U-Turn: A Surprising Effect of Being Poor

Carolyn Molyneaux’s op-ed on NorthJersey.com looks at the long-term effect poverty has on children’s education and adult lives, citing organizations like Turnaround for Children and Roots of Empathy as solutions in creating environments in which children can learn and grow into healthy adults. Here is an excerpt:

As I think of the opportunities to “rewire” children’s brains, it is clear how much society benefits from tackling the problem at the elementary school level. It costs money to do it, though, and the argument is almost always that we can’t afford it.

Of course that is saying that we CAN afford the costs of dealing with it later. Costs for additional police, social services, processing court cases, corrections and psychiatric evaluations along with producing non-contributing members of society.

You can read Molyneaux’s opt-ed, U-Turn: A Surprising Effect of Being Poor here.