Essay On Rural Childhood Poverty

Words: 1861
Pages: 8

Whenever we think of childhood hunger here in the United States, our first thoughts go to those children who reside in urban areas, the ones we see and read about daily in the newspapers and on television. Childhood poverty in the rural United States is on the rise. Most government legislature set in place to fight childhood poverty is centered on “Big City America” and those who live in rural areas of the South and Southwest part of the country is often overlooked when it comes to government aid and support. More or less they are the forgotten ones. The Southern states have the highest childhood poverty rates with the exception of Florida, Virginia, and Maryland. This is not just a recent phenomenon; The Southern and Southwestern part of the country often trail behind when it comes to education, employment, and technology. This paper will concentrate on the alarming rate of rural childhood poverty and the affects it …show more content…
The government classified poverty rate cannot tell how poor an individual is. If a family has an income that is 75 cents to a dollar below the poverty line, they are categorized as poor, without being confused with a family that is thousands of dollars above the poverty line. Deep poverty is vital to many of the families, it is embedded and their needs are more fraught. Very few poor families benefited the least from the prosperous 1990’s, because of the new welfare reforms. A change of even a few hundred to a few thousand dollars a year can affect a poor family and their children’s well-being well into adulthood. Children living in rural areas are more often living in deep poverty than their child counterparts residing in urban cities. The magic monetary number that would eradicate rural child poverty is 10 billion dollars with a “B” a small fraction compared to the current 3 trillion dollar federal