Yet, do not worry children
- Posted by e2 on 03.08.09
- Tags Family Changes, Modern Family
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Living in poverty exposes children to multiple risks to healthy adjustment. The cumulative impact across time often has harmful impacts on child development, reducing the prospect the child will reach full potential; and causing higher rates of many social, behavioral, educational and occupational problems. The long-term impacts of child poverty show up most strikingly in three areas: lower educational attainment, occupational status and earnings; poorer health status; and higher rates of criminal behavior. These impacts exact a human toll, through increased distress and suffering for children and parents, and a huge economic toll, due to costs for expensive remedial programs, lost human potential and diminished workforce capability.
The recession, even if prolonged, will eventually end. One key question is: will the effect on children be temporary as well, or are there more prolonged consequences that persist after the economy recovers? One impact of the recession could be to keep children who are currently poor in that status even longer. We could see increases in the number and percentage who will endure persistent poverty during their childhoods.
One analysis of the effects of the recession of the early to mid-1980s showed that fully 65 percent of those in poverty prior to the recession remained poor for at least several years after. But what about those not currently living in poverty who are pushed there by the recession? Based on data from previous recessions, 30 percent of the children pushed into poverty are likely to remain there for years beyond the end of the recession. Therefore, those children will experience the persistent poverty that is most toxic. Another 30 percent will experience somewhat shorter post-recession poverty, but still long enough to pose substantial risk of diminished development. Recession-induced poverty, therefore, often persists well beyond economic recovery and has many long-term effects on child development.
One additional outcome has compelling policy implications. In the recession of the early 1990s, of those children who did not fall into poverty during the recession, only 3 percent experienced poverty at any later point in childhood. Those pushed into poverty by that recession were 13 times more likely to later experience poverty. This suggests that interventions preventing families from falling into recession-induced poverty would produce a substantial long-term return on investment – at a magnitude of 13 to 1.
