Attitudes of American High School Students Toward People Living in Poverty: A Quantitative Study and Analysis

ABSTRACT

This study examines the attitudes of a group (n = 536) of American High School students toward people living in poverty. Given the severity of poverty both globally and in the United States, coupled with the fact that today’s youth will no doubt inherit a world where poverty remains a persistent and serious problem, it was very surprising to find that this appears to be the first time American High school students have been asked about their attitudes toward poverty. Among several key findings was that these high school students favor structural explanations for why people are living in poverty in the U.S. over the more common individual explanations favored by a majority of Americans.

KEYWORDS:

• Attitudes toward poverty
• high school
• poverty

Acknowledgments

We want to thank Kaila Levitt, a senior year social work student who provided major assistance in the collection of data, especially from the camp groups. Kaila was also involved in the data analysis process.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

IRB

This project was approved by the Author’s University IRB. Information regarding the IRB approval is available on request.

Notes

1. Bauman & Cranney, (2020) U.S. Census Bureau School Enrollment in the United States: 2018.. This report provides the most recent data on school enrollment in American Schools. In addition, Thinkimpact.com shows American High School have a Gender Parity Index of .99. This number indicates that males slightly outnumber females.

2. Riser-Kositsky (2022). Education Statistics: Facts about American Schools. Education Week. https://www.edweek.org/leadership/education-statistics-facts-about-american-schools/2019/01.

3. The percentages reported here are for all public schools (K-12) and not just high schools.

4. 47.6% of our combined sample indicted “Don’t Know” when asked to identify whether their school was urban, suburban, or rural. We believe this was a problem with the wording of the question for the camp group survey. We know from other sources of information (e.g., camp application) that a majority of these respondents attend suburban high schools. We believe the actual % to be around 40%.

5. This percentage combines rural schools (19.2%) and small towns (10.9%).