Born Poor True Vision Tv

Leo Migdal

-Dec 14, 2025, 1:04 AM

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.” 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...

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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... 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... “I’m just starving. We don’t get that three meals a day, like breakfast, lunch and dinner,” said 10-year-old Kaylie, who worried about missing so much school as a result of her family’s transient existence: “If I keep...

“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. An indelible look at the realities of growing up poor in America.

Filmed over 14 years with three families, from adolescents to adults with kids of their own, navigating an economy with more obstacles than opportunities. From FRONTLINE. 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,...

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