Education, cognitive development and poverty

Child poverty is a growing problem that adversely affects both future society
and the poor children themselves. This paper’s purpose is to investigate the
intergenerational links between education and poverty. Israel serves as an
interesting case study because it has exhibited an incremental trend in child
poverty between 1980 and 2010 (from 5% to 35%). Regression analyses
were conducted to measure the effect of the current generation’s features (i.e.,
education, income, and household investment in education) and of the state’s
school finance policy on the next generation’s cognitive development. These
analyses reveal that at the upper secondary school level, the education level, the
income level, and the extent of household investment in education of the current
generation of students in Hebrew-speaking schools have a high and positive
effect on the next generation’s cognitive development in terms of high school
matriculation eligibility. At the lower secondary level, school finance policy
and the education level of the current generation both have a high positive
effect on the next generation’s cognitive development in terms of academic
achievement measured by math scores. In addition, the findings for the Arabicspeaking
schools reveal that, at the upper secondary level, the income of the
current generation has a high positive effect on the next generation’s cognitive
development; at the lower secondary school level, the extent of household
investment in education of the current generation has a high and positive
effect on the next generation’s cognitive development. Policy implications
are discussed, and a school finance policy reform is suggested as a strategy of
breaking through the intergenerational cycle of poverty.