Intergenerational inheritance of poverty: bad news for children, challenge for policy

Children suffer when they live in poverty. Their inability to articulate their perceptions does not reduce that suffering, but that inability to tell us about their perceptions gives us a clue about the nature of early unintentional cognitions that remain largely unchallenged throughout their lives. It contributes to a foundation of attitudes and abilities that facilitate the ongoing nature of poverty. There are many reasons for deprivation during childhood, but because of the nature of poverty, the outcome will likely be intergenerational persistence of poverty and its problems. Although the powerlessness and vulnerability (of children) provide a moral imperative for collective action (Nolan, Maitre 2004: 53), the growth of poverty in a state also presents severe economic and social difficulties. Because child poverty and its effects are so hard on social systems, it is in the best interest of the State as well as children to reduce or eliminate child poverty. The purpose of this paper is to consider the implications of the transmission of poverty for children and for policy. The intergenerational continuity of poverty and inequality is well-documented, even in cultures where the belief in equality of opportunity is widely held (Rodgers 1995). However, the extent of continuity is difficult to measure and to interpret. Most studies find less than a 50% effect when examining the probability that the children of poor parents will be poor or stay in occupations that are ranked the same as their fathers. However, those children who do not stay in the same quintile of resources (income, education, etc.) generally only move into the adjacent upward (or downward) quintile (see for example Rodgers 1995). Thus, a change in resources from one generation to another does not necessarily signal a movement out of poverty. Because poverty is a labile social condition, with some families experiencing chronic poverty and some experiencing more