Effects of Poverty on Children
Poverty is a major challenge that children from various backgrounds across the world experience. In various communities and societies, the word poverty takes different connotation and meanings. However, scholars agree that poverty results from social and economic processes that deny or deprive people their resources and assets they are entitled to.
In addition, poverty results from social exclusion and inequality, which encourages impunity and social injustice during the distribution of resources. Today, poverty is a big challenge to children affecting their social, physical, psychological, and economic lives. This essay discusses the effects of poverty on the children’s social, education/schooling, and psychological lives.
It also addresses policies that societies and governments have instituted to enable children cope with poverty. Moreover, the essay highlights unintended consequences resulting from the highlighted policies. Information on the effects of poverty on children is obtained from public media sources to validate the arguments provided in the essay. Poverty affects children’s development and academic achievement negatively.
Effects of Poverty on Children’s Development and Education
Despite healthcare professionals providing that children should take a balanced diet breakfast, children from low-income families may sometimes miss it. This negatively affects their health, well-being, and physical development.
Poverty makes children to suffer socially and psychologically, especially when they are living in a wealthy neighborhood to see their age mates enjoy some privileges that they cannot afford (Ferguson, Bovaird, & Mueller, 2007). In addition, underfed children are likely to suffer from diseases, which may impair their health. This in turn undermines their academic achievement.
Poverty affects the children’s academic performance leading to long-term effects such as a late entry to preschool, school dropout, and bad behavior development. Children from poor families have low cognitive and academic performance as well as more behavioral problems than their counterparts from wealthy families.
This is due to poor parental inspiration and household experiences among the poor families (Ferguson, Bovaird, & Mueller, 2007). Poverty affects the child’s school readiness, which is a fundamental element for the success of the child’s future life. Poverty isolates children of the same age making them to begin schooling at different levels of preparedness to learn and study.
Research study on socioeconomic background and the child’s readiness to learn indicates that disadvantaged children are less likely to arrive at school ready to learn. Moreover, they have a few chances to catch up with the rest of the students if intervention programs are not organized for them. As a result, some of them drop out of school at earlier stages when they miss appropriate intervention (Challenges, 2010).
Impoverished families may not raise enough money for daycare and the extra costs required for their children to participate in after-school programs such as sports and social activities. As a result, the low-income children miss the benefits associated with daycare and preschool at the expense of staying at home with their families and relatives to reduce early schooling costs.
However, if the parents manage to get a little money for daycare, they may lack the funds to pay for their children’s extracurricular activities making them feel isolated and singled out when other children are enjoying outdoor games. This adds to their humiliation, thus, denying them a chance to develop motor skills, which are facilitated by socialization and team working (Williams, 2007).
Lack of participation in extracurricular activities affects the children’s coordination and physical development. This increases their changes of suffering from obesity unlike those of the rich families.
In summary, children from poor families miss early schooling activities, which would improve their school readiness, opportunities for better performance, financial dependence, and social stability (Ferguson, Bovaird, & Mueller, 2007).
Engle and Black (2008) provide that school readiness is the benchmark of the entire child’s academic achievement. Children from disadvantaged backgrounds are more likely to experience early school failures causing them to drop out of school, and develop unhealthy or deliquescent behaviors.
In the US, about 30 to 40% of the children entering kindergarten are unprepared for schooling due to poor socioeconomic background (Engle & Black, 2008). Those children from impoverished backgrounds are at a high risk of dropping out of school without graduating.
The National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Early Child Care Research Network (2005) supports this claim by highlighting that children from extreme poverty families have lower cognitive and academic performance, and behavior problems unlike those of average or rich families. This occurs because of lack of stimulating behavior and home experiences among poor families (Engle & Black, 2008).
Poverty directly affects the child’s development and schooling by intensifying the risk factors and restraining defensive factors and opportunities for inspiration and fortification.
For example, children from poor family background are likely to suffer from under-nutrition and obesity, which are linked with low food supply. Majority of low-income parents have limited education, which hinders them from providing beneficial and inspiring intervention for their children’s learning.
This limits the children’s linguistic environment due to the usage of a language that is subjugated by command and unkind parental control instead of mutual interactive styles that enhance poignant development and social proficiency (Challenges, 2010).
Poor families stay in neighborhoods with limited opportunities for education and learning. Moreover, the surroundings are characterized by the criminal activities that may negatively affect their child development. Academic institutions in these environments are underdeveloped and staffed by inadequately equipped teachers. This directly affects the children’s academic achievement, and behavioral development.
Children in the low-income neighborhoods are likely to develop low self-esteem as early as two years old (Engle & Black, 2008). As a result, their lives become dull because they focus on the negatives, and thus cannot achieve success on their daily activities.
Williams (2007) provides that the child’s low self-esteem can affect their quality of education, which influences their classroom performance outcomes and the future employment prospects.
Policies Enacted to Help Children Cope with Poverty
To help children from low-income families cope with poverty, interventions touching in the child’s development and educational outcomes are essential. For instance, improving the child’s school readiness and development is likely to reduce poverty-related disparities significantly.
Moreover, policies that attempt to improve the child’s school readiness and family support for schooling are vital. The interventions or the policies developed include family safety net programs and preschool interventions. Other programs include income supplementation and social security interventions developed for supporting the child’s early learning.
