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Talk:Child poverty in the United States

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Comments on the article

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Mmemorablemoments, here are some thoughts on the article as requested. I'll give you some detailed feedback on the lead and then some more general comments.

  • You have citations in the lead section; this isn't wrong, but just so you know it's not necessary. The lead is a summary of the article, so everything in the lead should be in the body of the article too, and should be cited there. So it's not necessary to add citations in the lead except for controversial information or direct quotes. Up to you; there's no harm in leaving them in if you want. If you do take them out, of course check that the information is indeed cited in the body.
  • And in fact I think you do have some material in the lead that is not in the body -- for example I don't see the "largest age group below the poverty line" fact in the body of the article.
  • You've made a good try at defining the topic of the article in the first sentence, which is the usual Wikipedia style, but I think this might be a case where it's hard to do this in a natural way -- see MOS:FIRST for examples. I would suggest something like "About 1 in 5 children in the United States are in families who are below the poverty threshold." There's no need to define poverty; it's a common word.
  • "It is caused by many factors, including race, education, and family structure, but ultimately race encompasses these and other factors." The second half isn't clear -- do you mean the other factors are less important (correlate or cause less) than race?
  • "There are multiple effects of child poverty; effects on health and development cause lifelong problems and lower educational outcomes, and food insecurity is also caused by child poverty." I would avoid using the words "child poverty" wherever you can -- you're going to have to use those words a lot so avoiding them will help make it easier to read. And food insecurity has other causes too.
  • "In order to counteract child poverty, the United States government has put in place programs to reduce child poverty using tax credits and transfers." Another place you can cut -- just make this "The US government has put in place programs to reduce child poverty using tax credits and transfers" -- the reader understands this is intended to help, so we don't need to say so.
  • "For future policies, greater investment directed to children and families in poverty and connections between healthcare providers and financial services can lower the child poverty rate": this is a definite assertion about something that is a matter of opinion; you're citing experts and I would suggest framing this as "Research into the causes of poverty suggests that..." or whatever is appropriate.

Some more general comments on the body.

  • How about a history section? I know little about the topic, but can anything be said about the history of attempts to deal with child poverty over the last 240 years in the US? Generally the article is framed as about the present state of affairs -- current measures, current policy. The history is probably worth a page in its own right, but it would be good to add whatever you can find.
  • How about a graph showing some of the measures, graphed over whatever time you can get data for?
  • I would suggest rewording some of the material in the measurements section. Where you have "has weaknesses", "critics say", "many argue", "other people say", and so on, it would be better to either make the statement absolute if there's no academic debate about it, and simply cite sources to support it; or if there is debate about it, present both sides.
  • The first paragraph of the measurement section mixes definition and criticism. I think it would be better to have a first paragraph that's just definition: mention the one-third of consumption of food, the adjustments for inflation, age, composition, and so on. What did the 1950s survey produce, exactly? How did that get built in to the definition? Then the reader understands the definition and you can mention the criticisms.

More later; I'm out of time for the moment. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 17:02, 3 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Mike Christie, thank you so much for the advice and suggestions. I have a couple of questions. There were some graphs I found in the papers that I wanted to add, but they were not available on Wikimedia or Openverse. I didn't want to tread on copyright issues, so I decided not to add them. If I found them in the papers I cited from, am I allowed to add them to the article? Also, when separating the Measurements section to definition then criticism, should I do definition of absolute, definition of relative, then criticisms of both or definition, criticism, definition, criticism.
Once again, thank you for spending your time on helping me! I really appreciate it! --Mmemorablemoments (talk) 05:53, 4 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
You're right not to just take a graph from a paper; that would be copyrighted. However, you could retype the data into Excel and create a new graph if you wanted to, and upload a screenshot of that graph. Also, any chart produced by the US government is automatically public domain, so for example you could use the graph on this page if you wanted to. I would think census.gov would be a good place for you to find more data and other graphs that might be useful. Re the measurements, it's an editorial judgement, not an absolute rule -- I was thinking about how a reader would find it easiest to absorb. I think it would best to give all the definitions first, then the criticisms, but if you think there's a good reason to do it differently, try it and see how it looks. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 10:33, 4 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
That website was very helpful! I added two graphs from there! Instead of doing all of the definitions first, I did definition of absolute, critics of absolute, then all of relative. I chose to do this because the Supplemental Poverty Measure was a response to the criticism of the Official method. Therefore, its definition is in direct contrast to the critics of the absolute method. Mmemorablemoments (talk) 06:16, 6 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Did you know nomination

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The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: rejected by BlueMoonset (talk) 02:04, 9 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
This article was part of a class assignment that ended on December 1, and the nominator has not edited Wikipedia for a month. Closing with regret; it was abandoned by its nominator too soon.

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  • ... that in the United States, one in five children live in poverty? Source: "Childhood poverty has been a persistent problem in the United States, with approximately 1 in 5 children living below the official federal poverty level (FPL)" ([1])
    • Reviewed:
    • Comment: on page 1 of the source

Created by Mmemorablemoments (talk). Self-nominated at 04:14, 7 November 2022 (UTC).[reply]

theleekycauldron Ok, sounds good!

  • Ambitious work on a difficult but important topic by a new editor (welcome!). New enough (submitted within 5 days of creation), super long (4011 words), well sourced, Earwig says no copyvio. QPQ is not required for a first nomination. Issue with hook has been addressed. Before I check this off for approval, I would like to ask Mmemorablemoments to please review the final section on "Future steps" and see if you can revise the copy a bit to make it sound more neutral and more encyclopedic. Given the topic, it's hard not to be prescriptive, but in places, this very long paragraph sounds a bit like soapboxing, which we're trying to avoid. (See WP:SOAPBOX.) (A few minor changes may go a long way to fix this.) Other comments (not necessarily DYK blockers): 1) Measurement section is too long and too detailed; the reader could easily forget what the article is about and it reads like a college paper rather than an encyclopedia article. 2) Overall, the article could use some TLC in terms of copyediting and proofing: Is the writing as clear as it could be? (I noticed that you share one of my bad habits which is to use the word "also" a lot. There is a section of the article where "also" appears in nearly every sentence (!).) Anyway, I understand that this article is part of your coursework, but hopefully your instructor also understands that what makes a good paper for an academic course is not the same as what makes an acceptable Wikipedia article. The article is more than long enough for DYK, so don't be afraid to simplify and shorten, if it gets your points across more clearly. Shorter paragraphs may help also. <-- See what I did there? Cielquiparle (talk) 23:46, 16 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Nominator has not responded in two weeks and has not been active on Wikipedia since 9 November. Per review above, article as it stands does not meet DYK standards. Cielquiparle (talk) 06:54, 30 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
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