“I’d like to go to college,” said Emanuel, who earns A’s and B’s in school. “I’d be the first in my family. I want to be a police officer, or a fireman or a judge.” But, he acknowledged, there isn’t a single book in the house.

Emanuel’s ambition is commendable, but children of poverty face treacherous obstacles to success.

Emanuel has already been caught shoplifting — “I’m not doing that anymore,” he said firmly with what sounded like contrite embarrassment — and his mom, Christina Laster, worries about him. Gangs begin to recruit boys at about 14, and his friends carry knives.

Every year I hold a contest to choose a university student to travel with me on a reporting trip, typically to write about poverty, disease and hunger in Africa or Asia. This year, partly because America’s presidential candidates are ignoring domestic poverty, I led my win-a-trip tour right here in America. My contest winner, Cassidy McDonald of Wisconsin, a journalism student at the University of Notre Dame, traveled with me along a wrenching journey through this Other America, starting here in Pine Bluff.

What many Americans don’t understand about poverty is that it’s perhaps less about a lack of money than about not seeing any path out. More than 80 percent of American households living below the poverty line have air-conditioning, so in material terms they’re incomparably better off than poor families in India or Congo. In other ways their lives can be worse.