Research into Poverty and Eliminating Poverty

A big topic of the last campaign was elimating income inequality ( a feel good term replacing Poverty). You cannot get rid of poverty its not going anywhere. Not one Country on Earth has gotten rid of poverty no matter how hard they try. Its not gonna happen because life isn't fair some people have money and some people don't. Poor people are not sad people with hard lives. We are not pitiful creatures who must be saved. We do not want the Government to take care of us, we want jobs to take care of ourselves.

I am researching Poverty and the effects of poverty. Most of what I found were incomplete because it followed children. The adults weren't separated in groups such as Urban Poor or Rural Poor. How does the Red Neck and the Hood Rat differ? They don't follow the children tested to see if most kids who lived in poverty got out and what percentage stayed.

The study I read talk about lower cognitive skills and education. The rates of Learning Disabilities were increased in children born into poverty. Yet they couldn't tell you why. To bad none of them thought to ask the parents of the children if they knew why.  Poverty a produces Food Emergencies and when you are hungry you can't learn. Yes the kids have free lunch and for the children in grades K through 8 have breakfast and they help but the children know they may not have dinner unless their parents could get to a food bank or help from other poor people. Poor children worry about financial problems of the household because besides hunger utilities are often off. The electricity being off means they must get dressed in the dark. The water being off means they must get water (mainly older kids) they must carry heavy jugs from their friends or family until the bills can be paid and services restored. Having Gas off in the winter means they are cold even with electric heat its cold. Stressed children have difficulty learning.

The problem no one wants to talk about is the public schools that serve poor kids.  Some teachers hate poor children they may be dirty, hungry, and they never have school supplies. The teacher may wish she had students who didn't have so many problems. Maybe they don't want to waste their times on "dumb" children. Most teachers are frustrated because they know the parents can't afford things like pencils and the School Board will not purchase pencils. This leaves the teacher themselves to purchase teachers and papers. This is beginning to change and both Churches and Non Profits are having book bag give aways. Its a wonderful thing for children and their parents. Children are embarrassed when they don't have money.

The requirement of Uniforms is another problem because of the expense. Uniforms should never be required at any public school because parents can't afford them. Schools that require them have truency problems. This ends up with the parents ending up in jail. The kids miss because the one uniform ends up dirty. Kids skip because no one wants to be laughed at.

When you have issues like this your study on cognitive abilities make sense. Its the Poverty issues stupid to quote Bill Clinton.