Poverty and Children With Special Needs
Poverty is one of the most pervasive conditions associated with children with special needs. Already generally recognized as one of leading factors correlated with a huge number of social issues, poverty is in some ways an umbrella so large that it leads to ask whether it is a cause or an effect. As it relates to the topic, however, we can say definitively that poverty is an adequate way to summarize the existence of a huge number of contributing factors that make a family less likely to be able to adequately support a child with special needs.
Poverty as a Causal Factor
Poverty -- the lack of adequate money -- on the part of the parent(s) can directly contribute to the birth of a special needs child through a huge number of direct physical stressors, including (but not limited to):
• Poor Nutrition: An inadequately-fed fetus is likely to be born prematurely or at a low birth weight, both of which are definitively correlated with special-needs diagnoses.
• Neglect: Poor parents are significantly more likely to neglect their children simply as a matter of necessity, leaving them alone or with inadequate care so that they can pursue opportunities to pay the bills.
• Abuse: Poor parents are also significantly more likely to actively abuse their infants, being unable to cope with the stress of caring for a child while struggling with money and/or being addicted to mood- or mind-altering drugs that cause them to act abusively.
• Exposure: Obviously, homelessness or inadequate shelter is much more commonplace for poor parents, both of which can cause developmental problems in infants.
• Disease: Inadequate healthcare is one of the hallmarks of modern poverty; a child of poor parents is significantly more likely to have the earliest signs of a disease go unrecognized -- or recognized and untreated -- until the opportunity for prevention has passed.
In short, families that suffer from chronic poverty are significantly more likely to have children with special needs -- and are also the least likely to be able to stand up to the stress of raising a child with special needs.
Single Parentage, Poverty, and Special Needs
A significant 8% of children born to two-parent families live at or below the Federal poverty level. That statistic alone is grim enough -- but it's important to note that over the past few decades, the percentage of children born to unwed mothers has skyrocketed to 38%, and a massive 32% of single-parent children live below the poverty line. That averages out to 22% of all American children being 'born poor' -- and thus, at a significantly higher risk of being born with special needs, as described above.
In short, if we intend to seek out a policy solution to the increasing number of special needs children overwhelming our schools, there is an obvious area to begin: with the elimination of poverty. Recent efforts in Utah as well as significant number of experiments a few decades ago across Canada and the US have shown that we have the resources we need to do so -- just not the political will.