Poverty is often a cycle, an oppressive cloud that hangs over generations, expanded by a community’s inability to offer living wage jobs, affordable housing and comprehensive health care.

Society’s youngest often carry the mental trauma that comes with not knowing if their home will be heated in the winter or their bellies full in the summer.

When poverty cycles by generations, that means it takes longer for a society to address the poverty in their communities, and more children are likely to grow up to have children living in poverty as well.

While the impact of living at or below the poverty level is felt by children all around the globe and all around the country, the Mahoning Valley is significantly affected, according to newly-issued data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Family Survey. The data collected is from 2019, before COVID-19 hit. The most recent data includes only cities with 65,000 people or more, but the survey contains data from 2018 on smaller cities.

Many people living in poverty work, but their wages are not enough to lift themselves and their children out of poverty, said Emily Campbell, associate director and senior fellow, Williamson Family Fellow for Applied Research at the Center for Community Solutions, Cleveland. But, policies could turn the numbers around, Campbell said.

The obvious solution?

“Simply put, families with children need more money,” Campbell said.

Policies that better help unemployed people find jobs, offer training in higher-paying occupations, increase the minimum wage and increase the hours of part-time workers would help raise income and lift people, and their children, out of poverty, Campbell said.

“Community Solutions’ analysis shows that someone working full time for the full year making Ohio’s minimum wage of $8.70 per hour would earn less than the poverty threshold for a family of three. The new data shows that there are thousands of people in communities across Northeast Ohio who worked full time last year and were still living in poverty,” Campbell said.

That means that efforts to reduce child poverty must include improving the entire family’s economic circumstances, she said.

Read more in Sunday’s Tribune Chronicle.