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Born Poor Revisited The Lasting Toll Of Childhood Poverty In America

Leo Migdal
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born poor revisited the lasting toll of childhood poverty in america

An indelible look at the realities of growing up poor in America More than a decade ago, the Emmy-nominated documentary Poor Kids explored poverty in the United States as it’s rarely seen: through the eyes of children. Born Poor tells the stories of the same children, now grown, chronicling their lives from childhood to the present day. The 90-minute documentary follows Kaylie, Johnny and Brittany across three chapters of their lives as they grow from kids to teenagers to adults, trying to pursue their dreams while dealing with an economy where... Remaking the Middle East: Israel vs. Iran

You’ll receive early alerts about our documentaries and investigations. Kaylie, pictured in the 2012 documentary “Poor Kids” and the 2025 documentary “Born Poor," a documentary showing on PBS. One in six American children under age 5 — about 3 million — live in poverty, the highest rate of any age group. Children remain the poorest age group in America, with children of color, children under 5, children of single mothers and children in the South suffering from the highest poverty rates. Two years after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, child poverty remains a paralyzing problem that both causes and worsens hardships in the lives of millions of children. It especially affects a child’s ability to learn and make academic progress.

Although the number of children living in poverty fell from 11.6 million to 11.1 million between 2020 and 2021, the pandemic ultimately pushed more than 1 million children over the poverty threshold. The crisis made clear how deeply entrenched wealth inequality is in America and how much it harms low-income households struggling to meet basic living expenses. Systemic racism, ingrained since the nation’s founding in American institutions, has long perpetuated child poverty. Current statistics show how effectively these barriers have pushed the American dream of economic mobility further out of reach, especially for Black and Hispanic children. The effects are visible in housing, education and health outcomes. Watch the prologue from FRONTLINE’s season premiere — a documentary made over 14 years that follows kids in three families trying to overcome poverty from childhood through the teen years to young adulthood.

More than a decade ago, the Emmy-nominated documentary Poor Kids portrayed poverty in America as it’s rarely seen: through the eyes of children. Now, those kids — Brittany, Johnny and Kaylie — are all grown up, fighting to overcome the lingering impact of childhood poverty as they navigate young adulthood. “Once you get in the hole, it’s extremely hard to find your way out,” Brittany says. She, Johnny and Kaylie continue to share their experiences with the American public in Born Poor, FRONTLINE’s season premiere. Filmed across 14 years, the documentary follows these three kids from three families across three chapters of their lives — from childhood through the teen years to young adulthood — and offers a powerful,... “Born Poor” is a documentary that follows three characters from childhood to adulthood and provides a longitudinal look at the realities of growing up poor in America.

More than a decade ago, in the Emmy-nominated documentary Poor Kids, the acclaimed PBS series FRONTLINE explored poverty in America as it’s rarely seen: through the eyes of children. Now with Born Poor it tells the stories of the now-grown children at the heart of Poor Kids — chronicling their lives from childhood to the present day, and offering a powerful, personal, and... Filmed across 14 years, it follows Kaylie, Johnny, and Brittany. When we were first introduced to them in 2011, these three kids from three families were living in the Quad Cities, a crossroads along the border of Iowa and Illinois on the Mississippi River... Lauren Mucciolo, Producer of FRONTLINE: Born Poor, joined “Arizona Horizon” to talk about the “Born Poor” documentary and her work on it. Going back to 2011, FRONTLINE: Born Poor was the first project Mucciolo worked on for the FRONTLINE documentary series.

“We filmed them over a long period of time. We invested time getting to know their world. We said we would come back. We stayed in touch, and it was fascinating to hear what was going on,” said Mucciolo when reflecting on her initial experience working on this project. Born Poor: A 14-Year Journey into Childhood Poverty and its Consequences What happens when you grow up poor in America—and stay in touch with the same filmmaker for more than a decade?

In this episode of The FRONTLINE Dispatch podcast, host Raney Aronson-Rath speaks with filmmaker Jezza Neumann and Kaylie Hegwood, one of three young adults Neumann has been following across 14 years. They discuss what the resulting documentary, Born Poor, reveals about hunger, loss, and the daily fight for stability in a country where opportunity can depend on the financial status of the family you were... Neumann discusses what it takes to document three lives across more than a decade: “I have sat in a corner of a room and not moved for hours on end before, just to sort... And Kaylie shares what it’s like to grow up on camera, to see her own story, now as a soon-to-be mother herself, and why she’s continued to share her life with the American public. In 2012, the Emmy-nominated documentary Poor Kids, and in 2017, the documentary Poor Kids: Update, poverty in America was portrayed as it’s rarely seen: through the eyes of children. Now, those kids — Brittany, Johnny and Kaylie — are all grown up, fighting to overcome the lingering impact of childhood poverty as they navigate young adulthood.

“Once you get in the hole, it’s extremely hard to find your way out,” Brittany says. She, Johnny and Kaylie continue to share their experiences with the American public in Born Poor, FRONTLINE’s season premiere. Filmed across 14 years, the documentary follows these three kids from three families across three chapters of their lives — from childhood through the teen years to young adulthood — and offers a powerful,... “Do I ever get tired of the struggle? Absolutely,” Johnny says. “But I feel like if you get another day to breathe and wake up and make something happen, you got to get off your butt and make it happen.”

Born Poor October 7, 2025 7/6c: pbs.org/frontline, PBS App 10/9c: PBS stations (check local listings), YouTube & the PBS Documentaries Prime Video Channel www.facebook.com/frontline Instagram: @frontlinepbs | YouTube: youtube.com/frontline More than a decade ago, in the Emmy-nominated documentary Poor Kids, the acclaimed PBS series FRONTLINE explored poverty in America as it’s rarely seen: through the eyes of children. This fall, FRONTLINE’s 90-minute season premiere tells the stories of the now-grown children at the heart of Poor Kids — chronicling their lives from childhood to the present day, and offering a powerful, personal... Filmed across 14 years, Born Poor premieres Tuesday, October 7, at 10/9c on PBS stations (check local listings) and YouTube, and at 7/6c at PBS.org/frontline and in the PBS App. The documentary is from an award-winning team led by director and producer Jezza Neumann and producer Lauren Mucciolo, who first began filming with Kaylie, Johnny and Brittany in 2011. Back then, these three kids from three families were living in the Quad Cities, a crossroads along the border of Iowa and Illinois on the Mississippi river that had been hit hard by the...

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