According to www.worldvision.org, roughly 12.3 percent of the population, or 39.7 million people, in the United States live off of low income of less then $33.26 per day and about 4.7 million of those people are children living in an negative environment that come from below the federal poverty threshold.
In our findings, we have identified that socioeconomic status of a parent is a key factor to the achievement of retrieving the American dream. When living in a family of low income, negative short term and long term impacts become present to the children, problems that drag the child down from achieving the American Dream. Key impacts include negative financial and mental impacts that come from not being able to pay for the essentials of living such as food, this can have an overall impact on the way you think. Furthermore, research has shown that stress, depression, poor physical health, educational failure, and antisocial behavior develop and become present to the child while they grow up in poverty.
According to multiple studies, by www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov, those whole lived in a neighborhood of low income and lived in a low income family and those from a high class of income were observed. They found that the adolescents that lived around the low income neighborhood ‘engaged in more antisocial behavior across childhood, including lying, cheating, stealing, and fighting than their low-income peers growing up in concentrated poverty’. It further explains that ‘These findings were troubling as children who engage in persistent antisocial behavior are also at heightened risk for later mental health problems, use of illegal substances, school dropout, and even emergency visits.’ These mental effects and acts caused by a parent’s low socioeconomic status also result to negative relationships and a low education as these children are at more of a risk to drop out of school and behave poorly making it harder to achieve the American Dream.
Roughly a majority of the population that live in poverty remain in poverty their whole lives, this means that they will never reach the American Dream and the pursuit of happiness as variables such as stress and depression come into play when poverty is present in a child’s life. When it comes to a child that lives in a high socioeconomic status, the child is more prone to be successful. This is due to the financial support that the child is given and the fact that the child’s parents have the money to purchase the needs of living. In addition, the child has the financial aid of the parents to go into some sort of education support that leads to the child being successful and having the needs that could pursuit happiness.
