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Essay On Low Socioeconomic Status

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Research shows that socioeconomic status is associated with a wide array of health, cognitive, behavioral, and socioemotional outcomes. A person with a low socioeconomic status must often face challenges that create significant stress in their lives, with effects that begin prior to birth and continue into adulthood. Emotionally, low SES individuals are in unstable, unsafe, and unpredictable environments. According to a 2006 study by Ahnert, Pinquart, and Lamb, caregivers tend to be overworked, overstressed, and authoritarian with children, using the same harsh disciplinary strategies used by their own parents. They often lack warmth and sensitivity and fail to form solid, healthy relationships with their children. The failure to form positive …show more content…

In addition, low-SES children are more likely to have conduct problems. Children raised in poor households often fail to learn healthy responses to everyday situations. Due to the behavioral problems, low SES children are often excluded from group learning by either their peers or teachers. Low-SES children are exposed to higher levels of domestic violence and neighborhood crime. Compared with higher SES children, those from low-income families interact with aggressive individuals more often. These early interactions and disruptive behavior lead to less opportunities during development, which usually result in the same pattern of behavior in adulthood. In many poor households, parental education is substandard and a parent’s ability to help is limited. In a 2001 study by Jerald, standardized intelligence tests showed a correlation between poverty and lower cognitive achievement. The effects of poverty create a cycle of low expectations and low self-esteem. Additionally, high-poverty students receive significantly less state and local money than do more prosperous schools, and students in such schools are more likely to be taught by teachers who are inexperienced or teaching outside their

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