Jacky Dong, U2 First Sources Citation

Murphey, David, and Zakia Redd. “5 Ways Poverty Harms Children.” Child Trends, 8 January 2014, https://www.childtrends.org/publications/5-ways-poverty-harms-children. Accessed 2 November 2022.

      Over time, poverty has been a main issue for a very long period. The government had tried to decrease the rate of poverty over the country, but it did not come out as well as it is. As poverty goes on, people, childrens’ all get affected by it and it causes enormous amounts of problems. In 1964, the poverty rate of children was 23 percent, which means that around 23 percent of children over the country are suffering and trying their best even to survive. Additionally, if we only count blacks and Hispanic, the rate pops up into around 39 and 34 percent, which is almost half. Poverty could bring up many mental or brain problems to a child’s development. It could lead them to adulthood faster than other children and shortened their life expectancy. The next problem would be that when comparing with other peers around the same ages, the gaps will all appear and make them feel inferior and as the time goes on the gaps will become wider and wider. This could cause most poor children to lose competition with others and eventually to drop out from school. Growing up poor will also cause bad health, bad emotions and even bad behavior, which have a higher chance of receiving some chronic health conditions.

    After reading the passage, I learned that there’s multiple issues that could happen to children who are in poverty. The information presented above includes a wide range of potential to children’s mental and physical health. The information that was mentioned was largely new to me, therefore this really impressed me. In my opinion, poverty is a big disadvantage for a child’s mental and physical development, because as it’s mentioned in the text it greatly increases the chances of them being in adulthood faster than other peers in the same ages.

“Particularly at its extremes, poverty can negatively affect how the body and mind develop, and can actually alter the fundamental architecture of the brain. Children who experience poverty have an increased likelihood, extending into adulthood, for numerous chronic illnesses, and for a shortened life expectancy.”