poverty

The issue: Gaps in student achievement often fit familiar patterns. Children from wealthy families generally perform better on tests than students from poorer families; white students tend to do better than black or Hispanic students.

Economists have several methods for measuring financial stability within a society. One such measure is “financial fragility,” or a household’s ability to access emergency funds from any source in a moment of crisis. It is a stark measure of assessment, for sure, but it is revealing of the level of vulnerability — and potential anxiety — with which many workers and their families presently cope.

Economic theory predicts that in the short run, increased immigration in a competitive job market should lower workers’ wages.  Studies have been less conclusive, however, leading to research on how immigration affects workers with different skills or in different demographic categories.

Research shows that early exposure to violence can lead to problems such as substance abuse and delinquency. However, studies have not always controlled for factors that could lead to the same results, such as poverty and low education levels. Whether or not exposure to violence is truly the chief factor explaining negative cognitive and behavioral outcomes for young people in urban settings has remained an area in need of further inquiry.

While the 1990s were a time of economic growth and declining poverty in the United States, the year 2000 marked a turning point. A mild recession was followed by a “jobless recovery,” and poverty rates began to increase. Between 2000 and 2008, the number of the U.S. residents living in poverty increased at nearly twice the growth rate of the population as a whole. This translates to an increase in the national poverty rate by 0.8% to 15.2% in 2008.