Poverty Among Urban Youth

I found an article that was posted a few days ago on the recent report by UNICEF on "The State of the World's Children 2012".  The article discusses how millions of children around the world are growing up in urban poverty.  Despite having greater access to modern services and facilities than their rural counterparts, children in urban areas still lack access to clean water, electricity, and education.  Also, due to overcrowding in cities and the often unsanitary environments they reside in, children tend to suffer from deadly diseases.  So, as cities continue to grow, people in those areas, particularly children, continue to suffer because they are often not able to afford the aid or medicine that they need. The article also points out that people often say that those in urban areas are better off than those in rural areas.  However, the authors say that the relative wealth of those living in cities offsets those living in poverty making it look like urban areas are less poor when, in reality, that is not always the case.

Although this article is summarizing a report of urban areas in other, poorer parts of the world, it still brings up factors that I will need to think about in my research.  The article stresses that children who are poverty stricken are often held back later in life because they grew up in an environment where they did not have the opportunities to receive a good education, eat nourishing foods, and receive good health care. All of these factors lead to children not being as healthy and productive as they can possibly be.  This is related to what we read in Poor Economics where the authors found that malnourished workers could not be as productive as possible and therefore were not able to get good jobs and therefore lift themselves out of poverty.  The report states that because the children growing up in these parts of the world suffer from under nutrition and lack of education they are not able to bring themselves out of poverty later in life. 

These factors are things that I think are also true for the urban poor in America as well.  If children in urban America are unable to afford a sufficient amount of food or afford to go to college and receive a good education it is unlikely that they will be able to receive a good job and bring themselves out of poverty.  So these are some of the factors that I will need to try and account for in doing my research.  I will probably need to find some data on schooling systems in poor areas of American cities and whether or not the people who live there receive some sort of financial aid for food and other necessities.  These will be very important in whether or not people will remain poor or not and also whether or not they will be able to move out of these areas. 

http://www.newsroomamerica.com/story/220341/millions_of_children_in_cities_face_poverty_and_exclusion:_report_.html