Child Poverty - Cycle of Poverty

Cycle of Poverty

The cycle of poverty is when a family remains in poverty over many successive generations. For this reason reducing child poverty has been a focus of almost all governments as a way to break this cycle. Improving the quality of education provided to the poor is seen by most as the best way to break this cycle. Improving the environment the child grows up in, ensuring access to health, providing financial incentives (either through benefit schemes or reducing taxes) and promoting family values have all been suggested as ways to break the cycle.

Boys and girls have equal rates of poverty through their childhoods but as women enter their teens and childbearing years the rates of poverty between the genders widens. Globally, women are far more impoverished than men and poor children are more likely to live in female-headed households. Attempts to combat the cycle of poverty, therefore, have often targeted mothers as a way to interrupt the negative patterns of poverty that affect the education, nutrition/health, and psychological/social outcomes for poor children.