Education vs. Poverty

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Education is the key to success all around the world. The majority of the world lives in poverty. Two of the main countries living in poverty are America and Africa. Children of poor families are six times more likesly to drop out of high school compared to wealthy children (11). The large amount of students who drop out of high school end up unemployed, stuck with a minimum wage job, or end up on federal aid, and struggle throughout their lifetime. Overall, students have low graduation rates due to the negitive environments they live in. This leads to increased unemployment rates and poverty. According to the government, the poverty line in America means that you have a family of four (two adults and two children) that earn less than $21,834 a year (11). Americans are brought to believe that if they work hard, they will succeed in life. This is not the case though, due to the lack of education to earn a living wage for most families already in poverty. In 2005, thirty-seven million Americans, representing twelve-point-seven percent of the population, lived below the poverty line (Beegle 15). High school dropouts are more likely to be unemployed and earn a lower wages. Studies show that in 1993, the risk of poor children were two times higher for grade repetition and high school drop outs, one-point-three times more for parents reporting emotional or behavioral problems, and six-point-eight times for reported cases of child neglect (Beegle 17). It is also shown through many different studies that the ethnicity and the sex of individual students can cause problematic factors in their graduation rates in school. The rates are often lower for males, African Americans, and Hispanics. The graduation rate for African Americans in 2008 was sixty-one-point-five percent compared to eighty-one percent for Caucasian people. Males are eight percent less likely to graduate

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