Overall Experiment/Plan:

My overall plan for my experiment is this.... I will be giving out 2 different surveys to 10 individuals each. The first 10 will receive a survey with facts on the top of the page they must read first. These questions will consist of the amount of money the government pays for unemployment, how many people face poverty, what type of people face poverty and basically questions that can be taken negatively. The second survey will consist of questions like how many children are in poverty, what these children face each day, what stress is brought to families etc. I plan on observing how the people react differently to the information given and if people are actually educated on the topic of poverty. I am prepared to see that the people who receive the "sad" facts will react a lot more positive to the fact that our government helps those who cannot provide or who are in poverty.

Experimental Project:

I have chosen to do an experiment for my next blogs. I plan on surveying people whether or not they believe people should receive unemployment/ money from the government with a paper attached of the number of population who are in poverty, number of people who are unemployed, how much money the government offers for these people each year, etc. Then i want to survey the same amount of people but this time give these people a paper stating some of these statistics but with other information about the children facing poverty and the hardships as well. I chose to do an experiment because i want to see peoples views on poverty once the hardships are brought to their attention. I plan on showing the surveys first as a whole and on multiple graphs, then demonstrate the drop off different once i reveal what paper i had given each individual i surveyed.

How to define Poverty

There are three different ways to determine who is actually "poor" or not. The first way uses an income guide based on size of family. This method recognizes the composition of a family and decides if what a family makes is acceptable for the number of members in a household.Then there is the "supplement Poverty measure." this involves the government and how they help those with low incomes. Lastly there is the  consumption method that focuses on what the people in the household actually spend. Either way, is there ever a clear line to who faces poverty and who doesn't? And is it fair how the government helps those who are right below the poverty line yet not the people barely above? Think about it.

Addressing Poverty In Schools

After psychiatrists viewed traumatized children in schools, they saw a pattern that the more traumatized and stressed, the more the child would be disrupted. Most kids who go through poverty specifically, face stress every day of their lives. These children commonly feel "distracted, aggressive, and tuned out." said Cantor the psychiatrist. Cantor specifically visited high-poverty schools and was shocked with the chaos. Although not all children are disruptive, many kids facing poverty are not brought up seeing school as a positive.

This relates to what we are learning about currently in class because when kids are facing this stress and becoming aggressive and what not, this is opening the door for these children to get into trouble. Whether some of these children need money and decide to sell drugs, or get into violent behaviors due to their financial frustration, it is sad some of the children never have clear guidance.

Poverty Bringing Stress to Families

There are article almost every single day speaking about the financial issues families face. The hardest part as a parent has to be by far the fear of disappointing their children and not being able to provide for them. Within the Chicago Tribune, many articles popped up speaking about the 2.6 million Americans that had slipped into poverty in the last year. The article i chose was Poverty's Damaging Legacy. This article does not focus just on the fact a poor mother was sent to a shelter with her 5 children, but it explains that once this mother does find a way back on her feet, the children are still greatly impacted and troubled by their lives being temporary stripped from them. The mother of these 5 children in the article was dealing with the new transformation of losing her job and needed to find one quickly. She had no options and was sent to a shelter with the time she spent jobless. If that wasn't bad enough, her children began to run away and had doubts in her. She felt she had let her children doen for something that was completely out of her control. 

Child Poverty:

After reading the article about child poverty, many issues resurfaced in my mind. Being wealthy has many opportunities that people are unaware of. Children who are poor for example are two times more likely to have stunted growth, iron deficiency, and severe asthma compared to a child born into wealth. Many people could conclude the health of these children are not up to standard, but what they may not see is our country will face a great loss of money due to the children will have less educational opportunities and become less effective workers.  A group called the Children’s Defense Fund estimates that every year our nation will pay at least $36 billion for future productivity alone. With all of this research, it is also shown that the families who struggle to raise their child and who deal with hardship are associated with anxiety, depression and irritability. In the end, all of this affects how the child will be raised and children often face neglect, less love, or even possible abuse. 

The truth and sadness of poverty

When many people think of poverty as simply being poor or below standard wealth, they lack the true insight on what impact poverty actually causes. So clearly we can conclude that those with less money, buy less clothing, struggle in paying bills and don’t get to live a luxurious life like most people. But what many people don’t realize is that approximately 25,000 people die every DAY due to hunger as shown in the Hunger and World Poverty article. So break that down even more and that's one person in every three and a half seconds. So while many of us walk up to the dinner table taking seconds or thirds, or throw out our "gross" sandwich our mom made that day because we didn’t feel like eating it, a human being is sick and dying because they can’t afford to buy a single thing for them and possibly their family. The saddest thing of all is that the people who die the most from these starving and malnourished diseases are children.