A recent report revealed that poor US teenagers residing in areas where there is a high level of income inequality suffer depression that induce them to quit high school.
This is in contrast with high school kids living in relatively equal income neighborhoods which did not manifest the same kind of thinking. The data was taken from a research conducted by the Brookings Institute.
"Income inequality has ... a despair effect on kids at the bottom," said Melissa Kearney, the co-author and also a non-resident senior fellow at Brookings Institute.
"Instead of incentivizing them to stay in school and invest more in themselves, it causes them to think 'why bother?'," she added.
Perfect examples are the District of Columbia and Louisiana, two areas which have the highest levels of income disparity in the United States. More than one fourth of high school students in these locations did not complete their four-year course.
In contrast, Nebraska and Vermont, where there is more equality in income, only 10 percent of the high school kids dropped out of school.
The results of the study contradicted conventional wisdom held by economists which hold that high level of income disparity even spur lower-income students to strive harder to advance economically.
Thankfully, there are people and organizations that show concern and initiate programs that will help this sector of society.
Research indicates that even temporary jobs coupled with personal and individual mentoring will help encourage these teenagers and get their lives on the right track. The study conducted by the University of Chicago Crime Lab in collaboration with the University of Pennsylvania in 2014 revealed that the spirits of these kids will be lifted up with direct intervention.
Some kids were placed in the One Summer Plus program in Chicago where they worked for eight weeks in non-profit government jobs. The researchers followed these students after the eight weeks were finished and they found out that they were not likely to be involved in any criminal activity, even 16 months after the completion of the experiments.
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