This paper examines the level of poverty among Hungarian seventh grade students and its effect on their future education plans. The data is based on the answers to a self-administered questionnaire of more than 9000 students from a research conducted by the Institute for Economic and Enterprise Research (IEER) in 2015. We find that a large group of students are deprived of basic necessities and that poor children plan to finish their studies earlier than non-poor children. Using mixed-effects regression models controlling for other possible factors affecting further education plans we show that the negative effect of poverty is substantial.