Many social scientists over the last decades have focused on the question of the impacts of poverty on people. Studies in this field primarily examine the effects of social, cultural, and economic resources and structural factors on the development, social outcomes, and well-being of an individual. In the last decades, scholarly interest has increasingly focused on poverty among children and adolescents (hereafter “young people”). Young people are seen as a nation’s future, which forms a reason for societal concern with their well-being and developmental outcomes. In addition, scholars increasingly acknowledge that poverty is multidimensional and heterogenous: the effects of poverty differ according to personal characteristics such as age, gender, race/ethnicity, or disability, but they are also exemplified by the disadvantaged environments in which young people find themselves, such as dysfunctional families, deprived neighborhoods, and low-quality schools. This article gives an overview of the most important works in the field of the effects of poverty and disadvantaged environments on young people (0–18 years of age). As the nature of poverty differs significantly between affluent countries and low-income developing countries, this review is focused on studies in the United States, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand. Given the fact that disadvantage, and the different effects thereof on young people, can be approached from the perspectives offered by different social sciences, publications from geography, sociology, social work, anthropology, economics, and (environmental) psychology are included in this review. This article departs from the idea of ecological models, assuming that poverty impacts children within their various contexts such as the home, school, and neighborhood. After presenting general works on poverty among young people, attention is given to the impacts of disadvantages in home, neighborhood, and school environments. Most studies that are discussed in this review deal with disadvantage in urban areas, reflecting the focus of the overall literature in affluent countries. However, poverty and disadvantage also differ between urban and rural environments. Therefore, the article ends with an overview of literature on poverty among young people in rural areas.
The Party Building Leads the Innovative Exploration of Grassroots Governance in Rural Pastoral Areas under the Concept of Co-governance
