The American Dream..Is It Real?

I'm going to take information from The National Center for Children in Poverty(Mailman School of Public Health..Columbia University) today.I recently got an e-mail from a conservative that feels individuals in poverty are there because they don't try hard enough  to overcome environmental obstacles and lack character to succeed.I am going to take information from Wagmiller and Adelman who wrote "Childhood and Intergenerational Poverty:Consequences of growing up poor".

Children growing up in low-income families face many challenges that children from more advantaged families do not. 1 These children are more likely to experience multiple family transitions, move frequently, and change schools. 2 The schools they attend are less well funded, and the neighborhoods they live in are more disadvantaged. 3 The parents of these children have fewer resources to invest in them and, as a consequence, their homes have fewer cognitively-stimulating materials, and their parents invest less in their education. 4 The stress of living in poverty and struggling to meet daily needs can also impair parenting. 5
Social and economic deprivation during childhood and adolescence can have a lasting effect on individuals, making it difficult for children who grow up in low-income families to escape poverty when they become adults. 6 Because the negative effects of deprivation on human development tend to cumulate, individuals with greater exposure to poverty during childhood are likely to have more difficulty escaping poverty as adults.

We find that individuals who grow up in poor families are much more likely to be poor in early adulthood. Moreover, the chances of being poor in early adulthood increase sharply as the time spent living in poverty during childhood increases. At all levels of poverty during childhood, African-Americans are more likely than whites to be poor in early and middle adulthood

Intergenerational Poverty: The Consequences of Growing Up Poor

Adults who were poor during childhood are much more likely to be poor in early and middle adulthood than are those who were never poor (see Table 1). Few adults who did not experience poverty during childhood are poor in early and middle adulthood. At ages 20, 25, and 30, only four to five percent of those adults who were never poor during their childhood live in poverty. At age 35, less than one percent are poor.






Poverty rates for adults who were poor during childhood are much higher, especially for those individuals with high levels of exposure to poverty during childhood. For adults who experienced low-to-moderate levels of poverty during childhood (one to 50 percent of childhood years), 12 to 13 percent are poor at ages 20 and 25 and seven to eight percent are poor at ages 30 and 35. For adults who experienced moderate-to-high levels of poverty during childhood (51 to 100 percent of childhood years), between 35 percent and 46 percent are poor throughout early and middle adulthood

Conclusion

Our examination of PSID data indicates that while most children never experience poverty, 35 percent of children born between 1970 and 1990 experienced poverty between birth and age 15. We also find that African-American children are more likely to experience poverty than are white children. These results have implications for adults: Individuals who were poor during childhood are more likely to be poor as adults than are those who were never poor, and this is especially true for African-Americans. Consequently, intergenerational poverty and persistent disadvantage impedes individuals’ ability to achieve the American Dream. Though there is considerable upward mobility in the United States, escaping poverty is difficult, and racial disadvantages mean that mobility out of poverty for African-Americans is far more difficult than it is for whites.