Poverty and education: impacts and interconnections

Education in Australia

The educational system gives primary emphasis to student preparation for future employment. This clearly indicates a belief that education leads to employment and so that education can be a useful tool in raising an individual or a group out of poverty. The average educational level achieved in a society is though to affect the levels of poverty in that society, but at the same time, it is evident that the level of poverty affects the ability of children to get an education in the first place. Poor children therefore fail to get the same education as wealthier children and so are not as well-prepared for joining the workfor5ce, which is one reason why poverty perpetuates itself from generation to generation. Understanding this process is important to me in my profession, for I work in the Human Resources Department of a large Educational Tutor Institute. Presumably, such a position also provides the opportunity to help shape educational policy for future generations and to assist students in gaining the training they need. I have to cope with sifting applicants who have not benefited from their educational opportunities as they should and need to consider why this is so in order to prevent it in the future.

Poverty Levels

Jean (2003) writes that numerous welfare groups in the nation have called on the government to adopt a plan to cut the poverty rate in half in Australia in a decade. The Australian Council of Social Service (ACOSS) asked the government to adopt the council's three-point plan to reduce child poverty. This plan would include increased income support for people on low incomes, better community services, and education programs to help people develop the skills needed to gain full-time jobs. Other agencies called on the government to take more direct action to address the issue of homeless children even while the other efforts are ongoing.

Because Australia now has the fifth largest rate of child poverty among the 25 largest industrialized nations, Anglican Australia has launched a national campaign to fight the bipartisan policies it says might trap 750,000 children in life-long poverty. They hope to halve the number of destitute children within five years. The organization has urged all Australians to write to the prime minister, the federal children's minister, and their local MP on the subject. They view this not only as an economic issue but as a moral issue, and so the call to action (Labi 2003).

There is no doubt that solutions must be found and implemented, and any solutions to the problem of poor children must be more expansive and consider the plight of poor adults as well. Families do not consist simply of children, and the welfare of the family and the welfare of the child are related. Indigenous families may have more severe problems and so may need a different approach, but all families need to be considered. Among the ways this issue can be addressed are the following:

1) Address child poverty directly with programs to alleviate the number and provide for food and shelter for children and their families.

2) Alter detrimental policies such as the penalties for not meeting job search targets.

3) Provide increased income support for people on low incomes.

4) Create better community services.

5) Create education programs to help people develop the skills needed to gain full-time jobs

6) Create specific programs to alleviate the problems of indigenous families.

7) Consider a taxpayer levy to address these issues.

8) Study the success or failure of programs in other countries to determine what will work best in Australia.

9) Provide direct assistance for children to families in poverty.

10) Increase school lunch programs and early morning snacks to alleviate the problem of children going hungry.

11) Give tax breaks to businesses that offer programs for low-paid employees to help with their children.

12) Increase funding to social service organizations that help children.

Le and Miller (2002) point out that educational levels for the population as a whole have been increasing, with particular increases over the past four decades for women. In assessing levels of child poverty, what is being assessed is usually family poverty, much of it related to single-parent families where the woman is the sole breadwinner. Increases in levels of education for women and higher levels of workforce participation as a result can reduce the levels of poverty in time, though the poverty of today can affect children who may become enmeshed in the cycle of poverty until some force gets them motivated to get an education and change the cycle. Le and Miller cite significant increases in female participation in secondary and higher education in Australia and seek to account for these changes using models of educational attainment as estimated for all individuals as well as for females from different age groups. The authors report that family-related characteristics play a major role in the education decision, with evidence of cohort effects in the process determining female educational attainment. The authors also find that changes in female educational attainment may be linked to the Equal Pay for Equal Work and Equal Pay for Work of EqualValue decisions of 1969 and 1972, respectively.

This sort of process is taking place in various parts of the world, with particular attention given to the issue in Australia. Equal Opportunity there is seen as an outcome and not just a process, backed by legislation such as the Equal Opportunity for Women in the Workplace Act (1999), which aims to promote merit in employment and equal employment opportunity while eliminating discrimination. It also encourages consultation between employers and employees on these issues. The legislation went into effect in January 2000, and it involved renaming and updating the Affirmative Action (Equal Employment Opportunity for Women) Act of 1986. The act requires private sector companies, community organizations, non-government schools, unions, group training companies, and institutions of higher education with 100 or more people employed to establish a workplace program to remove the barriers to women entering and advancing in their given organization (the Act, 2004).

Other efforts in the workplace have involved forms of diversity management, with Australia being a highly diversified society which has had conflicts between social groups in the past. Barrile (2003) reports on diversity management at one workplace in Australia, noting that such a program has become necessary as there has been an increase in same sex partners and lone parent households, so that today there are more women than men in the Australian population. In addition to this gender diversity in the workplace, there are also divisions related to language, culture, age, and attitudes, among others. The Australian workplace reflects the same separations and divisions as Australian society does, and Barrile says that a proactive diversity management program would involve HR policy and practice integration and would establish clear links to the bottom line by monitoring employee morale and developing a more productive workforce.

Children living in poverty raises a number of questions about the commitment of a society to child welfare, to correcting the ills of poverty, and to creating a more inclusive economy. Australia has faced the issue of child poverty for some time, and though there was long a belief that social and governmental policies had corrected the problem and produced a reduction in children living in poverty, more recent data suggests that the number is still rising. This has led to government efforts to bring about a change through programs to cut the number in half by 2008.

Harding and Szukalska (2000) present a study suggesting that child poverty in Australia fell by about one-third between 1982 and 1995?96 and that this was primarily a result of very substantial increases in government cash payments to lower income families with children. At the same time, though, it was found that poverty rates among 15 to 18-year-olds who had left the parental home or who were still living at home but not in full-time study increased sharply. The researchers also reported that the after-housing poverty picture was not very good, perhaps because of a compositional change in the types of families in after-housing poverty. The researchers also find that the meaning of the term "poverty" differs from country to country and that Australians in general are well off:

Australians generally do not suffer the severe material deprivation evident in some developing countries. This affects our definition of poverty. For us the notion of poverty extends to include not only individuals without food or shelter, but also those whose living standards fall below some overall community standard (Harding and Szukalska 2000, p. 236).

Still, children who do not have enough to eat raise the concerns of everyone.

Abello and Harding (2004) offer more recent data to draw conclusions about how family incomes and the state of poverty of Australian households with children changed from year to year in the mid?1990s, based on data from the Survey of Employment and Unemployment Patterns, a longitudinal survey that followed a group of respondents between September 1994 and September 1997. These researchers define poverty based on different thresholds and determine the child poverty rates resulting from these thresholds. The researchers found that in the three years studied, about 5.7 per cent of all Australian children were poor in all three years of the study, and this represented between 28 and 41 per cent of those in poverty in the first year. The study also suggested that there may be differences in the characteristics of families of children in persistent poverty and those in poverty in only one of the three years, with the families in persistent poverty representing the greatest problem to be addressed in any reduction effort.

However, as Bradbury (1999) states, the industrialized nations of the world have been more successful in reducing poverty among the aged, but in many countries the last two decades there has been a re-emergence of child poverty. Rates vary widely, but evidence shows that Australia has a relatively high child poverty rate. A more recent study (Fed:Child poverty in Australia increasing, study says [2002]) finds that the number of jobless families in Australia and the proportion of children living in poverty has increased. The study was by the welfare agency Anglicare Australia and is titled the State of the Family Report 2002, and it shows that poverty among children is significantly greater than among adult Australians, with an estimated 676,800 children growing up in jobless families. These children face a significant risk of living in poverty both now and in the future, and child poverty in Australia now stands at 12 per cent.