Ed,
Where Stephanie Mencimer is uninformed is that (see her last sentence)
poverty doesn't doesn't affect the intellectual development of children.
What does affect it is when parents don't talk or read much or when there
are no books in the house, and so forth. In terms of oxygen, energy and
food, the brain is given top priority. A person has to be at the extreme
edge of starvation then all the other organs are failing before the brain
is affected.
If teaching unions weren't so rigid about credentialism, then you could be
sure that private schools would invade the poverty struck parts of America
just as they have done (and continue to do) in the poorest parts of China,
India and Africa (where the poverty is at a deeper level than the poorest
of America). This would give a chance, at least, to the children, of
breaking out of the trap (though they would still need parents who were
motivated enough to spare a few pennies for the tuition).
Keith
At 14:19 25/10/2013, you wrote:
From Mother Jones:
CHART: Welfare Reform Is Leaving More In Deep Poverty
By <http://www.motherjones.com/authorss/stephanie-mencimer>Stephanie Mencimer
| Wed Oct. 23, 2013 3:00 AM PDT
The economy is picking up in some parts of the country, but that hasn't
translated into any new serious efforts to help those suffering the most
hardship. In fact, for those on the lowest rung of the economic ladder,
life may be getting even harder. A
<http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=4034>new report from the
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) looks at cash benefits
provided under the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program,
commonly known as "welfare." It finds that the value of monthly cash
benefits that make up the fragile safety net for the poorest families with
children has continued to decline steadily since the program was
"reformed" in 1996.
Back then, benefits weren't exactly generous, but they did manage to keep
a whole lot of kids out of really deep poverty. Today, those benefits are
almost nonexistent. The lucky few who are able to get cash assistance
aren't getting enough to
<http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2013/10/welfare-reform-cbpp-deep-poverty>pay
rent or keep the lights on in most states, and the value of the benefits
has declined precipitously since 1996even more so since the recession
sttarted. According to CBPP, there is not a state in the country whose
welfare benefits are enough to lift a poor single mother with two kids
above 50 percent of the poverty line, or about $9700 a year. In many
southern states, TANF doesn't provide enough money to get a poor family
much above 10 percent of the poverty line. What's especially troubling
about these figures is that, as CBPP reports, TANF benefits are often the
only form of cash assistance poor families receive. They may be getting
food stamps, which definitely help their situations, but you can't
<http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2013/10/welfare-reform-cbpp-deep-poverty>buy
diapers or pay the rent with food stamps.
People like President Bill Clinton and then-Speaker of the House Newt
Gingrich claimed they'd be doing welfare recipients a favor in the 1990s
when they reformed the welfare program to impose work requirements and
make it more difficult for people to get benefits. The idea was that
welfare recipients were just lazy and that their government checks were
keeping them from working, making them dependent on the government. When
the reform legislation passed, with Clinton's signature, some people in
the administration quit in protest, arguing that cutting off cash
assistance for poor families would push millions of children into poverty.
That didn't happen, at least not right away. But funding for the TANF
block grant hasn't increased since 1996, meaning that in real terms, what
the country spends to help poor families in the program has fallen 30
percent overall since welfare was "reformed," and benefit levels have
fallen even more in some states that cut benefits after the financial
crisis started in 2007. Not surprisingly, since 1996, the number of
families with children living in extreme povertythat is, on $2 a day oor
lesshas
<http://www.npc.umich.edu/publications/poolicy_briefs/brief28/policybrief28.pdf>gone
up nearly 130 percent.
The
<http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2013/10/welfare-reform-cbpp-deep-poverty>US
Census Bureau reports that the number of Americans suffering significant
hardships, such as having utilities cut off, getting evicted, or suffering
food shortages, has escalated sharply during the recession. Between 2005
and 2011, nearly 7 million additional people were unable to make a
mortgage or rent payment, suggesting that as the nation's last-ditch
safety net for people in really dire straits, TANF, is not working. Given
that science is now showing just
<http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-10-21/stress-of-childhood-poverty-may-have-long-effect-on-brain.html>how
damaging the stress of poverty is to children and their health and
intellectual development, maybe it's finally time for welfare reform to be
reformed in a way that gives poor kids a fair shot at a decent future.
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