Children and Poverty in the United States

Ronie Carper

Axia College

    In this essay, we will be discussing children, poverty and the effects it has on them in the United States. Poverty; we should first know what the definition is. Poverty is characterized as; “the state of one who lacks a socially acceptable amount of money or material possessions to be able to support themselves and their families” (US Census Bureau, 2010).   The most popular measure of poverty is the “poverty threshold”. This measure distinguishes poverty as a lack of goods and services that is taken for allocated daily from the mainstream society (US Census Bureau, 2010).

    Poverty is worldwide, but it is America’s dirty little secret. Even though the United States is one of the most prosperous nations in the world, it has an immensely higher percentage of poor children, and is greedy with aid when it comes to the children and the programs that are needed to help them. In fact, the United States’ rate is twice that of the next country behind them. In 1964, President Lyndon Johnson declared war on American soil: the war on Domestic Poverty (Hearts and Mind Network, 1997-2007).Over the years, government agencies certainly have aided and contributed to Americans that are in need. The United States still has not won the war on poverty. It has become worse today than ever. When programs need to be cut, Welfare is the first program that has taken drastic cuts. Single families that lived in poverty that were headed by women; especially the Hispanic and Black population had the highest rate of poverty. 29.9 percent of the single women households were the poorest, although single men households were 16.9 percent and married couple families were 5.8 percent (Poverty in the, 2006).

    Poverty affects everyone. It shows no discrimination or geographical regions. An amazing forty-eight percent of its prey is children under the age of eighteen. One out of four children, which is around... [continues]

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