Thursday, September 20, 2012

What Poverty Means to Children

http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2012/09/what-poverty-means-beyond-the-antiseptic-numbers.html

http://conversableeconomist.blogspot.com/2012/09/what-poverty-means-beyond-antiseptic.html

http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/events/2012/9/12%20poverty/20120912_poverty_income

comments of Ralph Smith, senior vice-president of the Annie E. Casey Foundation, who focused on what the poverty numbers mean in more human sense for the prospects of children. The quotation is taken from the uncorrected transcript of the event, which is posted here. Smith said:


"There’s an antiseptic quality about the charts and graphs and the PowerPoint that feels to me as if it misses the issue and misses the reality of the lives of the people and the families about whom we speak.

.....

"More than 50 percent of them will not be enrolled in pre-school programs and by the time they enter kindergarten, most of them will test 12 to 14 months below the national norms in language and pre-reading skills. Nearly 50 percent of them will start first grade already two years behind their peers. During the early grades, these children are more likely to miss more than 20 days of school every year starting with kindergarten, and that record of chronic absence will be three times that of their peers. When tested in fourth grade, 80 percent of these children will score below proficient in reading and math. We know now that 22 percent of them will not graduate from high school, and that number rises to 32 percent for those who spend more half of their childhood in poverty. And to no one’s surprise, these sad statistics and deplorable data get even worse for children of color and children who live in communities of concentrated poverty.

.....

And we don’t care as much as we say we do because some kids matter more than others and some kids matter not at all. And I think these million kids are the kids who might matter not at all. And so when I see the numbers, I must admit that I flinch and I think they ought to as well because for these children, the numbers that matter most to their futures and to ours are one, the income of their parents, and two, the zip code of their homes. ...

.....

I'll just add that it has been remarkable to me during the last few years of sustained high unemployment and families under stress, how much our national political discussion has focused on the merits of different tax levels for those with high incomes, and how little our national political discussion has focused in any concrete way on how to assist the poor, and in particular on how to alter the trajectory of life for children living in poverty.


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