The latest edition of UNICEF's report on child poverty showed the United States ranks second out of 35 developed countries on the scale of what economists call “relative child poverty” with 23.1 percent of its children living in poverty. Only Romania ranked higher. It was another shameful reminder that, as economist Sheldon Danziger put it, “Among rich countries, the U.S. is exceptional. We are exceptional in our tolerance of poverty.”
For the Lynch family in Columbus, Ohio, headlines like this aren’t news. Lucille Lynch and her children Sarafina, 17, Timeeka, 14, Daisha, 11, and Elijah, 10, live on just slightly over half of the federal poverty level. The family’s only cash income is the combined $1,200 per month Social Security disability checks for Elijah, who has autism, and for Lucille, who suffers from a lung condition, along with occasional and minimal child support. Their family is a portrait of deep poverty in America. In 2010 20.5 million Americans were living on less than half of the federal poverty level.
The Lynches live in isolation in a dark house in a dangerous neighborhood between several main roads. A church that helps the family built a chain link fence around the house so Elijah can’t run out into the street. A block and a half away is a group home for sex offenders. Lucille gets advisory flyers in the mail with photographs of the men and their offenses -- rape and gross sexual imposition were listed on two of the flyers on the living room table the day Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Julia Cass met the family while on assignment for the Children’s Defense Fund. “It’s scary to know that,” Daisha said. “You don’t want to go out in the street because of them.”
Elijah, 10, lives with his mother and three sisters. The family of five receives $583 a month in food stamps. They go to food pantries and raise tomatoes in pots but they often are down to peanut butter sandwiches at the end of the month.
Lucille, 47, considers herself lucky she has the house which she inherited from her parents. She left high school in the 11th grade -- “It was horrible and I couldn’t learn. There was too much violence.” Later she took classes and became certified as a nursing aide and for seven years she worked in nursing homes bathing, dressing, and diapering patients. But in 2006 she began feeling ill and by the next year, “I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t lift them anymore at all.” She was diagnosed with sarcoidosis, which causes inflammation of the lungs, and had to stop working. She’s done occasional babysitting since then.
One of the many sad consequences of deep poverty is that autism often goes undiagnosed longer, which is critical because many therapies for autism are most effective when they begin before age three. Elijah was diagnosed at five. Lucille said she knew something was wrong because “he wasn’t speaking. He wasn’t looking at people.” But pediatricians told her to wait and see if he improved and he wasn’t tested until he reached kindergarten age.
When Elijah was eight he began having problems in his special education classroom. Lucille eventually found out a child sitting behind him on the school bus was hitting him and another in his classroom was choking him. She said that school had one teacher and one aide trying to handle two classrooms full of children with different special needs. Lucille took him out of school and enrolled him in Buckeye Online -- a statewide private charter school that gives online instruction and receives money from the public education system.
The three girls experienced school violence, too, and now Sarafina and Daisha also stay at home and study with Buckeye Online, which provided two computers for the family to use. Sarafina was just starting middle school when she had a gun pulled on her. Daisha left school three years ago. “I didn’t really talk to other kids because they were so mean to me,” she said. “I got into a fight once but I didn’t want to fight but I had to because they kept hitting me. Nobody stopped them.” Online schooling means the children are isolated at home. Church is their major outside activity.
The family of five receives $583 a month in food stamps. They go to food pantries and raise tomatoes in pots but they often are down to peanut butter sandwiches at the end of the month and regularly eat filling, starchy foods like rice, pasta, and potatoes.
Lucille is hoping her children will “do better” than she did. She has the idea that art might help them get ahead because they all have the family talent for it. “There’s a lady who volunteers at the church, an artist,” Lucille said. “She’s going to help them make portfolios. Sarafina wants to present hers to the Columbus College of Art and Design.” Lucille is still holding onto the American Dream for her children -- but for now, the Lynches are living a much sadder American reality.
At the Children’s Defense Fund National Conference in Cincinnati July 22-25 we will have a series of plenaries, mini-plenaries, and workshops focused on economic inequality and child poverty. Join us to learn more about what we know works to reduce poverty -- and how we can work together to insist we do what works and set different national priorities. It’s time to end child poverty in rich America.
