Generational Poverty: A Cycle Not Worth Repeating

The cycle of generational poverty can seem impossible to break. Children inherit what their parents teach and show them. a joint report from Ascend: The Aspen Institute and Bernard van Leer Foundation affirms this. “What young children learn from the adults who raise and care for them lays the foundation for future social, emotional, language, and cognitive growth,” the report says.1

Children raised in a generational poverty mindset often lack the tools they need to succeed or achieve a better life than that of their parents. As adults, these individuals often then raise their children in poverty similar to that of their own childhoods, and the cycle perpetuates. It’s a cycle not worth repeating, yet it does time and time again.

For the 736 million people worldwide living below the poverty line, earning $1.90 a day or less, the focus is frequently on mere survival.2 Children are disproportionately affected by extreme poverty, says UNICEF, as “children who grow up impoverished often lack the food, sanitation, shelter, health care and education they need to survive and thrive.”3

When poverty is the inheritance passed down through over two generations – the generational poverty definition – it’s often accompanied by a poverty mentality that contributes to the cycle’s perpetuation. Scarcity often leads people to believe life as it is now is what it will always be.4 They have no hope for a better tomorrow and often don’t even dare to dream for such things.

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