America's Poor Children

In looking at the data in the article from the National Center for Children in Poverty (http://www.nccp.org/publications/pub_684.html), I saw some items that were very disheartening. Something that was not actually said in this report, or in anything we have discussed thus far in class, is that racism is unfortunately very much alive and very well in the United States. The numbers are so lopsided toward non-Whites that it is disgusting! While only ten percent of white children live in poverty, this article states that thirty-five percent of black children live in poverty. Asian, Latino, and Native American children fall in between those two figures. In my home state of Ohio, a full forty-three percent of black children live in poverty.

This report also tells us that close to twenty percent of poor children have no health insurance. I am confident that many of these children are the children of working poor women who work in a job that either does not offer health insurance or they do not earn enough to pay for the health insurance.

I so often hear in my daily life, and have read in this report, that regular increases to the minimum wage are necessary to get people out of poverty. While I agree with this, I would put forward another thought. If the minimum wage is increased, then the employers will increase the cost of whatever they might be producing. Thus, we have a vicious circle. What needs to be done is the minimum wage increased while, at the same time, caps are put on how much profit companies can make. We are studying about poor working women and poverty. How many CEO’s live at or below the poverty level? How many of our state and national legislators live at or below the poverty level? Just increasing the minimum wage will NOT solve the problem!

Since this article was written in December, 2006, I am sure the current numbers of the categories mentioned in this article are much higher than they were back then. This was before the bottom fell out of the economy. Perhaps something like the old WPA program of the 1930’s would be a good thing to bring back.