As the human race has evolved, many epidemics have plagued human existence. While most sicknesses have been eradicated, one has persisted, the sickness of injustice. Social injustice has affected every civilization in human history. In the past, people battled slavery, racism, and inequality. In present times, humans have developed a society mostly free of these injustices, but poverty still continues. Although the number of people in poverty has diminished over time, poverty is a widespread problem that still affects a large percentage of the world’s population (200 Countries). This abundance of people in poverty not only puts people at a monetary disadvantage, but also causes them to be less successful than others. This is because poverty is the single most influential factor in a person’s likelihood for success.

Poverty causes a person to be less successful than a person in the middle or upper class because it can affect a person’s intelligence. One reason for this is that “parents of a low socioeconomic status are also less likely to tailor their conversations to evoke thoughtful and reasoned responses from their children” (Jensen “Chapter Two”). The major problem with this is that from an early age, children are less likely to develop critical thinking skills. Critical thinking skills are important in the future of children, because it allows them to have a successful adulthood where they can look beyond their current situation. Critical thinking skills are also important for a person to develop because, in a career, an employer would rather have someone who can process many things at once and think beyond the obvious, as well as accomplishing the job well. In addition to having less critical thinking skills, children born into low-income families, on average, learn thirteen million words by the age of four compared to twenty-six million in a middle-class child and forty-six million in an upper-class child (Jensen “How Poverty”). In other words a child of the lower class by age four has learned less than a third of the words that a child of the upper-class has. This discrepancy between the vocabulary of a lower and upper-class child leads to many disadvantages for them in the future. For example, children with larger vocabularies have more opportunities in their future because they can better express themselves. Also, a child in poverty can be at a disadvantage intellectually because he or she could “miss out” on experiences that “could help develop skills and academic achievement,” experiences such as having a “home computer, visiting zoos and museums, and attendance at pre-school programs” (“The Effects of Poverty”). All these reasons affect children-in-poverty’s intelligence because they setback their cognitive development and makes them less likely to succeed.

Poverty affects a person's likelihood for success because it can cause them to experience more stress than a person of a higher class. This increase in stress starts for children in poverty at an early age. Nearly sixty percent of poor children have two or more stressors affecting them. In contrast, only thirty percent of children not in poverty have two or more stressors affecting their daily life (Jensen “Chapter Two”). This increase in stress can be influential in a child’s life; stress levels this high can affect their attentiveness at school and other social aspects of children’s daily lives. In addition, stress can “exert a devastating, insidious influence on a children’s physical, psychological, emotional, and cognitive functioning—areas that affect brain development, academic success, and social competence” (Jensen “Chapter Two”). All these aspects to stress can affect a child’s likelihood for success in a big way. If a child does not develop his or her brain correctly due to stress, he or she will lack the ability to succeed greatly at school and in the work place. A person’s stress can intervene at school because a child may worry about what is stressing them, rather than what he or she is learning. Lastly, if a child lacks social skills, he or she will find it hard to succeed in life because a person must be interactive and cooperative with coworkers in the workplace. All these factors make children in poverty have a lesser chance at success when compared to their better-off counterparts.

A person’s low socioeconomic status can have large effects on their behavior. Behavior develops from an early age; children learn almost all of their behavioral patterns from their parents. When a child “comes from a stressful home environment,” he or she “tends to channel that stress into disruptive behavior at school” and tends “to be less able to develop a healthy social and academic life” (Jensen “Chapter Two”). This disruptive behavior has malevolent consequences on the child’s life. Not only will the child suffer from disciplinary actions at schools, such as referrals and detentions, but may also suffer from inattentiveness at school, which can lead to falling grades. On the same note, a child in poverty faces large levels of distress. This distress causes a child to display one of two behaviors: “angry ‘in your face’ assertiveness or disconnected ‘leave me alone’ passivity” (Jensen “How Poverty”). Both of these attitudes cause a great deal of harm towards the child and cause them to be less successful than their high socioeconomic counterparts. For example, their behavior may lead them to be punished by their administrator. Also, their distress may cause children to have times at which they do not pay attention to the lesson or the teacher, which leads them to be less successful. Due to these issues, poverty is a dominant factor in a child’s likelihood for success.

Low socioeconomic factors can affect the quality of a child’s education. When children are poor, they are labeled by the federal government as at-risk students. These labels cause them to be more closely affected by the government in their classrooms. For example, children’s educations are affected by federal restrictions, such as No Child Left Behind, which “has forced high poverty schools to concentrate on literacy and math to meet testing requirements, while subjects like science and social studies are generally reduced to short vinaigrettes that lack both content and critical thinking” (Capra). This delusion of critical thinking skills and content goes on to affect a child in the latter part of their lives. Critical thinking skills become a huge part of a person’s career. Employers look for employees that can look beyond a condition and work out new and innovative solutions to a problem. Another major reason that children in poverty are less likely to succeed is that teachers are not in tuned with the culture of poverty. In addition, teachers need to be sensitive to the vast array of needs that children of poverty bring to the classroom (“The Effects of Poverty”). This disconnection between student and teacher can be very harmful to the student. This harmful detachment becomes evident because students may not receive all the help they require and may be too timid to ask the teacher for additional help. This causes for students of a low socioeconomic status to fall behind, due to lack of comprehension, and be less successful as opposed to their high socioeconomic friends.

Poverty is the single most influential factor in a person’s likelihood for success. A low socioeconomic status can affect a person’s intelligence, can affect a person’s stress levels, can affect a person’s behavior, and can affect the quality of a person’s education. All these factors are influential in a person’s life and success. Due to this, if a child is wealthy, he or she will be more successful in life. In contrast, if a child is poor, he or she will be less successful. All-in-all, poverty is a worldwide problem that, if tackled, will lead to a more prosperous and successful lives for all.


Works Cited
200 Countries, 200 Years, 4 Minutes. Perf. Hans Rolsling. BBC Four, 2010. Online Video.
Capra, Theresa. "Poverty and Its Impact." Thought & Action Fall (2009): 75-81. Print.
"The Effects of Poverty on Teaching and Learning." The Effects of Poverty on Teaching and Learning. Teach-nology, n.d. Web. 13 Nov. 2013.
Jensen, Eric. "How Poverty Affects Classroom Engagement." Faces of Poverty May 70.8 (2013): 24-30. ASCD. Web.
Jensen, Eric. "Chapter Two." Teaching with Poverty in Mind: What Being Poor Does to Kids' Brains and What Schools Can Do About It. Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 2009. N. pag. Print.