Raising Children Above the Line
Every day in the United States, progress is made. Scientists advance one step closer to curing cancer and Alzheimer’s. New technology is pioneered at lightening speeds. This very second, babies are being born, novels are being written, peaceful protests are being carried out, and the ozone layer is slowly but surely repairing itself.
But with all this progress being made in one of the wealthiest and most powerful countries in the world, why is it that 1 in 5 American children are poor?
Just let that sink in; 15.3 million or 21% of American children live under the poverty line. This Line, an outdated benchmark that our government has established as a three times what a poor family spent on groceries in 1963, separates a large number of underprivileged individuals from mainstream society. Granted, poverty in the United States does not rival the desperate poverty in third world countries such as Somalia. But for a highly developed country, the United States has among the worst rates of child poverty. For instance, the child poverty rates in Germany and Australia are half that of the United States. And even though our country’s definition of poverty may be much less austere than Somalia’s, it means a lifestyle of definite hardship relative to the vast amount of prosperity that exists within our country. America’s particular brand of wealth has been paraded through countless advertisements, television shows and lifestyle magazines. In a country with so many people that have so much, it is shocking to discover that there are also so many people that have so little.
But what is even more shocking is that U.S. child poverty rates are climbing, and have been for many years. The U.S. government has a number of programs designed to help relieve poverty, such as Earned Income Tax Credit and TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families), commonly referred to as welfare. The government also has programs specifically targeted towards child poverty, like the Free and Reduced Breakfast and Lunch program, the Head Start program, and CHIP (Children’s Health Insurance Program). While these programs can be very impactful for families that are eligible, they aren’t enough to keep poverty rates at bay, especially in southern states like Texas. This is because many of the programs are block grant programs, which means that only an outdated quota of funds and no more is allocated for a select group of people. But the overarching problem with these programs is that they relieve the symptoms of poverty, but not the core causes. Families living and poverty cannot climb above the poverty line because they don’t have the resources to do so. When they are able to amass the resources and their income begins to rise, they find themselves ineligible for government programs. So these families struggling to improve their lives sink back to their previous situation. This is called the Cycle of Poverty, and it is a demoralizing reality for millions of American families.
Poverty in the United States is an overlooked but nevertheless extremely serious obstacle. Children are the future authors, doctors, teachers, scientists, and engineers of our country. It’s no secret that growing up in poverty drastically reduces the academic achievement, physical health, and psychological wellbeing of an individual. These effects spell severe consequences for our country’s economic standing; economists predict that child poverty costs the United States $500 billion a year, reduces productivity, increases crime, and drastically escalates healthcare costs. But it also means that many children don’t have the ability to improve their socioeconomic quality of life as they reach adulthood. It means that millions of children go hungry every day, and millions of parents sacrifice meals so that their children can eat. It means that many children, who, under better circumstances, would thrive, find themselves on a path of self-destruction. And it means that not every deserving child has the opportunity to pursue higher education. Children’s lives are made exponentially more difficult if they are born below The Line.
In the haste and chaos of our busy college lives, it can be very easy to forget about the children below The Line. It is very easy to take our education–and the life it affords us–for granted. Poverty isn’t glamorous; it doesn’t grace the glossy covers of coffee house magazines and it certainly isn’t discussed in Keeping Up With the Kardashians. Poverty doesn’t often find its way into our thoughts or dinner conversations because we don’t experience it in our day-to-day lives. This Thanksgiving, invite those around you, your friends and family, to really think about what it means to be born above The Line. Your education means more than just hours of poring over textbooks and studying for finals; not every person is lucky enough to be able to go to college.
Is our country really “progressing” if 1 out of every 5 children is left behind?
It’s imperative for future generations that we raise awareness about child poverty in the United States–immediately. Each and every one of those 15.3 million children has something special to offer our country and deserves the opportunities to be able to share it. We must find new ways to relieve child poverty, so that the children below The Line can rise up and make their mark on the world.
For more information, you can visit:
American Psychological Association:
http://www.apa.org/pi/families/poverty.aspx
The National Center for Children in Poverty: http://www.nccp.org/topics/childpoverty.html
Child Trends Data Bank Indicator:
http://www.childtrends.org/indicators/children-in-poverty/
The Annie E. Casey Foundation:
Non Profit Organizations in the Austin Area that work to directly relieve poverty and homelessness:
https://www.centraltexasfoodbank.org
http://www.caritasofaustin.org