What are the working poor doing wrong that keeps them poor?

Answer 1

Nothing. They are basically paying for the sins of their parents. They didn't get to go to college because they didn't do well in high school. They didn't do well in high school because they didn't do well in middle and elementary school. And performance in elementary school traces back to things like parents' education and income, child's weight at birth, mother's age at first childbirth, and whether parents speak English at home...

Answer 2

It is not so much "what they are doing wrong" as the opportunities that they do not have. The main thing is that they do not have the same opportunities for education. If someone from a poor family goes to public schools, one would think that they could just study hard and get scholarships and therefore they have the same outlet to education as everyone else, right? Now think, if a kid goes to school with no food in his stomach, with no notebooks and goes home to find the electricity often off (because the bills were not paid), or has to share a small house with several people and cannot find time or quiet to do homework, or does badly because their uneducated parents cannot help them, will that kid have the same opportunity? Even if the kid does very well in high school, many college scholarships are "partial" scholarships. Scholarships cover only so much, and then the kid (or the kid's parents, who do not always have the money) must pay for where they live (or transportation from home if they live at home), their books, their food, etc, and basically may not have the ability to do that. Therefore, the kid goes without a college education. Education provides for higher paying jobs; a lack of education provides for a life of lower paying jobs. If someone works at McDonald's all year, which many adults are forced to do because they don't have an education, they will make a small amount of money. If someone receives their bachelors degree from a University, for example, they will start off making four times what the person at McDonald's makes, and will continue to keep making more and more as they gain more work experience. Thus, I would say that education, and the lack of opportunity that the poorer have to receive a college education, is a major factor in keeping the poor poor. There are other factors, of course, but I think that this is the biggest.

Answer 3

um, i guess they live in a country where it's getting near impossible to climb from the bottom to the middle economically. people that are poor often stay poor because of our skewed economy. don't blame the poor themselves.