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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsTrump's War on the Poor Includes Our Children
One in five American children live in poverty, even as pundits tout employment highs.
By Rajan Menon
February 4, 2020
The plight of impoverished children anywhere should evoke sympathy, exemplifying as it does the suffering of the innocent and defenseless. Poverty among children in a wealthy country like the United States, however, should summon shame and outrage as well. Unlike poor countries (sometimes run by leaders more interested in lining their pockets than anything else), what excuse does the United States have for its striking levels of child poverty? After all, it has the worlds 10th highest per capita income at $62,795 and an unrivalled gross domestic product (GDP) of $21.3 trillion. Despite that, in 2020, an estimated 11.9 million American kids16.2 percent of the totallive below the official poverty line, which is a paltry $25,701 for a family of four with two kids. Put another way, according to the Childrens Defense Fund, kids now constitute one-third of the 38.1 million Americans classified as poor and 70 percent of them have at least one working parentso poverty cant be chalked up to parental indolence.
Yes, the proportion of kids living below the poverty line has zigzagged down from 22 percent when the country was being ravaged by the Great Recession of 200809 and was even higher in prior decades. Still, no one should crack open the champagne bottles just yet. The relevant standard ought to be how the United States compares to other wealthy countries. The answer: badly. It has the 11th highest child poverty rate of the 42 industrialized countries tracked by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Winnow that list down to European Union states and Canada, omitting low and middle-income countries, and our child poverty rate ranks above only Spains. Using the poverty threshold of the OECD50 percent of a countrys median income ($63,178 for the United States)and the American child poverty rate leaps to 20 percent.
The United States certainly doesnt lack the means to drive child poverty down or perhaps even eliminate it. Many countries on that shorter OECD list have lower per-capita incomes and substantially smaller GDPs, but, as a UNICEF report makes clear, have done far better by their kids. Our high child-poverty rate stems from politics, not economicsgovernment policies that, since the 1980s, have reduced public investment as a proportion of GDP in infrastructure, public education, and poverty reduction. These were, of course, the same years when a belief that big government was an obstacle to advancement took ever-deeper hold, especially in the Republican Party. Today, Washington allocates only 9 percent of its federal budget to children, poor or not. That compares to a third for Americans over 65, up from 22 percent in 1971. If you want a single fact that sums up where we are now, inflation-adjusted per-capita spending on kids living in the poorest families has barely budged compared to 30 years ago whereas the corresponding figure for the elderly has doubled.
The conservative response to all this remains predictable: You cant solve complex social problems like child poverty by throwing money at them. Besides, government antipoverty programs only foster dependence and create bloated bureaucracies without solving the problem. It matters little that the success of American social programs proves this claim to be flat-out false. Before getting to that, however, lets take a snapshot of child poverty in America.
https://www.thenation.com/article/economy/child-poverty-trump/
Newest Reality
(12,712 posts)The problem with non-fetuses comes down to those child labor laws. The little non-fetal critters are fully able to work hard and long hours so that, they too, can know the dignity and freedom of work from an early age without depending on help that distracts from the protection of fetuses on the Altar of Pro Life!
All those poverty, post-fetal critters are sitting around and being lazy and waiting for others to FEED THEM? What? We have to be able to make them willing to get off their little butts and earn their food, clothes, and if they are really good, even a place to live. No more of this playing, going to school, watching TV or anything else that makes them a drain on this Great Society!
To solve the problem of hunger and poverty with the rather inconsequential and relatively worthless non-fetuses, we could just start them out with shovels to dig practice pits and them move them into other forms of hard labor which will decrease obesity, improve their physical health and supply enough food and clothing to keep them moving, which is what they should always be doing for the sake of their country, the little ingrates.
Problem solved. Stop the whining.
BeckyDem
(8,361 posts)2naSalit
(86,308 posts)population of choice by human traffickers and pedophiles... I'm sure they have plans for them. I mean, not all pedophiles are into brown babies readily supplied by the concentration camps at the border, poor white babies are what they are shopping for.