-Parents are disabled, have mental health problems or additional needs. Child is disabled a parent may not be able to work as they may be a full-time carer for the child. 1.2 The family income has the potential to increase or decrease a child’s health and life chances because the income of the parents can affect the area in which the child is brought up in, the level of housing, the quality of food the child is provided, also the access to outings, holidays and leisure facilities. These factors can affect a child’s chances to ‘achieve economic wee-being’ (Every Child Matters) -Infant mortality rates are more than twice as high in low income families than high income families. -Statistically, children from low income families are more likely to have poorer health resulting from poor housing conditions, poor diet, stress and/or depression.
Another explanation of poverty is the poverty cycle. The poverty cycle means that poverty is passed on through generations. In the poverty cycle, children who are born into poverty have a deprived childhood - they experience material and cultural deprivation, and as a result of this they are less likely to do well at school, gain qualifications and stay in education beyond the minimum school leaving age. This means that their future opportunities are limited because their lack of qualifications means that the jobs available to them are mostly unskilled and low-paid. Consequently, they are likely to live in poverty as adults.
This leaves the family open to exploitation as they lack the resources to alter their circumstances to be able to move out of poverty. Families living in poverty are considered disadvantaged in society due to seeing them as the under classed citizens of the general population. Families frequently suffer economic disadvantage (hardship) and low living standards as they can’t afford the necessities and experience real deprivation and hardship in everyday life (Issues in society, Poverty, p1). Who is likely to be affected by poverty? There are high rates of poverty among families experiencing unemployment, single parent families and indigenous families.
Funding from local tax revenues and community resources to generate additional income from poor families is smaller than that of affluent neighborhoods. Second, parental participation is lower due time constraints and lack of information which is often interpreted as disinterest. Third, parents often feel powerless to create change which often influenced by the fourth factor, lack of “individual and collective efficacy” (p. 85). Educational success is further impacted by student arriving with additional needs. Unlike their affluent counterparts, students with in the Oakland system arrived to school with unprepared: academically, often lacked dental and health insurance, came to school hungry, moved frequently or were affected by domestic violence.
The women who was at their last resort was to send their children away to work and earn a small pay to buy food. The Great Depression in Canada was definitely a struggle for individuals; it also had a great impact on the family unit. Men, women, and children all struggled to survive and meet their basic daily needs. The Depression profoundly affected the family unit. Children found themselves in orphanages, working for a small pay, on their family farms and out of school.
Poverty can impact on a Children’s life chances and outcomes. Poverty can also lead to unemployment, parental separation, illness addictions and crime. Children may suffer from malnutrition or a poor diet as a result of a parent not being able to afford quality food. People on low incomes are
Poverty has increased due to a high unemployment rate, lower wages for many people, and a decreasing amount of public assistance benefits. Since the start of the recession, many people have lost their jobs and have been unable to find new employment or have been forced to work for wages far lower than they had previously been paid. In 1996, the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program, which provided cash assistance to poor families with children, was replaced with a grant program called Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF). This program has not been able to keep up with inflation causing a higher poverty level among the already poor which has resulted in families not being able to afford housing (“Why are People Homeless,”
There are two main reasons that American children are poor: Their parents don't work much, and fathers are absent from the home. In good economic times or bad, the typical poor family with children is supported by only 800 hours of work during a year: That amounts to 16 hours of work per week. If work in each family were raised to 2,000 hours per year the equivalent of one adult working 40 hours per week throughout the year nearly 75 percent of poor children would be lifted out of official poverty. Father absence is another major cause of child poverty. Nearly twothirds of poor children reside in singleparent homes; each year, an additional 1.3 million children are born out of wedlock.
In New Orleans, poverty among young children was high, partly because many parents were out of work or in low-wage jobs; also, a high percentage of families were headed by a single parent. Parents’ poor education, health limitations, and disability probably also contributed (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services 2004). The sketchy information available on the health and development of New Orleans’ young children suggests that many were not doing well. This is not surprising: a wide range of studies consistently shows that poverty and low incomes correlate with worse outcomes for children (Golden 2005). Before the hurricane, Louisiana’s capacity to meet the needs of these young children was limited.
Through this correlation, one can see how such factors can keep children in impoverished homes throughout their lives. Education is a social problem in the mix of poverty. In many low-income cities, a good education is very rare for many leaders of the household. This lack of education usually results in generational poverty. In other words, children end up following in their parent’s footsteps by dropping out of school at a young age.