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THE STATE OF AMERICA'S CHILDREN YEARBOOK 1998
Table 1
Poor Outcom•• for Poor Children
Outcome
Health
Death in childhood
Stunted growth
Iron deficiency in preschool years
Partial or complete deafness
Partial or complete blindness
Serious physical or mental disabilities
Fatal accidental injuries
Pneumonia
Education
Average IQ score at age 5
Average achievement scores at
age 3 and above
Learning disabilities
Placement in special education
Below-usual grade for child's age
Dropping out between ages 16 and 24
Poor children's higher risk
relative to nonpoor children
1.5 to 3 times more likely
2.7 times more likely
3 to 4 times more likely
1.5 to 2 times more likely
1.2 to 1.8 times more likely
About 2 times more likely
2 to 3 times more likely
1.6 times more likely
9 points lower
11 to 25 percentiles lower
1.3 times more likely
2 or 3 percentage points more likely
2 percentage points more likely for each year
of childhood spent in poverty
2 times more likely than middle-income youths;
11 times more likely than wealthy youths
Source: Arloc Sherman, Poverty Matters: The Cost of Child Poverty in America (CDF, 1997), p. 4.
love you, or only through desperate screams of
violence, gangs, guns, sexual promiscuity, and substance
abuse?
Does what we do every day really matter for
anyone besides ourselves and our immediate family?
Is our example one we would like our children
to emulate and pass on to our grandchildren and
the children of the world? Will we leave them a
country and Earth more just, virtuous, and safe
than we inherited? What messages do our lives
convey about the brotherhood and sisterhood of
humanity?
How will each of us add to or subtract from
America's moral bank account when the God of
the universe asks for an accounting? Will God care
how many times our excessive nuclear stockpiles
can blow up humankind? Will God be proud that
we sell more weapons to other nations than any
other country, which fuel wars all over the globe
that kill mostly women and children? Will God ask
how many billionaires and millionaires we created
with the land and water and talents God blessed us
with and praise us for developing the cleverest ads
to sell tobacco's deadly poisons to our children?
Will God agree that a child's life in Bangladesh is
less precious than one in Bangor, Maine, as America's
tobacco industry markets its deadly wares to
developing nations? Or will God ask did we feed
the hungry, heal the sick, visit the prisoner, protect
the widow, orphan, and stranger? How will America
answer? How will you and I answer? How will
we teach our children to answer as citizens of the
richest nation on earth blessed with the opportunity
to abolish want and disease?
America's children will make or break America's
greatness and future. One in four current
Americans is a child. Children are the future tense
of our humanity. Its quality will depend largely
upon our present-tense care of them. The Rev. Dr.
Gardner Taylor, the dean of American preachers,
says:
If we do not bequeath to them something
worth calling life, then we cannot expect of
them any lives that are worthwhile. . ..
Might it be that this land with all of its
richness, with all ofits opportunity for true
xiv CHI L D R EN' S D E FEN S E FUN D