Growing up poor in america
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In the coming weeks, hundreds of new leaders will take the helm at agencies responsible for implementing policies that touch the lives of poor children and affect their odds of success in life. "But being a child in a low-income or poor family doesn't happen by chance, and neither should our approach to alleviating child poverty. She is also director of the Center for Young Children and Families, and co-directs the Adolescent Study Program at Teachers College."While food assistance, public health insurance, and other programs have certainly had a mitigating effect on poverty for many families, the fact remains that in the United States young children have close to a one in two chance of living on the brink of poverty," said Renée Wilson-Simmons, DrPH, NCCP director. JEANNE BROOKS-GUNNis Virginia and Leonard Marx Professor of Child Development at Teachers College, Columbia University. Consequences of Growing Up Poordescribes the extent and causes of hardships for poor children, defines the interaction between income and family, and offers solutions to improve young lives. They also weigh the relative need for income supplements, child care subsidies, and home interventions.
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Others offer evidence that lower income has a stronger negative effect during adolescence than in childhood or adulthood.īased on their findings, the editors and contributors to Consequences of Growing Up Poorrecommend more sharply focused child welfare policies targeted to specific eras and conditions of poor children's lives. Consequences of Growing Up Pooralso looks at the importance of timing: Does being poor have a different impact on preschoolers, children, and adolescents? When are children most vulnerable to poverty? Some contributors find that poverty in the prenatal or early childhood years appears to be particularly detrimental to cognitive development and physical health. Consequences of Growing Up Poorinvestigates whether such family conditions as the marital status, education, and involvement of parents mitigate the ill effects of poverty. In later years, conflict between economically stressed parents increases anxiety and weakens self-esteem in their teenaged children.Īlthough they share economic hardships, the home lives of poor children are not homogenous.
GROWING UP POOR IN AMERICA PROFESSIONAL
Poor parents also tend to rely on home-based child care, where the quality and amount of attention children receive is inferior to that of professional facilities. Low-income preschoolers exhibit poorer cognitive and verbal skills because they are generally exposed to fewer toys, books, and other stimulating experiences in the home. Many of their investigations demonstrate that although income clearly creates disadvantages, it does so selectively and in a wide variety of ways. In Consequences of Growing Up Poor, developmental psychologists, economists, and sociologists revisit a large body of studies to answer specific questions about how low income puts children at risk intellectually, emotionally, and physically. Consequences of Growing Up Pooris an extensive and illuminating examination of the paths through which economic deprivation damages children at all stages of their development. To address these problems it is not enough to know that money makes a difference we need to understand how. Low income is statistically linked with a variety of poor outcomes for children, from low birth weight and poor nutrition in infancy to increased chances of academic failure, emotional distress, and unwed childbirth in adolescence. One in five American children now live in families with incomes below the povertyline, and their prospects are not bright.