Handling the Extra Challenges of Escaping the Poverty Trap

https://www.thesimpledollar.com/financial-wellness/handling-the-extra-challenges-of-escaping-the-poverty-trap/

There are many areas of the country, both rural and urban, where there is simply a lack of investment in schools and in infrastructure, which makes it hard to receive any kind of competitive education in that area. Beyond that, there often aren’t transportation options to be able to take a child to another area where better educational options are available.

Often, the parents in those situations are working, but they’re not making enough to be able to afford to move to a higher cost of living area and they don’t have the spare time to take their kid across town to a different school every day when they’re working two jobs. So, the child goes to the decrepit school near their home, surrounded by kids in similar circumstances along with a lot of kids coming from backgrounds where there is very little structure at all. Those schools are underfunded, too.

~snip~

He offers five proposals that he says might help the country return to more equal footing. Some are fairly clear levers that many before him have recommending pulling: expanding access to and improving public education (particularly early education), repairing infrastructure, investing less in programs like prisons that oppress [the] poor [and] minorities, and increasing funding for those that can help build social capital and increase economic mobility.

These are great moves for a society focused on maximizing opportunities by those trapped in poverty, but no matter how much the government helps, it comes down, at least in part, to helping yourself and helping your family. Someone might give you the best ladder in the world, but it’s still up to you to climb it.

~snip~

Here are six key steps for handling some of the extra challenges that are part of escaping the poverty trap, both for yourself and for your family.

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Posting this because it's a great article, and posted here because it sort of applies to entrepreneurship and bootstrap motivation, and doesn't fit neatly into other categories either.

There remain deep fringe exurban areas of even large cities. Places without adequate transportation or natural barriers - rivers, lakes, political boundaries - exist everywhere, and economic development occurs in pockets here and there. Work at home may change that to some extent, but even there the supporting infrastructure - Wifi, a major employer or hospital, highway commuting - may remain absent, and leveraging professionals may be quite elusive where the local populace has lived for many generations and you're still an outsider decades later.

I will read this article a few times, might even print it out. Hit a nerve on the relevance of education, locale, and lack of connections.