We find overwhelming evidence from this literature that, on average, a child growing up in a family whose income is below the poverty line experiences worse outcomes than a child from a wealthier family in virtually every dimension, from physical and mental health, to educational attainment and labor market success, to risky behaviors and delinquency.
Many studies document that, on average, children growing up in poor families fare worse than children in more affluent families. A study by Duncan, Ziol-Guest, and Kalil (2010) is one striking example (see Figure 3-2). Their study uses data from a national sample of U.S. children who were followed from birth into their 30s and examines how poverty in the first 6 years of life is related to adult outcomes. What they find is that compared with children whose families had incomes above twice the poverty line during their early childhood, children with family incomes below the poverty line during this period completed 2 fewer years of schooling and, as adults, worked 451 fewer hours per year, earned less than one-half as much, received more in food stamps, and were more than twice as likely to report poor overall health or high levels of psychological distress (some of these differences are shown in Figure 3-2). Men who grew up in poverty, they find, were twice as likely as adults to have been arrested, and among women early childhood poverty was associated with a six-fold increase in the likelihood of bearing a child out of wedlock prior to age 21. Reinforcing the need to treat correlations cautiously, Duncan, Ziol-Guest, and Kalil (2010) also find that some, but not all, of these differences between poor and nonpoor children disappeared when they adjusted statistically for differences in factors such as parental education that were associated with low childhood incomes.
Jerry Brown on Growing Up in Poverty
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