Monday editorial: Dump poverty data
Let’s ban all those gloomy national statistics about American kids living in poverty. Not many people pay attention. Those who do may feel bad, but they figure there’s little they can do about it. Mostly, they’re right.
Others misinterpret Jesus’ words in Matthew 26, “The poor you always have with you,” to mean, “Why bother?”
Yet there is good reason to bother, and it is important that we do. More importantly, there are plenty of ways to have an impact on the lives of these children. But it requires digging beneath poverty statistics and not using the enormity of the problem as an excuse for doing nothing.
Earlier this month the Annie E. Casey Foundation published its annual “Kids Count” national compendium of child welfare data. In looking at the numbers for Missouri, the Post-Dispatch reported that “Missouri children are descending into poverty at three times the rate of kids nationwide” and that “nearly a fifth of Missouri’s 1.4 million children in 2006 lived in households with income levels below the poverty level [annual income of $20,444 or less for a household of four].”
Illinois conditions are comparable. About 17 percent of that state’s kids live in poverty.
Nationwide, 17 percent of the nation’s children met the criteria for being considered poor in 2006, the same percentage as in 1975. During most of the intervening 30 years, the rate was even higher. Twenty percent and more of the nation’s children lived in poverty during the 1980s and early 1990s. Real gains were made during the go-go years of sustained economic growth in the 1990s, but the rate never fell below 16 percent.
If a huge economic expansion accompanied by a worldwide digital revolution can’t move the child poverty needle in America below historic averages, isn’t that pretty much proof positive of futility?
Not really.
Consider other measures of child welfare that especially affect children living in poverty. Indeed, the Casey Foundation report itself teases out 10 other statistical factors: low birth-weight babies, births to mothers without high school diplomas, infant mortality, high school dropout rates, child abuse and neglect, births to teens ages 15 through 19 and violent deaths of children ages 15 to 18.
St. Louis County has made progress in six of the 10 indicators, and it betters the state average in all but two: low birth-weight babies and infant mortality. What can residents do to pull up those two crucial deficiencies?
The city of St. Louis has made progress in eight of the categories, although it falls below the state average in all but one: child abuse and neglect, incidents of which have dropped precipitously since 2002.
Also take a look at the St. Louis Metropolitan Children’s Agenda, a list of strategies developed by leading local child welfare and health care organizations and philanthropic groups.
Here we find projects focused on such as things as minimizing the impact on children of parents in jail, enforcing annual lead testing, preventing teen pregnancies, providing greater access to prenatal care and recruiting more foster parents.
One of the great barriers to social reform is the profound public misunderstanding that if you can’t do everything, you might as well not do anything.
People look at the stubborn nature of child poverty and use it as an excuse to throw up their hands. But the path out of poverty for children can be walked in small steps, with people committed to sustained work on many causes, helping one kid at a time.
(Pictured: After a more than 20-year absence, Little League returned to Mounds, Ill in 2002, where census figures listed it among the poorest towns in the state. AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)
There’s nothing stubborn about child poverty, it only seems stubborn because liberals refuse to do what’s needed to reduce it. Dramatically reducing the number of children in poverty would require just a few simple steps by teenagers, who are today’s parents of poor children:
1. Graduate high school.
2. Do not abuse drugs or alcohol.
3. Don’t do things which will result in incarceration.
4. Do not have children out of wedlock.
Do these things, and child poverty will plummet.
I have a great idea! Let’s take some money from the working taxpayers and their children and give it to people who keep having babies they can’t support. We could call it the “Great Society” or “War on Poverty” or something. If we just spend enough tax money on them, we’ll make all these poor folks industrious, contributing members of society. After all, it’s for the chiiiillldddrrren.
