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)