Shadow Idol: This, too.

[silveradept]

The class you are born into will affect your entire life, either for the better, or for the worser.

Because it starts right at the beginning: babies in poorer households suffer more stress, even in utero.

Yes, and then the children of richer parents have more opportunities for enriching activities.

Yes, and then after the first year of life, richer kids have better cognitive development and abilities.

Yes, and then those who fall behind due to their poverty tend to drop out of required schooling.

Yes, and then those kids that are poor do worse on standardized testing, assuming they're even allowed or able to take the test at all, for fear of dragging the school down and cutting their funding.

Yes, and then the rich kids go to the choicest colleges, leaving everyone else to struggle with community college or no college at all.

Yes, and then of those who do get into college, the richer you are, these more likely you are to finish. And possibly get more degrees.

Yes, and then, unsurprisingly, those kids who had poor parents end up working at jobs where they will be poor as well, because they were denied entry to higher socioeconomic classes by not being able to afford and attend college.

Yes, and those who are poor and minorities can expect to serve lengthy prison sentences for minor offenses or be seriously injured or killed for the crime of being visibly a minority, or visibly poor.

Yes, and then even those who manage to beat the odds and finish college end up lower on the pay scale, coming in behind even those rich kids who didn't go to college, because once you have a certain amount of wealth, it can be configured to replicate itself, regardless of the skill of the person who has it.

Yes, and then the richest get even more as their parents and relatives pass away and leave them to inherit the wealth, while the poorest get no inheritance and still have to strive with their wages and work.

Yes, and the United States doesn't do a whole lot to try and prevent this inequality from expanding. Because the rich have captured the legislators and make it impossible to run campaigns for high office without them.

Yes, and then the poor die early from their stresses, their poverty, and the fact that they're being forced to strive for an ever-shrinking part of the national wealth, which brings out the worst in everyone.

Yes, and there's nothing short of a very strong rebalancing that will fix this.

Yes, and there seems to be almost nobody who has the power to do something about this that wants to.

Yes, and...now what?

Comments

[alexseanchai]

So true. So, so sadly true.

[marahmarie]

OK, so where does science say I fall into this? I've always wondered...

1) my mother was upper middle class when she married
2) she remained middle class throughout marriage
3) she became pregnant with me after almost seven years (I was the first and my dad's only child), separated from him, and was poor by the time I was born
4) we remained so for two years
5) she remarried and became upper middle class again
6) she left him after a few years, became poor again and remained so for pretty much the rest of my life.

I officially think of myself as having been raised poor (because outside of a brief burst of upper middle classness, I was - my father did nothing remarkable or even all that mentionable to support me until I was almost a 'tween) but I was born to the upper middle class - one half of that couple only became poor once it split. She was not house or car poor, just finances poor, until all that as well went after the second marriage.

It's weird but despite poverty and obvious material lacking I've always felt rich though my material life has not exactly reflected that. Of course in grade school all the kids were rich (really exclusive, tiny, tony school that by virtue of zip code alone I wound up having to attend) so I was one of perhaps six poor kids there and god how the richer ones never let us live it down - they always teased about clothes, shoes, what we brought for lunch, whatever, but despite that, once I hit my teens (and switched schools/hometowns) I never felt that poor again and still don't though basically nothing's changed.

[silveradept]

These charts and graphs are trends, rather than absolutes, so you could be an outlier. It could be that some of that upper-class life may have also instilled some thoughts about services or other things that can be taken and used for enrichment at low or no financial cost. Our that it meant the was a fully-stocked library instead of having to try and buy one on a poor salary, etc. Or maybe it was good preschool.

That said, even if you've done well for yourself and have a middle class life, your assets will paddle in comparison to a trust fund baby with no college once they inherit, and like I said, once you have enough wealth, you can basically replicate it ad infinitum with very little effort on your own part.

[marahmarie]

I've had all the same outcomes as someone born into poverty; I guess what I'm trying to understand (but have basically given up on trying to figure out) is why, given I didn't come from a poor family (simply someone who suddenly became and remained so) is why I had those outcomes. It never occurred to me until recently that poverty could hurt the immediate/first products of it unless it was part of a multi-generational, repeat pattern (which in my family it wasn't; even my mom spent half her life better off than I spent most of my own - nobody on either side of my family was ever even close to being poor, afaik). I guess I always believed not coming from multi-generational poverty might confer some kind of advantage (and maybe for some people it does) regardless of present circumstances. It's kind of a shock to think just one generation (I guess that's my own) sinking into poverty is enough to erase perhaps hundreds of years of wealth forever. It's just a lot to have to absorb.

Of course, wealth can sometimes be built back up after a family has lost it but there was how my dad wasn't paying for my college unless I promised not to study law (that's a longish story), there's a house I can't inherit what would work out to one-half its current value because the state owns that half, there's three other inheritances I was denied over the years (my grandfather's, my fathers, my grandmother's - all longish stories) and I don't know...lots of other twists and turns along the way, along with how I don't tend to get involved with anyone who makes much more than me (since I guess that should be figured in).

I'd say truth is stranger than fiction but since multi-generational poverty doesn't seem to be referenced in the charts and graphs maybe not; maybe if you're poor, it doesn't matter if that's a recent occurrence for your family or not; maybe its more of a rigid fate than I ever thought possible, in which life cheats its victims immediately and forever in more ways than anyone can chart or graph. I still have a hard time believing that, though, in spite of sort of maybe walking around being living proof.

[silveradept]

Multi-generational poverty just makes it more difficult to get out. Now, if the United States had a decent social safety net, we could have people temporarily in poverty, but then be able to get out of it fairly quickly. (Some do, of course)

[marahmarie]

Yes, and then even those who manage to beat the odds and finish college end up lower on the pay scale, coming in behind even those rich kids who didn't go to college, because once you have a certain amount of wealth, it can be configured to replicate itself, regardless of the skill of the person who has it.

Perhaps it was in an article linked to from the article you linked to (haven't gotten that far yet, kind of dovetailing around tonight) but I'm not seeing 'lower pay scale' after college referred to in the article you linked to. I'm seeing lower income referred to, which I'd assume can be from any source. Poorer people of course will generally have lower lifetime income, with some exceptions.

[silveradept]

I may be interpolating the idea that a kid who inherits a company or gets some sort of nepotism can presumably get paid more for less qualifications, because they're rich and well-connected,

Or confusing income and pay.

[marahmarie]

Maybe both..to be fair, I've checked even the links coming from the link you used in your post but no one exactly explains what income is. Even federally taxable income can be...*googles*...just about anything: http://www.efile.com/taxable-income/

I would like to know how growing up poor affects lifetime pay-earning ability...good fodder for another post, perhaps (or even an addendum to this one).

[silveradept]

Well, the article there talks about the barrier to college, and most higher-paying jobs require college degrees as the entry requirement, so that's part of it.

Then, there's articles like this Washington Post article about the hidden costs of poverty, in time, in not being able to go to the Big Box store to fill up a car and a fridge, and so on that also affect job prospects - if your commute is limited to where the bus goes, that limits job prospects, too.

So people growing up poor may have their ability to earn limited simply because their parents can't provide enough of a boost for someone to get the things that will help create a middle class life.

And that's without the issues of gang life, crime, and unsafe living conditions that take a lot of people out of their earning potential, too.