Majority of U.S. Public School Students are in Poverty Analysis

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In this news article titled Majority of U.S. Public School Students are in Poverty ( HYPERLINK "/local/education/majority-of-us-public-school-students-are-in-poverty/2015/01/15/df7171d0-9ce9-11e4-a7ee-526210d665b4_story.html" /local/education/majority-of-us-public-school-students-are-in-poverty/2015/01/15/df7171d0-9ce9-11e4-a7ee-526210d665b4_story.html), Lyndsey Layton argues that 51 percent of students in pre-kindergarten through 12th grade in 2013 were from poor families. The author attributes this rise to an increase in the poverty levels, even though, the economy has improved significantly. The article notes that the reason for this occurrence is because most of the attention is directed towards their directing their social life that has been disoriented by poverty something that makes the academic aspect take a back seat. In addition to this, children from poor families do not have books at home something that makes it hard for them to continue their learning outside the school environment. Children from poor families also lack the parental support that is necessary for academic excellence. According to Layton, this phenomenon creates a scenario where the children fail to acquire academic excellence at the end of their education. The result of this is that the children end up continuing the poverty cycle and hence the reason poverty levels have been growing despite the phenomenal growth of the economy (Layton, 2015).
Classical Theory
Classical economics developed mainly in the 18th and the 19th centuries, incorporated theories on both value and distribution. The value that a product had was perceived to depend entirely on the costs consumed in developing the product. The elucidation of costs in classical economics acted concurrently as an explanation of distribution. The classical theory takes the assumption that the outcomes of the exchanges occurring in the marketplace are effective, and for that reason faithfully mirror personal productivity. Accordingly, poverty is mainly treated as the result of poor personal choices. Under the classical theory, a significant part of the policy prescriptions center on efforts to raise the productivity of impoverished individuals as a way for them to join the labor force with an immediate effect (Scott, & Edin, 2000).
Looking at the poverty issued that is presented by Layton in her article, the behavioral/decision based theory comes out as the best suited to explain why despite the phenomenal growth of the economy the poverty levels keep on increasing. According to the proponents of this theory, the outcome is attributed to the decisions that an individual takes. The view given in this theory is that people are to be held accountable for their experiences of poverty, which are connected to strictly individual deficiencies. The proponents of this theory list the personal traits that cause people to fail as the failure to work hard, the lack of virtuous ethic, as well as the lack of competitive market skills. In liberal states such as the United States (US), this is blamed on the low level of social benefits, as well as the smaller set of social rights (Morazes, & Pintak, 2007).
This is consistent with the view given by Layton in the article that for things to change the government needs to increase its commitment to educating poor children (Layton, 2015). Ideally, the behavioral theory on poverty was pervasive during the 19th century when most people believed that poverty was essential since it motivated the laborers to work hard. The policy was, therefore, interconnected with thoughts of laisser-faire, which at that period connected virtue with work. This viewpoint on poverty was also profoundly impacted by the prevailing theory of “conditional welfare for the few” such as it was the case in the Victorian Poor Law (Morazes, & Pintak, 2007). The policy predisposition gotten from this principle dwelt on keeping public redistributive expenditure low and subject to means testing while increasing aid through charity and voluntary effort. For this reason, this comprehension of the issue of poverty rotates around the notion that the poor self-select into deprivation, which is not to be blamed for market failure, but, instead, the effect of inadequacies in their own effort and abilities. What this meant was that there was nothing else left for the government to support the poor other than for the moral aspect of it (Scott, & Edin, 2000).
The opinion given by Layton in the article precisely matches the behavioral theory in many aspects. It is significant to point out that, in this discussion of behavioral theory, which proposes that low productivity and/or non-involvement in markets is brought about by conscious preference, the belief that individuals play an active role in determining their outcomes is life. The underlying proposition is that, despite the existence of other options, they still make choices that prevent their access to economic resources, therefore, increasing their chances of ending up poor. This is the argument that Layton seems to be proposing by pointing out that the government has been doing ‘something’ but that this has not been what the poor need (Scott, & Edin, 2000).
Likely Outcome of Events Presented in the Article
By studying what the classical economic theory says about the relationship between ...