What is poverty and how it really affects learning?

I think it important when declaring a position on a topic to have some type of evidence to support your ideas. So on this blog all my thoughts will incorporate a reference to outside sources. With that being said, I read an article entitled "The effects of Poverty on Children by authors Brooks- Gunn and Duncan <http://www.jstor.org/stable/1602387>. The statistics given in this article for impoverished children were overwhelming. According to this article poverty is the "condition of not having enough income to meet basic needs for food, clothing, and shelter" (55). In order to have a discussion about poverty one needs to come to a full definition of what poverty consists of. Maybe I should have addressed this in my previous post. Reading the article made me think of how poverty affects a child in every aspect of their life not just when it comes to illiteracy. If a child is unfortunate and born into an impoverished family, they start of significantly disadvantaged. Although programs, such as Head Start have been developed to improve conditions, this still isn't enough to fully bring them out of the situation that hinders them. There have been many studies that show when children have outside issues or home issue's it is hard from them to devote time and focus to their studies. Some children come to school hungry, tiered, abused, as well as many other things that occur as a result of an impoverished home. Also, sadly enough, today children are cruel and tend to bully and criticize those that aren't able to afford the latest gear or technology. This distracts the students and discourage them from attending school.
The article shows that 28.8 percent of poor children repeat grades, compared to 14.1 percent of those children who repeat a grade level that aren't impoverished. Social factors such as teen pregnancy also occur more in poor homes than in non poor homes. Elven percent of poor families produce a teen that has a child out of wedlock, while only three point sic percent of teens in non poor homes become parents. The man statistic that stands out that is also a major eye opener is that; twenty one percent of children from poor homes were high school drop outs, while only 9.6 percent in non poor homes would not finish high school. According to this article, the NLSY and IHDP conducted a study between children of various socio- economic statuses and found that "The poorer children scored between six and twelve points lower on various standardized tests of IQ, verbal ability, and achievement" (61). The article found that the differences occurred in the younger children, more so. With this being known interventions need to be made early in order to prevent the many problems impoverished children face. There are many programs in schools such as Head Start, the breakfast program to help counter some of these effects. What more can be done? Yes, these programs help but it seems that they aren't helping enough because there continues to be a large literacy gap.