PERSPECTIVE ON CHILDREN : California: A Society That Cuts Child Welfare but Boosts Jails : A record 28.6% of state children live in poverty; 20% have no access to health care. Gov. Wilson asks further cuts.

Despite what we often hear from the governor and the Legislature, spending for the welfare of our children has been in steady decline.

An example: for the last several years, the governor has allegedly given politically popular K-12 public education “high priority” and “saved it from cuts.” But figures from the second annual Children’s Budget, completed by the Children’s Advocacy Institute, show a steady decline each year, including for the proposed 1995-96 year.

At the federal level, Congress proposes to change from “entitlements” based on how many children qualify for assistance to “block grants,” set at a static figure for five years. The Republican leadership contends that such a policy lessens what it calls “runaway spending.” In contrast, the Children’s Budget reveals that such a freeze means substantial reductions year to year, imposed without consideration of need or consequences.

Budgets based on raw numbers, or numbers with only inflation or only population changes considered--but not adjusted by both--slowly but inexorably squeeze out infrastructure investment. In California this failure has allowed a largely undiscussed disinvestment in children to accumulate over the last six years.

From 1989-90 to the current year, Aid to Families With Dependent Children has been cut 20%, the three child-related Medi-Cal accounts an average of 23% and public education 7.5%.

The consequences in terms of flesh and blood are momentous: The Children’s Budget reveals that the 1.8 million AFDC children in California have been cut from close to the federal poverty line to only 75% of that wholly inadequate amount. The governor now proposed to reduce AFDC to just 64% of the poverty-line figure--posing a clear danger of malnutrition and permanent health damage. Wilson also proposes further cuts in AFDC assistance after six months of help; the Republican House would cut children off altogether after two years, if Mom does not have a job.

Ironically, the same gradual suffocation has been applied to GAIN, the major program providing child care and job training for AFDC mothers. Here there is a 9% decline from 1989 and a proposed further cut of 12%.

The typical AFDC recipient, contrary to public perception, is 29, white, recently divorced, with two children and no child support. Her problem is not a desire for welfare dependency, but the far more prevalent dilemma of paternal abandonment. Is it relevant that child-care help and job training accounts, without which she does not have a chance, have been cut? Fewer than 10% of AFDC parents get child-care help.

The minimum wage is another example. If it had been adjusted to match inflation over the past 20 years, it would be just above $12,000, the federal poverty line for a family of three. But if our typical divorced mother of two obtains full-time employment at minimum wage (as many must do), she will earn $8,840 before deductions--about what full-time child care for her children will cost. Would we take such a population and affirmatively cut their wages every year by 3% to 5%? That is what the current numbers accomplishes.

We are spending more in one area: jailing of criminals. California now has the highest juvenile incarceration rate of any state--in a nation with the highest juvenile incarceration rate among all developed countries. California’s adult prison population has increased from 19,000 in 1977 to 132,000 this year--at an operating cost of $20,000 per prisoner per year; the state is now preparing for 341,000 prisoners and 41 new prisons over the next eight years. Is there a relationship between unlimited prison spending, versus years of decreases in basic investment in child infrastructure?

To be sure, many of our problems are based on private irresponsibility--a dependency mentality by some and, for more, a frightening abandonment of children by biological fathers. But public spending has an impact.

Children Now indexes show that a record 28.6% of California children live in poverty; 20% of our children have no access to private or public health care; there is high infant disability, record low test scores by our students and increasing violent juvenile crime.

Each of these aspects has a relationship to public-spending. It is no accident that California’s falling test scores, for example, correlate with the worst student-teacher ratio in the nation and a per-pupil spending level now nearing the bottom five, just ahead of Alabama and at half the level of New Jersey.

California is one of the richest jurisdictions in the world, with more vehicles than licensed drivers. Our wealth increases each year. The governor predicts that personal income will increase 6% in each of the next two years. And our tax burden has decreased: In 1989-90, we spent $6.88 from the general fund for every $100 in personal income; in the current year, we are spending $5.86 per $100, and the governor proposes a further reduction to $5.50. At the same time, he is calling for a $7-billion tax cut for the wealthy over the next three years.

Could the governor make his cutback proposals if the numbers were used and understood? The fact is that we have been giving to the wealthy for the past six years, and taking from children. We just haven’t been talking about it.