Year after year, South Central Community Action Program workers saw different people from the same families needing the same basic resources it takes to make a living in Monroe County.
Generational poverty makes sense when you look at the biological implications of being born into and growing up in poverty, said Linda Patton, coordinator of SCCAP’s Thriving Connections program and an adjunct faculty member in Indiana University’s School of Public Health.
Research shows that children who grow up homeless or in families that could be considered among the working poor are at the highest risk of “adverse childhood experiences” (ACEs) such as experiencing sexual abuse, witnessing domestic violence and living with substance abusers. ACEs limit physical, cognitive and emotional growth, and a high rate of childhood poverty will only perpetuate that cycle over generations.
“When children are very young, if they’re placed in highly stressful situations, their brain wiring is going to be in response to those,” Patton said. “And that kind of wiring is often not helpful when they’re adults.”
The percentage of children living in poverty in Monroe County hasn’t dipped below 18 percent since the end of the Great Recession, according to 2014 data from the Indiana Youth Institute’s Kids Count Data Book. For at least the past five years, about one in five Monroe County children has lived in poverty. Both statewide and locally, that percentage is increasing.
“It really does affect all aspects of their growth,” said Erin Predmore, executive director of Monroe County United Ministries, which provides emergency services to low-income families and runs an income-based child care and preschool program.
The Indiana Youth Institute estimates that there were 23,103 children younger than 18 in Monroe County in 2014. The highest percentage of those children were younger than 4. In Monroe County, 19 percent of children live in a household with income below the federal poverty threshold, according to 2014 data from the Kids Count Data Book.