How does poverty affect the children of the world?

I have learned through this weeks assigned readings, as well as from researching a variety of different websites, and from reading disscussion posts from other students the many different ways that poverty can affect children here in the United States, as well as the ways that poverty affects children in other areas of the world. For children here in the United States poverty can affect test scores, how far children remain in their educational institution, how many children will attend college, behavior, illness, attentivenes, as far as many other things. There are also many programs in the United States that try to combat poverty as well as try to positively impact the possible affects of the poverty. Some of these programs are WIC, Healthy Families, Medical, Cash Assistance, free lunch, and many others that i do not know about.

I found a great deal of interesting research on the Chilhood Poverty Research and Polity Centre website located at http://www.childhoodpovery.org/. This website gives information about how many children are in poverty in several different countries as well as information about birth and death rates, official statistics, and possible reasons for the poverty. I learned that China has the greatest population, and that they have done many things that have reduced poverty in the past. The website also states that although poverty has not gone up, the reduction rate has slowed over the past 10 to 20 years due to some of the things they were doing to reduce poverty have been done less and less. I also learned that India is doing great things in order to reduce poverty, but they are still struggaling with getting thousands of children into basic primary schooling. India also struggles a great deal with illness and disease such as HIV/AIDS which adds to the poverty level. I also read about Mongolia, and how a large part of the population lives in poverty and that it is very difficult for the poor population to recieve proper medical attention and many times proper nutrition.

It is very sad learning about how many people live in poverty and how many different types of poverty that there are. I unfortunately am considered as living in poverty because the amount of my income is not enough to care for my children since my husband was laid off his job 2 years ago. Unlike many people who live in poverty in other countries my family and I still have a roof over our head, we can get free or low cost medical care, and my children get the proper nutrition that they need. It is also sad that i am considered poverty level when i have a BS degree, work 40 or more hours per week, and am able to provide for my kids as well as i do. I will not go into the problems with our economy. I just wanted to give a little peek into what poverty in the Unted States can look like. I know that when we look at poverty in other states atleast i picture the very small frail children that we see on telivision, or families that live in fort like dwellings made of grass and mud. It is very sad to know how little some children have, and how much some of them overcome in order to provide for their families.