Kristin Hendricks

Prof. Thomas

UWRT 1104

March 19th, 2020

Source Synthesis

By choosing the inquiry topic “The effects Poverty has on a child”, I had to imagine

myself in the shoes of someone who actually experiences these unfortunate effects as well as

reminding myself of my various encounters I have had with people like that. I had to be

reminded of the adverse circumstances I have seen coming from both friends and strangers.

Because I went to a public school my whole adolescence life, I was able to be easily connected

to people sprinkled along the wealth spectrum, including those on the lower end. I have grown a

curiosity from these experiences of how their circumstances affect them and how will it develop

into adulthood. I researched and gathered multiple sources that answer my curiosity.

I first explored official statistical data in an attempt to find information that is completely

unbiased, which I found in Summary health statistics for U.S. children: National Health

Interview Survey, sealed by the​ National Center for Health Statistics. ​By being an official US

statistics program, this document provides information that had to be approved and accredited by

multiple professionals, meaning that there would be no bias influencing the article. In contrast,

most of my other sources lack this level of credibility, and unfortunately could contain some

biases. The purpose of this document is to provide the public with data that was collected from a

broad range of participants. It provides statistical data that regards the health status of several

groups, focusing mainly on children. The statistics reveal the number of children who have poor
health and what kind of poor health, along with their family’s financial status (whether they have

insurance, guardians, etc).

Poverty is a vast disease that affects all parts of the health spectrum in an individual, their

physical, emotional, and mental wellbeing. My next source covers the mental aspect of the

wellbeing triangle, “Effects of multidimensional child poverty on children’s mental health in

Mainland China”, by the leading author Chunkai Li. The main author is a professor at ​Nanjing

University,​ majoring in the field of psychology. The aim of this article is to find the true effects

child poverty has on children’s mental health, and whether it weakens mental health and

development. The study examines the different byproducts of poverty and how it individually

and collectively affects development. The conclusion was that, with the inclusion of multiple

variables, poverty does have a negative effect on children’s mental health.

My next source discovery was “The impact of poverty on the current and future health

status of children”, which covers the physical and mental health of children living in poverty.

Like my first source, this document is affiliated with a Government program, ​US National

Library of Medicine National Institutes of Health organization, i​ mplying there is little influence.

However, this article is written by a few people who decipher the information and use words like

‘excellent’ or ‘poor’ that can influence the way a reader views the data. This article details

cumulative data that supports the idea that poverty is a detriment on children’s physical health,

and thus their future health. They explain various detrimental effects poverty has on children

such as its influence on cognitive development or prospering embryos.

To further answer my original curiosity, I then went on the search for articles pertaining

to the effects that persist into adulthood. My first supporting document was “Child Poverty as a
Determinant of Life Outcomes: Evidence from Nationwide Surveys in Japan”, by leading author

Takashi Oshio. Oshio is a respected professor at ​Hitotsubashi University​, as well as being an

acknowledged member of the ​Institute of Economic Research.​ His work may be biased, like the

author Chunkai Li, because they both are researching statistics of their own country while

remaining to live in it. In an attempt to examine the adverse effects poverty during youth has on

an individual, a team studied data pooled over the course of six years, which subjects were

impoverished children. Their research revealed that poverty has a great impact on the education

and income of adults who had a poor childhood, while also scoring low on happiness and health

assessments.

My other article that supports the idea that poverty’s effects develop into adulthood is

“The Effects of Persistent Poverty on Children’s Physical, Socio-emotional, and Learning

Outcomes”, by main author Jung-Sook Lee. The author is professor at the ​University of New

South Wales,​ whose expertise is under social sciences. This report actually discusses the effects

on children and other effects that accumulate later in adulthood. All of the collected data shows

that children living under constant poverty had significant negative effects on their

socio-emotional and learning outcomes, especially with children in disadvantaged backgrounds.

With this data, implied conclusions can also be made, like this being the reason why poor

children tend to do worse in schooling or eventually transition to a life of crime.