Everything Tagged with 'poverty'
2011’s ‘State of America’s Children’ Report
The report, issued annually by the Children’s Defense Fund, paints an especially grim picture. Marian Wright Edelman shares more:
With rampant unemployment, housing foreclosures, homelessness, hunger, and massive looming federal and state budget cuts, children’s well-being is in great jeopardy. One in five children is poor and children are our nation’s poorest age group. Child poverty increased almost 10 percent between 2008 and 2009, the largest single year increase since data were first collected.
I’ve never been fond of the ‘child-saving’ attitude that organizations like the Children’s Defense Fund tack toward: they tend to portray children as a passive group without much individual agency, and their solutions to children’s problems almost solely tend to rely on adults stepping in to “protect” children and “childhood”. Nevertheless, it’s vital to acknowledge the larger systemic context America’s children live in – a context which is increasingly being defined by poverty. That the blight of poverty is inflicted disproportionately and mercilessly upon our nation’s children is a disgrace. That it has continued this way for so long without any glimmer of hope on the horizon, well, that’s just sickening.