Responsible Parenting the real way to end childhood poverty
Political correctness, not societal apathy, is the real cause of poverty today. In “Dump Poverty Data” the Post-Dispatch purposely neglects to mention that a child born without two involved parents is highly likely to live in poverty. Birth “parents” who bring children into the world without a plan or means to feed, cloth and house them are irresponsible and selfish. People who bring additional children into that same environment are guilty of premeditated poverty. If society is to be held responsible for the offspring of unaccountable adults, perhaps we should have the right to decide who is allowed to reproduce in the first place. Please stop contributing to the dumbing down of America by failing to get to the root cause of childhood poverty- it is not societal apathy-but society’s failure to place the blame where it belongs– on the birth “parents.” If you really want to see childhood poverty reduced, pay people not to have children until they get an education, get a job and get married–and watch just how fast childhood poverty is reduced. Now that should be a solution both liberals and conservatives could love- a nanny state that actually gets results.
Nick,
The only thing that would stop having children outside wedlock is to stop having sex outside wedlock. This is were the problem lye, sex outside wedlock, not the other way as you put it, don’t you agree?
If one(s)have done EVERYTHING WRONG, such as in your numbers 1-4, then what?
1. Should they not be mentored or guided into a better direction?
2. Should they not be helped because they made their own bed?
3. Should they parish?
But, of course Nick, you have never had sex outside marriage nor have you been told that an aborted child was yours, correct?
Then we have those fathers who do everything under the sun, including having stand-in’s for DNA tests to get out of the responsibility of fatherhood with paid off Guardian Ad-Litems.
What do you think Nick? Should these children and single mothers parish they can’t survive on their own without a helping hand? You do realize that the burden is on the mother when it all boils down, I’ve watched judges hand out orders for fathers to pay as little as $25-$60 dollars a week for a child’s support by the father.
This is what you need to think about Nick. You add nothing beneficial to the problem by such twisted thinking, as, “don’t have children outside wedlock”. When the right solution and only solution is to not have sex outside wedlock.
Yes people need a high school education, but to support a family or even a child they need higher education. You mention high school only, shows much about the world you live in. Yes, White men can support families without high school educations and certainly with only high school educations through the steady union construction work, they most often get. You do realize that for the most part, Black men are not privileged to steady blue-collar union jobs, don’t you?
Nick the world is not what you are only capable of seeing it as through your narrow vision.
There’s still the “good ol’ boy” system in some trade unions, so sonny boy gets a card to insulate pipe if pop had one, but otherwise technically qualified minority people have the same rights as everyone else. The key phrase is “technically qualified”. Despite a happily increasing number of exceptions, many still can’t do a lot more than drive a dump truck or use a “sharpshooter”. For those who don’t know, that’s a drain spade and yes, I spent some time with one years ago.
I also helped introduce the first minority workers onto UAW assembly lines and clerical jobs about 50 years ago, where previously they could only get janitorial jobs. The white workers didn’t like it, but they couldn’t seem to hit me or the new guys with their ripe tomatoes, so no harm was done.
I could go on and on about how competent and qualified Blacks are not allowed even the opportunity to get technically qualified or the experience needed to move up the latter as their White counter parts are.
Now with the economy going down hill as fast as it is, it is all pretty useless to talk about the disparities between Blacks and Whites where union jobs are concerned. Everyone is going to suffer sooner or later, Blacks are always the first to suffer, but you have better believe that this time around is like no other time in any of our life time. Companies providing decent wage jobs to people are becoming a thing of the past. Small businesses and large alike will be destroyed, and those with lots of money stored, it will not do you any good.
This country will suffer greatly for a long time. Only those who understand and know where to place their hope,faith and trust, and those who learn to love doing the right and moral good things will come through okay.
The tables are going to turn on many who thought that they financially had the world by the tail. Their security was false security. Very sad seeing what’s about to come of this country and many people.
There are still so many out there who can’t see or believe that they can be affected, nor do they think they will suffer any hardship, but these ones who worship all their false security will be the ones hit hardest.
Seems to me that our immigrants from India and the Pacific Rim are doing well enough. Checked out your surgeon or anesthesiologist lately?
There are many technical colleges in India. One is known to have provided some of America’s top corporate leaders. the Indian citizenry begin to prepare their children for this college at the age of four. Those who cn’t make the grade there come to America and go to M.I.T. Maybe we Americans had better get with the program.
Wouldn’t it be great if American Corporations and schools would wise up and use these foreigners highly skilled in the tech fields to teach and train our citizens in the high tech industry instead of having them compete so for the jobs of our citizens?