Ability to Overcome Generational Poverty

Reflective Paper

The ability to overcome generational poverty is likely the greatest challenge for most Americans. The struggle of generational poverty is far more challenging for those who face poverty and low-income status. Perhaps the most powerful notion is that the experience of poverty is relative (Payne, 1996). They are many communities that are unaware of the national level of their community poverty level. They're many various disadvantages involved in overcoming generational poverty. Some are perceived as having a disadvantage when they are compared to others, for example, gender, race, skin color, age. It is easy to generalize by the color of one's skin, race or gender. There has been some progress has been accomplished in reducing the barriers put up between education, race, gender, geography, and religion (Mortenson, 1993), even though, poverty has been the one barrier that has not been able to overcome. In the year 1970, a person part of the lower income percentile was only 16% likely to complete a bachelor's degree compared to a person that didn't belong to the lower income percentile. In the year 1989, it dropped to 11% (Mortenson, 1991), and in 1996, to 10% (Levine & Nidiffer, 1996; Mortenson, 1996). Since then, there has been an even lower percentage of the people that have a lower income in the U.S. have become educated (Valadez, 1998; Greenberg, Trawn, & Plimpton, 1999).

To overcome generational poverty an individual generally can manage to re-establish themselves because of savings, skills and education, and good support systems such as family and friends. Being poor is not a reflection of one's intelligence or a statement of their individual abilities. Also, the feelings of low self-esteem and self-worth provide these people a terror of change and an inability of improving their situation. For children who are in poverty level families, their access to higher means of education is limited for several reasons. There can be many limitations due to lack of institutional availability, and lack of dedicated instructors. Due to these limitations, these services resulted in finding that those in receipt achieved greater success educationally and cognitively through the lifespan. (Ferguson, Bovaird, & Mueller, 2007). The first way to overcome generational poverty is education it is imperative that these individuals graduate high school, also that they get informed about college and vocational programs. Generational Poverty helps creates a strong family environment that most children refuse to want to break by leaving home. Some parents become possessive of their children and instead of preparing their kids to achieve success. Some of these children end up getting frustrated and dropping out of school or result in a teen pregnancy. In most cases parents can't afford to provide child care for their