The Poverty Cycle and Personal Finance by Riley

The Poverty Cycle and Personal Finance by Riley - January 2023 Scholarship Essay

In 2021, the official poverty rate in the United States was 11.6%, which means that about 38 million people are currently living in poverty. A lot of times, these people are never given the opportunity or the ability to break out of that 11.6% and to leave poverty behind. The majority of children who are born into impoverished families will raise their kids in poverty. The poverty cycle is a hard one to break out of, but hard does not mean impossible. Schools across the United States are currently taking measures to help students of impoverished backgrounds gain access to basic human needs and even more than that, to gain access to education. Public and private schools across the country offer a variety of pathways to help students become career or college ready, but in these classes, students are given opportunities to break the poverty cycle, but are not given the knowledge to keep that cycle broken.
The knowledge to keep the poverty cycle broken begins with a basic knowledge of the power of money. Many students do not know how to spend and save their money. Students of impoverished backgrounds would greatly benefit from taking a class such as personal finance. Not only do poverty riddled students need to take advantage of elective classes such as personal finance, all students should be required to take it.
Personal finance benefits all kinds of people, and students should be taught how to manage their money before they leave school. Requiring students to take a personal finance class will greatly reduce the number of future students and families who come from an impoverished background.