Child poverty and what is its effect on child education?

Child poverty is the situation where a child lives in conditions of debilitating poverty, with insufficient food, poor shelter and no healthcare.  Child poverty is found either where children are living in poor families, or in cases where children are based at orphanages with poor economic situations and a lack of basic needs.  Although child poverty is found in both developed and developing countries, it is the children in the latter that are by far worse off.  Poverty in developing countries is widespread and severe; one out of every four people lives on less than $1.25 per day. 

Children make up a significant portion of poor people in the world.  In 1997, it was recorded that 40% of the world’s poor people were children.  Approximately 2.2 billion of the world population is children.  Out of these 2.2 billion children in the world, one billion lives in poverty.  This means that child poverty affects one out of every two children.  Child poverty is a leading cause of the high child mortality rates current in the world – something that can be avoided if financial support for shelter, food and healthcare are available.  According to UNICEF, the number of children dying due to child poverty is a staggering 30,000 per day. 

Child poverty also severely affects the child’s education, as well as his or her development and ability to learn.  Research has shown that children living in persistent poverty conditions find it increasingly difficult to perform in vocabulary, reading and other cognitive skills and tasks.  Due to the lack of support for children in the average poor household where parents are predominantly concerned with finding some income and food for the table, the child is often left abandoned without support for education and learning.  When it comes to education, child poverty therefore affects the child in two ways: directly through the reduced ability to develop cognitive skills and indirectly through the lack of parental support and resources.  A UK study reported that children suffering from child poverty will lag behind in all phases of his or her education.  Throughout a child’s school years, his or her performance will be consistently lower that his or her peers that do not suffer from poverty.  And this also does not predict success for the child’s prospects as an adult. 

Early childhood development years are of utmost important for all children.  It is during these years that the child develops important skills that will assist him or her during the remainder of their lives.  Quality education is a guaranteed solution to end the poverty cycle – but with child poverty causing children to continuously lag behind and perform poorly at education tasks, the one key solution to ending poverty is in fact weakened.