A One-Question Quiz on the Poverty Trap
“Before I get into the results, I want to ask you to take a minute and try to guess: Which economic and social indicators do you think were the strongest predictors of the life outcomes of a neighborhood’s children? If you have a moment to spare, I encourage you to think it over before reading the next paragraph … Perhaps not surprisingly, the single biggest predictor was income itself. In neighborhoods with the lowest mean household income, children who grew up poor were particularly likely to remain poor as adults. Deep poverty begets poverty.”