Child Poverty Is Everybody’s Problem

It is very encouraging and promising that there is bipartisan movement to seriously address the child poverty scourge in the US.  When I check international data to find where the US ranks in indicators like child poverty, I feel compelled to check and recheck the numbers and consult different sources.  I do this because I find it difficult to believe that a country that rich ranks so low in taking care of its young people and future promise.

Let me say at the outset that there are different estimates of poverty, and child poverty in particular, so that one can come up with different numbers and international rankings.  For example, research out of the American Enterprise Institute disputes the US numbers used for international comparisons and contends that the US ranks close to other similar countries like the UK and Canada. 

Even so, in a country of extreme inequality, you can have mild national averages for a socioeconomic indicator that hide the very precarious state of considerable segments of the population.  Even after one adjusts the poverty levels by counting various government programs, the fact remains that there are pockets of significant child poverty in the US.  For example, the Children’s Defense Fund reports that one in six children live in poverty in this country.  The ratio is one in three for Black and one in four for Hispanic kids.  Across the US, child poverty rates are significantly higher in lower- income states and states with significant numbers of people of color.  Thus, even California and New York State have child poverty rates above the national average despite their overall prosperity.

The consequences of child poverty are grave in terms of economic impact, social mobility, health, cognitive and emotional development, and, of course, social adjustment and crime.  The Children’s Defense Fund estimates that the effects of child poverty amount to a loss of $700 billion of annual GDP.  Social mobility studies utilizing the Intergenerational Earnings (IGE) elasticity index have found that 50% of the earnings of American adults depend on the earnings of their parents.  It means that half of the adult earnings of a child born into a poor household are predetermined by the low earnings of the parents.  Unless we believe that foregoing part of a person’s potential for economic and social attainment is not a waste or does not matter for social harmony then we must have no difficulty acknowledging that investing in children can give a society the biggest payoff.

It is important to understand that the failure of fulfilling one’s potential in economic and social attainment is the result of what poverty does to a child’s cognitive and emotional development.  The effects are the product of interactions of genetic and environmental factors that affect the brain and health of the child.  Adverse environmental conditions include poor nutrition and health care as well as problematic family and social situations.  

Thus, child poverty is very relevant to one’s adult life.  Two kids born with very similar genetic predispositions can have dramatically different adult lives.  The kid born into a favorable economic, family and social environment is a lot more likely to be successful later in life than the kid born into poverty and adverse family and social conditions.  Ignoring the effects of childhood experience on adult life impacts how we perceive and, more importantly, attribute success and failure in adulthood.  A much higher percentage of Americans than Europeans attributes success in adulthood to personal effort and merit and more Americans than Europeans also agree with the notion “people are poor because they are lazy or lack determination.”  When we fail to understand the link between childhood poverty and adversity and adult life, we are more inclined to oppose public support programs for adults.

The developmental effects of poverty come from the fact that the frontal cortex is the part of the brain still developing during adolescence and the last part of the brain to reach full development.  The frontal cortex is important for executive functions and regulating our emotions.  Any impairment in its development impairs cognitive and emotion maturation.  It is known that poverty and adverse environment during adolescence can adversely affect the development of the frontal cortex.  Because of its late-stage development, the quality of the frontal cortex is less dependent on genes and more on the environment and nurturing.

Studies have shown that childhood adversity, including poverty, raises the odds for depression, anxiety, substance abuse, impaired cognitive capabilities, impaired impulse control and emotion regulation, antisocial behavior, and troubled relationships.  In other words, born in poverty means you have a lot more barriers and challenges to overcome in order to succeed.  Since child poverty implies household poverty, inferior prenatal care and maternity conditions also contribute to possible problems in the development of the brain.

The negative effects of poverty on the physical and mental health of poor people are also accentuated under conditions of inequality.  What has been found to really matter is not the condition of being poor but rather the condition of feeling poor. Children growing in poor households and neighborhoods become aware of their low socioeconomic status and this further contributes to their uneven development.

Beyond these negative effects afflicting American children, we need also to account for inequality in educational attainment due to more limited resources in school districts attended by poor children.  Therefore, the extent of the problem of child poverty is serious and complex.  Making progress in the war against child poverty requires investments that support robust educational opportunities and outcomes, good nutrition and good health care.

If we look beyond the US, the good news is that extreme poverty (which, of course, affects children) has declined from 50% of the global population in 1966 to 9% in 2017.  This is a tremendous improvement for mankind.  A lot of this achievement is due to the lower number of births per mother from 5 in 1965 to 2.5 in 2017.  With fewer children a household can take better care of its offsprings.

A good society is not one that neglects its most vulnerable members.  The challenge for America is to become a global role model in line with its status as the richest country.