Child Poverty In The United States

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Child poverty refers to the number of children that are living in poverty. The United States has one of the highest childhood poverty rates out of all the developed nations in the world. To be more exact, 16 million children in the United States live in poverty (National Center for Children in Poverty 2014). That means 22% of children in America live in poverty. These children live in households with an income that is less than the federal poverty level, which is $23,550 a year. According to Bernstein (2008), in order for a family to have a basic standard of living they would need a household income of $48,778, more than double what they are actually making. Children living in poverty tend to experience many adverse developmental affects due to a lack of secure attachment with caregivers and a lack of resources provided to them by their families. This can cause social, emotional and behavioral problems for the children. This paper will focus on the behavioral problems children in poverty …show more content…

It is believed that nature is also affected by poverty. Some genes may never be able to be expressed because an individual is put into an environment that does not allow for those genes to be expressed. For example, height is genetic, but it is also affected by nurture. If an individual is expected to be a certain height, but they are born into poverty and are malnourished, they most likely will never reach their potential height. Poverty creates an environment that is not conducive to successful development for children. Poverty is accompanied by a lack of parental supervision, causing children to develop insecure attachments or act out, and a lack of outside resources causes children to fall behind other children developmentally. Not only is nurture and environment important, but early environment for a child can be even more important especially when referring to infant attachment (Belford, 2012, p.

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