I just read an informative letter to the editor from a newspaper in Michigan, where about 1 in 5 children live in poverty. In the letter, Jack Kresnak points out that the cure for poverty starts with children.
I especially like that he emphasized how much of the first 5 years of a children’s lives affect their future finances. Even just when they start kindergarten, children who grew up poor have already fallen significantly behind children from more affluent families.
And those poor children will continue to grow up with severely limited resources, bad role models, and inadequate education. Many of the poor children will end up in poverty not because they make mistakes but because they never received a sufficient chance at success.
I personally think that education plays the biggest role. Many factors cause the poverty trap, but I think the denial of sufficient education holds poor children back most of all. Quality education gives people the knowledge and credentials to escape and avoid poverty. In contrast, without sufficient education, people will have neither the skills nor the credentials to support themselves financially.
Education starts at home, and poor children receive little. Then poor children go to the worst schools, and the poor children have the least resources at home to assist in their schooling. Then they have the least amount of money to spend on getting into and going to college. Many poor students have to leave school and get a job because they have family to support instead of having family to support them.
Considering the major role education plays, I think we can most effectively end poverty by ensuring that all children receive high quality education from birth until they have enough education to support themselves. With a high quality education, I fully believe the children can pay us back more than it costs us to give them education.