Generational poverty refers to when poverty becomes a family pattern, trapping generation after generation.
There are many causes of generational poverty, including a lack of income, limited job opportunities and even natural disasters.
Compassion fights generational poverty by equipping children with consistent care for every way poverty impacts their lives, enabling them to break free.
Poverty is being sick and unable to see a doctor. It’s having a growling belly without food to fill it. It’s dreaming of a brighter future without being able to attend school. It’s being overwhelmed by hopelessness, seeing no way for life to ever get better.
Poverty means being overwhelmed by need in all areas of life. And sadly, it’s a cycle that feels impossible to break, often passing from one generation to the next.
What Is Generational Poverty?
Generational poverty refers to this cycle, where poverty becomes a family pattern that traps generation after generation. Unlike situational poverty, where a family experiences poverty for a brief period due to a crisis, generational poverty is lasting.
It’s poverty that gets passed down from parents to children, on and on, because the obstacles never go away.
Generational Poverty: An Example
Imagine a child (we’ll call her Grace) living in poverty, without access to safe water near her home. Since her parents work long hours to provide, Grace must be the one to go in search of safe water to clean with, cook with and drink.
Each day, Grace rises to fetch water from the nearest source — a two-hour journey there and back. As she walks, she sees other children on their way to school. Oh, how she wishes she could go to school too.
This cycle continues as Grace grows. Missing out on an education, she doesn’t learn to read or how to do math. She grows up without these skills necessary to find a good job, forcing her to work low-paying jobs to provide, just like her parents.
And sadly, she faces the certain future of having to raise her children in the same circumstances. This is what generational poverty looks like.
What Causes Generational Poverty?
Most families don’t fall into generation poverty overnight. But over time, the many challenges a family faces can cause them to sink into desperate poverty:
Lack of income: Many families lack a livable wage, often living on less than $3.00 a day. This is far from enough for necessities like food, safe water and shelter, let alone what’s needed to change a child’s future circumstances, such as education fees and supplies.
Lack of education: Without an education, children can’t get the knowledge and training they need to provide for themselves or their families in the future.
Limited job opportunities: A lack of education can cause limited job opportunities. But so can the systems surrounding families. Many impoverished communities lack the infrastructure needed for economic development, like electricity, which can mean fewer jobs. While families can move for work, that comes at a cost many can’t afford. Without jobs or the resources required to go elsewhere, families struggle to provide. They can’t earn enough to build savings or get ahead.
Natural disasters: Natural disasters like earthquakes, typhoons and floods can throw families into extreme poverty fast. They rob families of what little they do have, making it hard for them to rebuild or move forward.
Inadequate medical care: Not being able to access proper medical care keeps impoverished families constantly sick. With immune systems weakened by hunger and threated by contaminated water, those in poverty are vulnerable to illness and often powerless to get better. Illness prevents children from attending school and learning, impacting their education and future work opportunities. It also prevents parents from working, hurting their ability to provide for their families.
As you can see, each challenge an impoverished family faces can create another one. No income can lead to no education. Poor medical care can lead to sickness that limits future opportunities. These challenges stack over time, until the next generation starts life already behind.
How Compassion Helps Children Break the Cycle of Poverty
Children living in poverty are hit by all these challenges that cause generational poverty all at once. That’s why, to break the cycle, children need care for all the ways poverty impacts their lives.
That’s what we do at Compassion. By partnering with local churches in impoverished communities, we provide the consistent love and care children need to be released from poverty in Jesus’ name.
We care for children by:
Sharing the gospel: Each child hears the gospel and experiences Jesus’ love for them through the local church, giving them hope for tomorrow.
Protecting them: Children are surrounded by loving adults who are trained to protect them from abuse, violence and exploitation. They also teach them how to advocate for themselves.
Caring for their health: We monitor children for malnutrition and provide them with regular medical checkups. If a child is sick, hurt or malnourished, we deliver the immediate care they need to heal.
Offering education: Each child receives a quality education, empowering them to reach for their dreams and become thriving, self-sufficient adults.
Delivering disaster response: When crises strike their families, children receive immediate disaster relief, including safe water, shelter, emergency food packs, trauma counseling and more.
With this care, children can grow into thriving followers of Jesus, equipped to rise above poverty. And as they do, they can transform their families, breaking the generational cycle of poverty.
Breaking Free: Wendy’s Hope for the Future
Wendy, a mother living in El Salvador, knows generational poverty. When her mother abandoned her, Wendy was raised by her grandmother. Her grandmother was forced to work from a very young age and never finished school. Sadly, this is the path that was also carved for Wendy.
After losing her husband, Wendy was forced to shoulder the load of meeting the family’s needs alone. As a single mother, she works tirelessly to provide for her three young sons while living in a small home on family land — a place her family has lived for generations, where opportunities have always been limited.
“Poverty steals my enjoyment of time with my sons because I have to work all day and some nights to provide for them. We live with a limited budget because there is never enough.” — Wendy
Although poverty threatens to steal her children’s futures too, Wendy trusts that God has a bigger plan. Each morning, she prays Jeremiah 29:11 over her sons.
“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” — Jeremiah 29:11, NIV
Her confidence in God’s promise grows when staff from the local Compassion center come to visit. Through this church-based center, her children receive support like food bags and medical care, helping Wendy make ends meet.
The boys also attend school each day, an opportunity Wendy was forced to sacrifice as a child. She smiles as hope fills her heart, knowing her children’s stories aren’t yet finished. Instead, a brighter future beyond generational poverty awaits.
“When I speak with any center staff, I find hope, advice and encouragement to continue fighting. I see the smiles and shining eyes of my sons when we receive the food bags and medical care from the center; it is very soothing.” — Wendy
While generational poverty may seem like an impossible cycle to break, there’s hope. With the love and care they need to thrive, children can rise above generational poverty and achieve a better future for themselves, their families and generations to follow.
