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How To Reduce Poverty In The United States

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Sociologists define poverty as a state where individuals lack a certain amount of money or material possession to enable them to live efficiently. Despite being a first world country, the United States faces high levels of poverty, especially among the African Americans and Hispanics. The poverty levels mostly affect school going children leading to dropouts. According to Rumberger (2013), it is estimated that over 1.1 million high school children fail to graduate due to dropouts. Children who drop along the way are unlikely to find a job. Thus, they live a poor life due to failure to earn wages. As a result, such children are likely to engage in crime, rely on public assistance, thus generating social costs that are shouldered by taxpayers. According to 2009 research, about 20% of children from low-income earning families were more prone to drop out of school. The poverty level among young children is high in the U.S. with over 20% of children born in low-income families dropping out of school. As per …show more content…
According to Pedro, there is numerous amounts of evidence that proves poverty can be an obstacle to excellence. Social conditions related to poverty such as unstable housing, poor early childhood education and lack of access to health care affects a child’s achievement in school and their overall cognitive development. It is imperative to note that poor children are capable of learning and poverty is not a disability, but, an obstacle to academic excellence. The children in cities from poor backgrounds encounter numerous obstacles that affect learning outcomes and their development. The government should put mitigation measures in place to fight factors that encourage poverty. Such factors to be fought include; racial and income segregation, lack of endogenous growth, gender and racial discrimination among others (Teitz and Chapple,

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