onomically poor. The disadvantaged child is a product of poverty--or more accurately is caught up in the self-perpetuating cycle of poverty and failure. (p.348)
Liebert and Wicks-Nelson (1981) also point out that the poor tend to be overly represented by ethnic minorities such as Blacks and Hispanics, and American Indians. For example, Blacks comprise about 11 percent of the American population, but 127 percent of those living at or below the official poverty line. People living at or below the poverty line tend to occupy the least desirable jobs in American society.
Directly relevant to this study is the fact that the disadvantaged tend to be those students least successful in school. For example, Liebert and Wicks-Nelson (1981) report that the lower children's socioeconomic status, the less likely it is that they are performing at or over their grade level. Regarding minorities in particular, the authors report that Blacks tend to be a full grade level behind whites as early as the first grade, and that this gap grows as children advance to higher grades.
Perhaps because of schooling difficulties, level of education (an often cited index of school success) has been observed to be linearly related to socioeconomic status. Specifically, the lower the socioeconomic status of groups, the fewer the number of college graduates in the group; this regardless of intelligence levels. In the lower socioeconomic categories, only about 20 percent of the high intelligence students are college graduates whereas in the higher socioeconomic categories, 64 percent of the high intelligence students are college graduates.
Putting all of these facts together, Liebert and Wicks-Nelson (1981) note that:
The picture that emerges then is that the disadvantaged individual is poor, undereducated, under- or unemployed, and suffering from a multitude of related conditions that work against mobility from a low status (p.350).
In more curre...