{"id":384,"date":"2015-11-09T06:36:22","date_gmt":"2015-11-09T06:36:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/aaas16\/?p=384"},"modified":"2015-11-09T06:36:22","modified_gmt":"2015-11-09T06:36:22","slug":"generational-poverty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/aaas16\/2015\/11\/09\/generational-poverty\/","title":{"rendered":"Generational Poverty"},"content":{"rendered":"

I found the effects of generational poverty on development quite compelling in Stuck in Place. <\/em>One figure we specifically mentioned in the class discussion was: being poor for two or more generations is the equivalent of missing two to four years of school. This was powerful for me because of the way in which is removes individual agency. I know that that was one of the potential criticisms made of the book \u2013 being too deterministic and ignoring human agency \u2013 but this fact shows how poor community themselves often constrain or erase individual ability. Because children are automatically disadvantaged by their parents\u2019 and grandparents\u2019 economic positions, their own possibilities for upward mobility are limited. This is true even when their families are middle-class when they are born. The effects of past generations, which children cannot control and might not even have any knowledge of, have a measurable impact on these children\u2019s future prosperity.<\/p>\n

Also significant is the use of years of schooling as a measure for the amount of disadvantage generation poverty can cause. School is often presented as the great equalizer, where even those who are deprived of economic resources can receive an education, \u201cpull themselves up by their bootstraps,\u201d and become more successful than the life they were born into. This theory regarding schooling is already fallacious considering inequalities in the US education system, but Stuck in Place <\/em>shows another way in which being born into a life of financial struggle can ruin even that one great route to success and mobility.<\/p>\n

It is important to consider the role of human agency in this phenomenon: obviously, some who were born into two or more generations of poverty are able to overcome the symbolic loss of years of schooling in order to exceed the economic status of their parents and grandparents. Still, it is saddening to consider the many who fall prey to this system of disadvantage. That an individual\u2019s capability of success can be determined (or, at least, influenced) by the upbringing of family members multiple generations before them presents grim prospects for the future of the poor black community. If the young are so heavily impacted by the older generations\u2019 economic status, it seems there must be many more generations of widespread economic prosperity before upward mobility becomes as easy as it should be.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I found the effects of generational poverty on development quite compelling in Stuck in Place. One figure we specifically mentioned in the class discussion was: being poor for two or more generations is the equivalent of missing two to four years of school. This was powerful for me because of the way in which is … Continue reading Generational Poverty<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7290,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[142774],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-384","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-structural-racial-inequality-week-9"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/aaas16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/384","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/aaas16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/aaas16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/aaas16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7290"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/aaas16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=384"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/aaas16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/384\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":385,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/aaas16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/384\/revisions\/385"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/aaas16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/aaas16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/aaas16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}