Williams and Danziger (2008) denote that the US macro-level intervention program of reducing poverty included income supplementation. With this program, parents with low-incomes get additional federal funds to supplement their income to support their children’s schooling.
In addition, the government facilitates relocation programs of some families from high-poverty stricken environments to low-poverty neighborhoods. This has been proven to promote the child’s academic achievement.
For example, children who were shifted from high-poverty neighborhoods to low-poverty neighborhoods showed academic improvement as compare to those who remained in high-poverty neighborhoods.
Another policy intervention includes early childhood programs such as Early Head Start. Those programs campaign against the effects of poverty among children by providing basic nutritional, academic, and social support to children in poor families (Williams & Danziger, 2008).
Those interventions enhance early childhood social and emotional development that are important in promoting the child’s coping ability with the effects of poverty. Research provides that enabling young children to achieve early social and emotional success is associated with positive school performance, hence reducing the risks of juvenile delinquency, school failure, and other behavioral problem in the future.
Williams and Danziger (2008) provide that enacting policies promoting social and emotional well-being of children helps them to cope with poverty. For instance, policies equipping the caregivers with skills that help bring positive self-esteem, good coping skills, and success in schooling children are essential.
The caregiver’s interaction with children during bathing, eating and playing times dictate to a greater extent the emotional development of the child and poverty coping ability. Therefore, the environment provided by the caregivers plays a great role in promoting the child’s experiences and growth.
There were no federal programs to help support low-income parents’ efforts to educate their children prior to 1935. However, in 1935 the federal welfare program known as the Aid to Dependent Children was instituted. Its name was changed to Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC).
This program offers basic support such as medical care, and educational programs for low-income children. In addition, a social security program was initiated by the federal government to help the elderly and the needy in the society, including children, with supplementary income (Challenges, 2010).
This program provided low-income children with basic needs to enable them cope with the hardships of poverty. Subsidized housing program which was started in 1987 also played a great role in ensuring that low-income children are at least enabled to access basic education (Williams & Danziger, 2008).
Through this program, parents could convert the money they would have used for rent to educate their children or provide them with the necessary tools for schooling/learning. The supplemental nutrition assistance program was enacted in 1964 to help disadvantaged children cope with nutritional hardships due to food insecurity.
It is obvious that low-income children lack enough food supply or rarely take a balanced diet due to their parent’s lack. Therefore, poor diet affects the child’s well-being, and learning or educational output.
This intervention program or policy is important for children at primary and high school levels (Williams & Danziger, 2008). Finally, these programs provide that early interventions can change the growing negative effects that poverty imposes on child development and schooling (Williams & Danziger, 2008).
Unintended Consequences of the Policies
The policies developed to help low-income children cope with poverty result in unintended consequences as well. For instance, income supplement programs help the parents to solve the problem of bills and provision of the family basic needs.
In addition, the policies helped in promoting the children’s social and mental well-being, which are important ingredients in academic performance and success in the school.
Furthermore, in spite of the programs/interventions being focused on promoting the well-being of low-income children and improving their poverty coping skill, their effects are still being experienced more than 40 years since the programs were instituted.
For instance, low crime rates and higher monthly revenues received by the then low-income children are some of the ways through which the effects of intervention programs are felt today (Williams & Danziger, 2008).
Conclusion
In summary, poverty has profound effects on child development and schooling. Low-income children face challenges that affect their socioeconomic, academic, and psychological development. Moreover, low-income children are at high risk of indulging in violent behavior due to social unrest and life humiliation.
On the other hand, children from wealthy background bully those from low-income background when they stay in the same neighborhood. This affects the disadvantaged children’s self-esteem causing a long-lasting problem in their lives.
Poverty affects negatively the child’s school performance and general behavior development (Ferguson, Bovaird, & Mueller, 2007). Children from poor family backgrounds score lowly in the classroom and are likely to indulge in juvenile delinquency as a defense mechanism against their classmates from wealthy families.
However, early intervention programs and policies targeting the disadvantaged children can change the negativity that low-income children are likely to develop. Looking for ways to alleviate poverty is essential to children’s education performance and well-being. However, providing them with necessary education is not enough to address the effects of poverty effectively.
Therefore, intervention programs that address empowerment frameworks are needed to promote positive relations between parents and children. Williams (2007) argues that reduction of the effects poverty brings to children requires a life-cycle approach that starts before they begin schooling. This will ensure school readiness, family involvement, and other processes linking child development and educational achievements.
References
Challenges. (2010). Child poverty: A priority challenge. Web.
Engle, L.P. & Black, M.M. (2008). The effects of poverty on child development and educational outcomes. Ann NY Acad Science, 1136, 243-256.
Ferguson, H.B., Bovaird, S., & Mueller, M.P. (2007). The impact of poverty on educational outcomes for children. Pediatric Child Health, 12 (8), 701-706.
National Institute Of child Health and Human Development Early Child Care Research Network. (2005). Duration and development timing of poverty and children’s cognitive and social development from birth through third grade. Child Development, 76, 795-810.
Williams, S. (2007). Child Poverty and self esteem. Web.
Williams, T.R., & Danziger, K.S. (2008). Anti-poverty policies and programs for children and families. Child Welfare Policies and Programs, 3, 25-45.