Children living in poverty means that they don’t have some of the basics like shelter, food, and clothing which greatly affects their well-being as a whole. The following ways are some of the impacts of poverty on a child’s well-being.

Poor Health: Poverty has a great impact on a child’s health, many such children tend to be malnourished due to lack of eating balanced diet meals. The lack of income will control the ability of the parents to provide their children with healthy foods. Many children end up suffering from hunger and many of them will experience stunted growth, being sickly due to lack of eating proper healthy meals. Many of such children will not be able to get proper health care due to poverty. There other factors that also affect their health, living in unhygienic environments which expose children to conditions like constant diarrhea, dysentery, typhoid and any other diseases associated with poor hygiene.

Emotional Development: Children who live in poor conditions will tend to have low self-esteem and depression also sets in when a child is living in poverty. Children exposed to poverty will suffer from perinatal stress and will also experience neonatal health problems. This can lead to mental retardation and learning disabilities. The cases of teen pregnancy, drug abuse and alcohol abuse is also another common occurrence in children who live in poverty. Children from poor backgrounds tend to have poor behaviors like stealing, abusive and other characteristics that they display as a result of the effect of poverty.

Low Intellectual Development: Children from a poor family will tend to have difficulty in learning and perform poorly at school. According to a study from the National Collaborative Perinatal Project, children born at low birth weight and lived in poverty for the first 5 years of their lives had an IQ that was 9.1 points lower than the IQ of low birth weight babies that were never subjected to poverty. Poor children may also have the tendency of dropping out of school or having to repeat classes due to poor performance.

Social Challenges: Children coming from poor families will be perceived by their peers as different and in many cases will be isolated. The lack of money to afford branded clothing, nice homes and other possessions that any child would love to have, can put such children out of any social circles within the neighborhood or even at school. This is when such children will end up in conflict with other children who come from well to do families. Such a child who is living in poverty will have trouble fitting in with other children who seem to have and this will cause them to participate in activities with their peers. Children coming from poor families often display aggressive behaviors, anger outbursts and depression.