If you have ever been to New York City you probably have seen tons of homeless people in the streets. What you probably don’t realize is that there aren’t just homeless adults but there are also homeless kids. Nationally one in five kids are homeless but in Silicon Valley the rate is higher than twenty three percent. Silicon Valley is the home of Google, Apple and Facebook’s garages. Back then they used the garages for new tech companies now people actually live in them. Homeless people live in the garage but have to pay an approximate of 1,000 dollars per month for rent. Which is cheaper than the median list price of approximately 2,975 dollars per month for a rental in San Mateo County.
Even if the children families do successfully get through poverty the toxic stress of child poverty can literally change the brain’s chemistry. Prolonged stress raises the level of stress hormones which can weaken the synapses in the brain. If their brain is resilient, and stable families can help dampen the stress but some kids do suffer from lifelong consequences. Toxic stress also has been linked to poor learning habits/ issues with learning which causes poor kids to drop out of school, go to jail and have a lower IQ’s than richer peers.
Not only does child poverty effect the child itself, but it also effects the country. The United States of America spends 500 billion dollars a year on economic losses, health care, and crime. Children that go through poverty are more likely to end up poor as adults.
There are three solutions that could possibly stop poverty. One way is by lowering the cost of housing so people that go through poverty actually have a roof over their head. This solution could lift 2.3 million kids out of poverty. The country will also benefit by losing only 23.5 billion dollars a year rather than losing 500 billion dollars a year. A second solution is by increasing a minimum wage. Increasing the minimum wage from to 10.10 dollars per hour and boosting the tipped worker wage to 7.07 dollars, would reduce the U.S. child poverty by 4 percent. The third solution is by giving a better early child care and early education. Kids who attend a better preschool are more likely to graduate from high school.
As you can see there are actually tons of kids that go through poverty in the U.S. Make a change in the world. Donate clothing or money to homeless shelters. If you want to watch an interview with people that are going through poverty go to the link provided below:
http://www.cnn.com/interactive/2015/03/opinion/ctl-child-poverty/#0
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