child care - Digital Library Collections

THE STATE OF AMERICA'S CHILDREN YEARBOOK 1998
gained $29,533 each. We have five times more
billionaires but 4 rnilHon more poor children.
While millions of stock options helped quintuple
the earnings ofcorporate CEOs between 1980 and
1995, those same employers threw millions of children
out of health insurance plans at their parents'
workplaces, and parental wages stagnated.
More than II million children are uninsured,
90 percent of whom have working parents. More
parents worked longer hours and more families
sent a second or only parent into the labor force to
meet family necessities. But for millions offamilies,
work did not pay a family-supporting wage, and a
minimum wage no longer prevents poverty. Sixtynine
percent of poor children live in working families.
Ending welfare as we know it will not help
them. Ending poverty as we know it will. Sustained
economic investment in rebuilding our communities
and in stable jobs with decent wages, quality
affordable child care, and health insurance must
become top American priorities.
Six years of economic expansion with low inflation
and a soaring stock market have not mtered
down to 36.5 million poor people, including 14.5
million children. In 1996 the number of very poor
people who Hve below half the poverty Une (a mere
$8,018 for a family of four) increased, while the
current income of households in the top 5 percent
increased by $12,500. Today more than one in five
children is growing up poor and one in II is growing
up extremely poor. This is shameful and unnecessary.
Ifwe are truly concerned about preventing welfare,
teen pregnancy, youth violence, school dropouts,
and crime, then we need to start rust by
preventing child poverty and ensuring every child a
fair start in life. The moral, human, and economic
costs of permitting 14.5 million children to be poor
are too high.
• A baby born poor is less likely to survive to its
first birthday than a baby born to an unwed
mother, a high school dropout, or a mother
who smoked during pregnancy.
• Poverty is a greater risk to children's overall
health status than is living in a single-parent
family.
• Poor children face greater risk of stunted
growth, anemia, repeated years of schooUng,
lower test scores, and less education, as well as
lower wages and lower earnings in their adult
years.
• Poverty puts children at a greater risk offalling
behind in school than does Hving in a singleparent
home or being born to teenage parents.
Dr. Laura D'Andrea Tyson, former chair of the
President's Council of Economic Advisors, says,
"Policies to reduce the poverty rate among
children-which typically remains higher in the
United States than in any other advanced industrial
countries-must be a fundamental part of our efforts
to build a healthy economy for the 21st century."
Nobel laureate in economics Robert M.
Solow ofthe Massachusetts Institute ofTechnology
states, "In optimistic moments, I like to believe that
most Americans would want to lift children out of
poverty even ifit cost something. It is hard to blame
little children for the problems that surround them
now and will damage their future health, ability, and
learning capacity. Doing nothing about it seems
both immoral and unintelligent."
All segments of society pay the costs of child
poverty and would share the gains ifchild poverty
were eliminated. America's labor force is projected
to lose as much as $130 billion in future productive
capacity for every year 14.5 million American children
continue to live in poverty. These costs will
spill over to employers and consumers, making it
harder for businesses to expand technology, train
workers, or produce a full range of high-quality
products. Additional costs will be borne by
schools, hospitals, and taxpayers and by our criminal
justice system. Poor children held back in
school require special education and tutoring, experience
a lifetime ofheightened medical problems
and reliance on social service, and fail to earn and
contribute as much in taxes.*
When legitimate avenues of employment are
closed, poor youths and adults turn to illegitimate
ones, especially the lethal underground economy
of drugs and crime fueled by out-of-eontrol gun
trafficking. Since 1970 America's prison population
has increased more than fivefold at an annual
taxpayer tab exceeding $20 billion. Almost one in
*These and other findings are detailed in a CDF report by Arlne Sherman. Poverty Matters: The Cost oj Child Poverty in America.
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