News Journal: Candidates should be talking about poor kids

If you weren’t too distracted by the political news/noise, maybe you saw that headline in this newspaper last week. The article itself was an eye-opener, so I went to its source at http://www.aecf.org/resources/the-2015-kids-count-data-book.

The Anne E. Casey Foundation compiles data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s annual American Community Survey and issues a yearly report on what is happening to children in this country. There is some good news, but overall the only conclusion I can come to is that we should be ashamed of ourselves.

The foreword to this year’s report says in part, “After numerous years of depressing economic news, many positive trends signal that the economy is finally recovering from the deep recession. Job growth and consumer spending are up, while unemployment is down. Nonetheless, there are warning signs that the recovery may be leaving the lowest-income families behind, disproportionately affecting workers of color and their children. We know from research that low family income can have negative effects on children. When very young children experience poverty, particularly if that poverty is deep and persistent, they are at high risk of encountering difficulties later in life – having poor adolescent health, becoming teen mothers, dropping out of school and facing poor employment outcomes.”

The details are discouraging. All of the major indicators in 2013 were worse than they were before the Great Recession. Twenty-two percent of American children were living in poverty, up from 18 percent in 2008. Thirty-one percent have parents who lack secure employment, up from 27 percent in 2008. Fifty-four percent are not attending preschool, up from 53 percent in 2007-09. Fourteen percent are living in high-poverty areas, up from 11 percent in 2006-10.

Depressing? Sorry, but I want to share another report, issued at about the same time, by the Journal of American Medical Association Pediatrics on the Association of Child Poverty, Brain Development and Academic Achievement. You can read this one at http://archpedi.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=2381542.

This is a medical abstract, collecting data from MRI brain scans of children and adolescents reflecting regional and overall U.S. demographics of income, race and ethnicity. Its conclusions echo those of the Casey Report: “Children living in poverty generally perform poorly in school, with markedly lower standardized test scores and lower educational attainment. The longer children live in poverty, the greater their academic deficits. These patterns persist to adulthood, contributing to lifetime-reduced occupational attainment.”

Did you – or did I – really need another scientific report or poll to tell us what we all intuitively know to be true? Of course we know that increasing childhood poverty will radically impair our ability to compete in the global economy. Study after study after study tells us preschool education is the cheapest and most-effective way to ensure higher achievement later on in life. Yet 54 percent of our children are not attending preschool. What’s wrong with us?

Reducing childhood poverty is in our interest as a nation. On a sheer dollars-and-cents basis, it makes economic sense. And yes, there is the Golden Rule, some variation of which is basic to every one of the world’s great religions. As a practicing Roman Catholic, another recent report – this one called an encyclical – has special meaning for me, but I think should resonate for everyone.

In “Evangelii Gaudium,” Pope Francis says, “Each individual Christian and every community is called to be an instrument of God for the liberation and promotion of the poor, and for enabling them to be fully a part of society. This demands that we be docile and attentive to the cry of the poor and to come to their aid.”

The first Presidential debate just took place, but we are in for a slew of them, both Republican and Democratic, in the next few months. We ought to demand a detailed answer to this question from every candidate:

If elected, what specific actions will you take to end the national embarrassment of childhood poverty in the United States?

Ted Kaufman is a former U.S. Senator from Delaware.