Trickle-down economics holds that tax breaks or other financial benefits should go to large businesses, investors, and entrepreneurs in order to stimulate economic growth. The wealthy will immediately use the money to open businesses and hire all the unemployed.
Alas, the data do not support this economic theory. It seems to me as a consumer, not an economist, that large businesses might merge so there are less jobs and higher prices.
Sadly, we do see a very different trickle-down effect in our country that I call “trickle-down poverty” because most children raised in poverty will spend their lives in poverty. What trickles down? Life with never enough money. Inadequate housing or even homelessness. Relegation to poor neighborhoods with poor schools and crime fueled by drugs. Broken families or families where both parents must work multiple menial jobs and nobody’s home to raise the children. A dearth of jobs that pay more than minimal wage. Less access to the internet. And all of this in a land where inequality continues to increase. Yes, the rich do get richer and the poor do get poorer in our land of amber grain and purple mountains.
And sadly, the American dream that enabled me, a poor child of the depression, to become who I am today has just about vanished from beneath our spacious skies.
In the early twentieth century when immigrants could believe the welcoming words on the Statue of Liberty, poor children abounded in the slums of New York. But there were good public schools, and for those who aspired to higher education, the College of the City of New York was free or nearly so. CCNY produced Nobel laureates and Supreme Court Justices that to my way of thinking is a good return on investment.
Sadly poverty affects many too many children in America today. Recent statistics show that 21 percent of America’s children live in poverty as defined by the federal poverty threshold. Even worse, it is estimated that families actually need at least twice that income to make it. Thus a whopping 44 percent of our 72 million children under 18 live in poor or low-income families.
Poverty is a cause of “food insecurity” our current euphemism for hunger. It is hard to believe that even one American child goes to bed hungry but every poor child is at risk of doing so. The poor pay more for everything: food, transportation, childcare, credit.
Every child needs and deserves a good start in life, right? This means the mother gets good prenatal and obstetrical care and the newborn gets good parental care for many years until he or she is grown. Poor mothers do not. In most other industrialized nations all mothers get prenatal care and help for the child if needed.
Every child needs a loving and nurturing family. The best family to care for children the intact, married, two-parent family, not isolated from the extended family or community, with at least one parent working and bringing in enough money for the family to live on. The family with the most challenges is the one headed by a single mother with a menial job and no family nearby. All families and children benefit from available, affordable, quality childcare.
Every child needs health care but the health insurance program for needy children, CHIP, is in a precarious position at this writing. Obesity in children is at an all-time high especially among the poor. The food industry heavily markets unhealthy sweets to children while school PE has been curtailed and most children take the bus to school. After school “activity” is sitting in front of a screen for hours.
Free public education in America, once the envy of the industrialized world, is now rated at the bottom of the list. College today can lead to crushing debt to pay off student loans. Job opportunities diminish in this technological and robotic age.
Even if a child raised in poverty manages to do well, the possibility of what are called “adverse childhood events” can cause downstream health problems, both physical and mental.
We will soon hear the State of the Union address and will most certainly be told that the state of the union is strong. But the state of America’s children is actually bad. What can parents, grandparents, and concerned citizens do?
We can pay close attention to what is happening. Vote for pro child and pro family legislators. Protest against unhealthy marketing to children. Push for parenting education especially for young mothers. Volunteer at schools. Take children with us in appropriate situations when we are helping others. Talk to our own children and grandchildren about the lives of less fortunate children compared to their own. Ask them to think about what can be done to help. Their generation will inherit the problem of trickle down poverty and will have to deal with it.
“It takes a village to raise a child” is an almost trite but still true adage. Please think about the corollary: without children a village dies. Ignoring children, our own or other peoples, means we ignore the future, our future. This makes no sense.
Why should we help the needy children of our nation? First of all it is morally, ethically, religiously, and economically right to do so. It can also save all of us downstream money for jails, welfare programs, and un- or underemployed people not paying taxes. And as Marion Wright Edelman of the Children’s Defense Fund said, “The child you ignore today may be the one caring for you in the nursing home tomorrow.” Think about it.