Follow Marian Wright Edelman on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ChildDefender
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Maybe she should have a few more children, it would increase the benefits. Of course those benefits would be paid for with money that I expended my life earning for my family. But who cares about any families that carry their own weight in society. We are only supposed to be concerned about the breeders that "just can't work" but still manage to have a bunch of kids.
"The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to ... provide for the ... general Welfare of the United States"
Socialism? Or Article I, section 8, clause 1 of the United States Constitution?
It doesn't mean a welfare state, but it doesn't mean tolerating systemic poverty either.
"Our" poverty level: stove, oven, microwave, refrigerator, tv(s), car, cellphone, often air conditioning, housing, food stamps, stereo, running water, heated water, etc etc.
Most of the impoverished of the world would love to be impoverished in America.
We rank the 2nd worst in the world among what's called rich nations beat only by Romania by the way I'm of Romanian heritage.
There is a little somethig called empathy that god gave us. Not having empathy doesn't make a better human, it detracts from what god would have us be.
Very calous remarks from someone who doesn't really know, except for opinion, about how the rest of the impoverished world might think. Oh by the way, we weren't talking about rankings among the impoverished world, we were talking about rankings among the rich nations.
1.that every man, woman and grown child able and willing to work may find employment.
2.that the poor, by industry, prudence and economy, may, at all times, support themselves
comfortably, without depending upon eleemosanary aid, and as a consequence it follows
3.that their sufferings and distresses chiefly, if not wholly,,arise from their idleness, their
dissipation, and their extravagance
4.that taxes for the support of the poor, and aid afforded them by charitable individuals, or
benevolent societies, are pernicious, as by encouraging the poor to depend on them,
they foster their idleness and improvidence, and thus produce, or at least increase, the
poverty and distress they are intended to relieve.
"Appeal to the Wealthy of the Land" by Matthew Carey, Philadelphia; 1829
a summary of the thinking of the rich in 1829 and 2012
these pages.
Children are easily damaged. If they don't get proper nutrition, they won't be able to learn. If they don't receive any encouragement or help fro society, you are betting on them to fail. Why would you want to do that? Do you suppose that is a productive approach to the problem? Just let them suffer, because their parents failed them?
- Income has a high correlation with educational levels. In 2007, the median earnings of household headed by individuals with less than a 9th grade education was $20,805 while households headed by high school graduates received $40,456, households headed holders of bachelor’s degree earned $77,605, and families headed by individuals with professional degrees earned $100,000.
- In 1997, 8.3% of children in two-parent families were likely to live in poverty; 19.6% of children lived with father in single parent family; and 47.1% in single parent family headed by mother.
2 paragraphs is totally illogical. ask the poor if theirs is a lifesrtyle choice if you really wish
to know the reality.
- 4 kids
- No father in the picture
- Not working
We have created an entire generation of folks who live off of the Government.
words purportedly said by one Jesus Christ.
Nonsense. Almost everyday I read posts from republicans saying pretty much exactly that. You might want to have a get-together with them so you can at least get your stories straight.
Poor people need help, even if they ARE working. Denying that, and just pretending that they have the same resources as the middle class, is just not accepting reality.
Do we want people in this country to fail?
Too many people have kids because they can. Sad really.
We have very fortunate people who were born to wealth, healthy and good looking and smart, they received the best education money can buy, had excellent connections to make lots of money with little effort, life was more than fair to them. Yet they whine about how unfair it is for them to have to pay taxes to support the food stamp program for people less fortunate
Ask Romney, he is doing well, but Ann never thought she is wealthy, does she know the definition of poor and what it feels like? I doubt it.
When people go to church tomorrow, please say a prayer for them, they need it. They have heard of envy but never of social justice and compassion.
manage to think these things up by themselves with their greedy little minds.
used to be special because unlike many places it believed poverty was war worthy it was a thing to try and change.
Wealth inequality was considered in to large a margin unhealthy. Thinking about the better good was considered a virtue. Now? It's totally opposite. A man running for POTUS can say without any real problems I don't worry about the poor. Our historic wealth gap is seen as a virtue and poverty is something to be punished.