They Were ‘Born Poor’ in America. As Young Adults, They’re Fighting to Shake Child Poverty’s Lingering Impact.
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, personal and longitudinal look at the realities of growing up in poverty in the U.S.
“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.”
The prologue of Born Poor, embedded above, gives a sense of both the documentary’s sweeping scope and its striking intimacy. Back when director and producer Jezza Neumann and producer Lauren Mucciolo began filming in 2011, Brittany, Johnny and Kaylie’s 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 Great Recession.
“We lost our whole house, and everything,” Johnny told the cameras at age 13. “Then we moved to a homeless shelter.” Kaylie, then 10, collected cans for money, and described feeling like she was always hungry. It was a familiar worry to Brittany, then 9, who shared, “I think there’s a lot of people in America that need help with food.”
As the Born Poor prologue shows, the filmmakers continued to follow the trio into adulthood, documenting how they’ve each tried to pursue their dreams while dealing with an economy where they face more obstacles than opportunities. Despite difficulty, loss and setbacks, Kaylie, Brittany and Johnny — now navigating parenthood themselves — refuse to give up on their pursuit of economic stability and an American dream that, to them, has felt perpetually out of reach.
“The last thing that I want is for my kids to worry about what we’re going to have for dinner, or worry about where we’re gonna stay,” says Brittany, age 22.
“What can I do today to make myself better for tomorrow?” says Johnny, age 25. “So, that’s really my mentality every day.”
But trying to overcome the grinding poverty that shaped their childhoods is no easy task.
“Changing the cycle that you were born into is very hard,” says Kaylie, age 22. “It’s a long, lengthy process.”
For the full story, stream Born Poor starting October 7, 2025, at 7/6c at pbs.org/frontline and in the PBS App, or watch on PBS stations (check local listings) and on FRONTLINE’s YouTube channel that night at 10/9c. The documentary will also be available on the PBS Documentaries Prime Video Channel. Born Poor is a FRONTLINE production with True Vision Productions. The director is Jezza Neumann. The producers are Jezza Neumann and Lauren Mucciolo. The senior producer is Frank Koughan. The editor-in-chief and executive producer of FRONTLINE is Raney Aronson-Rath.
