America’s Children Living in Poverty- Ranked 2nd from the Highest of 35 Developed Nations

http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/12275514-americas-children-living-in-poverty-ranked-2nd-from-the-highest-of-35-developed-nations-in-unicef-report-while-children-in-the-us-are-going-to-be

May 30, 2012 at 8:38 AM PDT
By Amee Ellsworth

Those advertisements that ask you to send money to feed a starving child in a foreign country should carry a significantly new meaning after reading a new report released by the Office of Research at the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF). The United States now has one of the highest rates of children living in poverty in developed countries. Children in the U.S. now rank second after Romania.

This rate is based on the definition of poverty- a child is deemed to be living in relative poverty if he or she is growing up in a household where disposable income, when adjusted for family size and composition, is less than 50% of the median disposable household income for the country concerned. According to this definition, over 15% of the 200 million children in the World’s developed countries are currently living in poverty. Of these 35 countries, only two countries have over 20% of their children living in poverty- Romania and the United States.

Contributing factors to issues faced by children in the U.S. include the long reaching destruction caused by the recession. Food stamp assistance has reduced the number of U.S. children from living in extreme poverty by half last year. Fears of reduction in food stamps, school lunch programs and other safety nets that are currently available to the nation’s children are raising concerns that this number may increase significantly.

According to the Washington Post, “1 in 7 people in the U.S. now subsist on food stamps, and, in 2009, nearly 15 percent of U.S. households were found to have low or very low “food security,” meaning that, on a regular basis, nearly 50 million Americans ran short on food. Even for many members of the traditional middle class, America is no longer the Land of Plenty.” Dependence on food stamps, school lunch programs and food pantries has increased significantly. Food pantries that once had full shelves are being forced to turn away hungry families as their shelves become bare.

ABC News reports “As many as 17 million children nationwide are struggling with what is known as food insecurity. To put it another way, one in four children in the country is living without consistent access to enough nutritious food to live a healthy life, according to the study, "Map the Meal Child Food Insecurity 2011."” The long term consequences of malnutrition caused by failure to maintain a healthy diet include learning disabilities, developmental issue and other long term problems.