4.2 percent in the 1978 cohort to 5.8 percent in the 1992 cohort. The mortality rate remained stable for poor Black parents, moving from 4.8 to 5 percent.

The study does not emphasize broad geographic trends; this is not about the decline of the Rust Belt, or poverty in Appalachia, or increasing inequality in superstar cities. Rather, it shows that race gaps grew smaller and class gaps grew wider across metro areas, neighborhood by neighborhood. The lesson for policy makers is that communities matter—not just in terms of wealth or public resources but in terms of social capital and societal expectations.

“I describe place-based policies as one of the most important early-childhood interventions,” John Lettieri, the president of the Economic Innovation Group, a Washington-based think tank, told me. “Neighborhood conditions are an early-childhood intervention, positive or negative, shaping what a child is going to become. Think of those early impressions: What is an adult? What does an adult do? How do adults behave? What kind of opportunities are people engaging in? That all happens silently,” he said. “But kids pick up on it.”

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I'm not a traditional college graduate. I went back to school at 49 because life happened

To other first-generation college students facing similar challenges, i say this: pursue your dreams relentlessly, regardless of age or circumstance..

I first stepped onto the campus of East Tennessee State University in 1999 at age 17. More than two decades later, I finished my degree and have never been prouder.

The journey that led me to ETSU represented an extraordinary achievement – one that felt like a distant dream. As a young child, I was abandoned on the steps of an orphanage along with my two brothers. We were fostered by an elderly couple who saved our lives.

My adoptive parents were a huge positive force in our lives. They grew up as sharecroppers in Alabama knowing the value of hard work, and they taught us the importance of higher education. They instilled these values in us from day one, and as a result, I was an active student in high school and got good grades.

I initially met my biological mother when I was 13. I spent years after that meeting wanting to explore our relationship, so when I finished high school, I decided to move to Kingsport and live with her. Even though I was out of their house, my adoptive mother continued to encourage me to further my education from states away. With ETSU being minutes away from my new home, I knew where I needed to be.

I didn’t want to be a hypocrite to my children. So I went back to college.

Sometimes life doesn’t always go the way we expect. After spending seven years at ETSU, I still hadn’t earned my degree. I was unmotivated and not living up to the standards set by my adoptive mother. I wasn’t a great student, and I was running out of money – so I dropped out and then life happened. Marriage, motherhood and a career in property management became my world, and I put ETSU on the shelf.

As my sons grew up, I passed along many of the same things I had been taught by my adoptive parents, including the importance of education. I realized that pushing so hard for them to get a degree without having one myself was a little hypocritical. So, at 49 years old, I decided to reenroll at ETSU alongside my youngest son.

Reentering ETSU’s halls more than two decades later, I saw a daunting yet exciting journey ahead of me. Despite everything, I completed my degree 22 years after I started, supported by mentors who believed in me and a college that welcomed me back with open arms.

Is college worth the time and money? Facts, job opportunities and income potential say yes

Laura Terry, my mentor at ETSU, was there for me from my first day in 1999 until my graduation in 2021. Her encouragement, guidance and unwavering belief in me made all the difference. Not only has she impacted my life, but her mentorship for my two sons is a testament to the community at ETSU .

Going back to school allowed me to achieve a goal and earn a better living

Since graduating, I’ve been inspired to pursue things I never thought I could do, from encouraging my biological mother to pursue her own educational aspirations to conquering personal challenges like writing a children’s book and completing my first 5K race. Not to mention, finishing my degree also got me a $25,000 raise and elevated my family into another income bracket. The ripple effects of my college journey have been profound.

To other first-generation college students facing similar challenges, I say this: Pursue your dreams relentlessly, regardless of age or circumstance. Speak up, seek help and never underestimate the support you’ll receive when you declare your ambitions loud and clear. Your journey may not be easy, but it will be worth it in the end.

My path wasn’t linear, but it taught me invaluable lessons in resilience, perseverance and the enduring power of hope.

Renee Williams, a resilient first-generation college student, began her educational journey at East Tennessee State University in 1999 and completed her degree 22 years later. Through her inspiring story, Renee sheds light on the transformative power of a four-year degree.

ETSU is part of Four the Future, a statewide initiative to showcase the value of a four-year degree for Tennesseans. Learn more at fourthefuturetn.com .