Flipping hamburgers is a time-honored way to put oneself through school..then the person can become an electrician, physical therapist,nurse, whatever. If they have a full-time job flipping hamburgers, and are single, and have minimum wage in my state, which is not too bad, they are out of the direst forms of poverty that have been described. They are a success story. They made it. They can afford food, a shared apartment or rental room, a bus pass and a few clothes. Medical problems would be another story and I hope we soon have national medical programs. I would have loved to have had a job say at McD. when I was in high school. Next step is the community college where they can get loans, grants etc. Then they get a decent job that the community college (in my state) will essentially place them in, because that is how they keep programs going, and leave the hamburger job for someone else.

Okay, but most states still have crappy minimum wages and a lot of underprivileged kids have kids of their own or feel obligated to help their families. Most large U.S. cities, at least in the South and West, have poor public transport so people end up spending a lot of extra time on the bus when they could be studying.

Also, a lot of kids are hamstrung in the first place because they and their parents have not learned to work within society to the point where applying for school loans, etc., is in their frame of reference. Seriously. They may not speak English. They may be reluctant to deal with financial or government organizations because their parents are here illegally. They may simply have no clue that this stuff exists or where to find it. My mother's friend has neighbors who have lived here for sixteen years who do not speak English and whose native-born children did not begin to learn English until they got to school (where they are doing poorly because they cannot read well and cannot read at all in English). They are extremely isolated, even in the middle of a neighborhood and school district that does not have a high immigrant population and that has probably better-than-average access to this sort of help. Sometimes there are multiple steps involved in even reaching the minimum level of functionality that would enable one to do the above.

I'm not saying it's impossible, but it's rarely that straightforward.