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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsWhy Being a Poor Kid in America Is Particularly Awful
One measure of how much governments prioritize children and families is how much they spend on things like child allowances, daycare, and child-tax credits. Inside a longer report on global child well-being, out this week from the nonprofit Child Trends, lies this surprising tidbit: The U.S. has a higher proportion of children living in poverty than most other high-income countries, and it spends just 0.7 percent of its GDP on benefits for familiesa fraction of what other middle- and high-income countries spend.
Among 21 countries in the study, the organization writes in an accompanying statement, the U.S. ranks second-to-last in the percentage of its GDP spent on benefits for families, despite one of the highest relative child poverty rates of the comparable high-income countries. (Turkey technically ranks last, but only because its data is missing.)
The U.S. comes in near the bottom, devoting less than one percent of its national income to perks for kids and parents. (Child Trends used data from the OECD and other sources.)
At the same time, the report suggests that American children are in dire need of this funding. A higher proportion of them live in poverty than do kids in most other industrialized nations."
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/09/childcare-spending/407035/
Hydra
(14,459 posts)There are people who argue this is not so...but what should be higher priority than our kids and our environment? Perpetually subsidizing the 1%?
The 1%er families are probably thinking something like this: Good, I am rich and my kids don't need any help. They will one day be even richer, and then they will need more low paid workers and personal servants. Everything is going exactly as it should to make this happen. My kids will rule an empire!!!!
prayin4rain
(2,065 posts)damnedifIknow
(3,183 posts)The younger children are the poorer they are. Nearly 1 in 4 children under age five is poor during the years of greatest brain development. Almost half of these children (47.9 percent) live in extreme poverty.
Although there was a drop in the number of poor children, it was statistically insignificant. The numbers continue to be staggering, especially when we know there are steps our Congressional leaders could take right now to end child poverty. In Ending Child Poverty Now, CDFs report released earlier this year, we proposed nine policy changes to increase employment and make work pay more and ensure childrens basic needs are met that could reduce child poverty by 60 percent and Black child poverty by 72 percent, said Marian Wright Edelman, CDFs President. But rather than moving forward with these changes, Congress is perilously close to again moving backwards, leaving in place harmful budget caps and causing further deep cuts in many of the very programs we know work to help poor children. "
http://www.childrensdefense.org/newsroom/cdf-in-the-news/press-releases/2015/2015NationalPovertyData.html
prayin4rain
(2,065 posts)BlueJazz
(25,348 posts)" Our poor people are more lazy" "Our poor know how to fool the system" "Our poor seem to have money for nice cars"
"I've seen a lot of poor people at Macys" "They wouldn't be poor if they had planned their life better" "That's what the churches are for" "God would help them if they'd ask" "It's not my problem"
yuiyoshida
(41,871 posts)But Republicans beg to differ. If people don't eat, they don't breed, or so their story line goes.