It’s a National Disgrace

Too often the talk about the need for health insurance for everyone, better child care or improved education is not correlated with real-life consequences. But a report of the House Select Committee on Children, Youth and Families has given us an update on one of the most horrible consequences: the astounding number of desperately poor children in the United States.

One-fifth of all children, 50% of black children and one-fourth of all preschoolers live in poverty. Children remain the largest group of poor people in the country. This slide is continuing a worrisome trend noted in 1983 and 1987. From 1970 to 1987, the median income of children living in single-parent families declined by 19%.

In California, the numbers are no better; from 1970 to 1988, the number of children living in poverty jumped 66%, according to the advocacy group Children Now. To put that in perspective: If the 1.6 million poor children in this state were in one place, they would make up the third largest city behind Los Angeles and San Diego. And these are not children deprived of mere niceties. They are from families making less than $10,000 a year.

Poor children are four times more likely to become teen-age parents and more likely to drop out of school. And so the cycle continues.

It does not have to continue. A comprehensive child-care bill that helps working parents and provides quality care for preschool-age children would help to make a difference. So would health insurance that would cover the 37 million who do not have it. Legislators can make these things happen. But citizens have to demand it first.