It’s difficult to quantify just how difficult times are for U.S. children, and the myriad ways a weakened economy and record joblessness are taking their toll on childhood. A series of recent reports paint a bleak and frightening picture that adds to the anecdotal evidence so readily available from large cities to small rural communities.
New reports on tough times for children bring back Depression memories
The news for American families and children continues to be exceedingly grim.
In June, the Foundation for Child Development found that more children will live in poverty this year, and more will have two parents who are unemployed. Some thirty years of social progress may be wiped out for children of the Great Recession, the report found.
On Tuesday, New York Times columnist Bob Herbert noted that “more and more families are facing utter economic devastation: completely out of money, with their jobs, savings and retirement funds gone, and nowhere to turn for the next dollar.”
The conclusions came from a new study aimed at measuring the economic well-being of families, developed by Yale University political scientist Jacob Hacker with support of the Rockefeller Foundation. Economic insecurity, the study found, is likely to have increased dramatically in the last few years, and is likely “greater than at any time over the past quarter century, with approximately one in five Americans experiencing a decline in available household income of 25 percent or greater.”
In addition, overall improvements in the child well-being index have stalled while three areas have gotten worse: the child poverty rate, the percent of children living in single-parent families and the percent of babies born at a low birth weight, according to the Annie E. Casey Foundation, which released its annual KIDS COUNT data book. The report is a treasure trove for journalists and many others, with online access to the latest child well-being data as ranked by hundreds of indicators.
Perhaps even more disturbing than what the report found, though, are the many questions about how children are doing that cannot be answered because we don’t collect the data. The Casey Foundation recommended four steps to help, ranging from expanding the National Survey of Children’s Health to adopting a supplemental poverty measure that captures recent spending figures on benefits such as food stamps and child care.
In the meantime, there are plenty of reasons to keep an eye on ways children are suffering from the economic stress — and distress — felt in so many homes. These are stories that must be told, voices that must be heard.