#child poverty

[politijohn]

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[heterorealism]

[reasonsforhope]

Flint, Michigan, has one of the [United States]'s highest rates of child poverty — something that got a lot of attention during the city's lead water crisis a decade ago. And a pediatrician who helped expose that lead problem has now launched a first-of-its-kind move to tackle poverty: giving every new mother $7,500 in cash aid over a year.

A baby's first year is crucial for development. It's also a time of peak poverty.

Flint's new cash transfer program, Rx Kids, starts during pregnancy. The first payment is $1,500 to encourage prenatal care. After delivery, mothers will get $500 a month over the baby's first year.

"What happens in that first year of life can really portend your entire life course trajectory. Your brain literally doubles in size in the first 12 months," says Hanna-Attisha, who's also a public health professor at Michigan State University.

A baby's birth is also a peak time for poverty. Being pregnant can force women to cut back hours or even lose a job. Then comes the double whammy cost of child care.

Research has found that stress from childhood poverty can harm a person's physical and mental health, brain development and performance in school. Infants and toddlers are more likely than older children to be put into foster care, for reasons that advocates say conflate neglect with poverty.

In Flint, where the child poverty rate is more than 50%, Hanna-Attisha says new moms are in a bind. "We just had a baby miss their 4-day-old appointment because mom had to go back to work at four days," she says...

Benefits of Cash Aid

Studies have found such payments reduce financial hardship and food insecurity and improve mental and physical health for both mothers and children.

The U.S. got a short-lived taste of that in 2021. Congress temporarily expanded the child tax credit, boosting payments and also sending them to the poorest families who had been excluded because they didn't make enough to qualify for the credit. Research found that families mostly spent the money on basic needs. The bigger tax credit improved families' finances and briefly cut the country's child poverty rate nearly in half.

"We saw food hardship dropped to the lowest level ever," Shaefer says. "And we saw credit scores actually go to the highest that they'd ever been in at the end of 2021."

Critics worried that the expanded credit would lead people to work less, but there was little evidence of that. Some said they used the extra money for child care so they could go to work.

As cash assistance in Flint ramps up, Shaefer will be tracking not just its impact on financial well-being, but how it affects the roughly 1,200 babies born in the city each year.

"We're going to see if expectant moms route into prenatal care earlier," he says. "Are they able to go more? And then we'll be able to look at birth outcomes," including birth weight and neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) admissions.

Since the pandemic, dozens of cash aid pilots have popped up across the nation. But unlike them, Rx Kids is not limited to lower-income households. It's universal, which means every new mom will get the same amount of money. "You pit people against each other when you draw that line in the sand and say, 'You don't need this, and you do,' " Shaefer says. It can also stigmatize families who get the aid, he says, as happened with traditional welfare...

So far, there's more than $43 million to keep the program going for three years. Funders include foundations, health insurance companies and the state of Michigan, which allocated a small part of its federal cash aid, known as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.

Money can buy more time for bonding with a baby

Alana Turner can't believe her luck with Flint's new cash benefits. "I was just shocked because of the timing of it all," she says.

Turner is due soon with her second child, a girl. She lives with her aunt and her 4-year-old son, Ace. After he was born, her car broke down and she was seriously cash-strapped, negotiating over bill payments. This time, she hopes she won't have to choose between basic needs.

"Like, I shouldn't have to think about choosing between are the lights going to be on or am I going to make sure the car brakes are good," she says...

But since she'll be getting an unexpected $7,500 over the next year, Turner has a new goal. With her first child, she was back on the job in less than six weeks. Now, she hopes she'll be able to slow down and spend more time with her daughter.

"I don't want to sacrifice the time with my newborn like I had to for my son, if I don't have to," she says."

-via NPR, March 12, 2024

[truth-has-a-liberal-bias]

The House voted Wednesday night to pass a $78 billion tax package that includes an expansion of the child tax credit, sending it to the Senate, where its path is uncertain. The Republican-led House passed the bipartisan measure 357-70...

...

It now heads to the Senate, where it will need at least 60 votes to advance.

Given the margin in the House, and the scope of the bipartisan support, that might not seem like much of a challenge, but one GOP senator summarized a core problem. NBC News also reported:

Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, cast doubt Wednesday on passing a bipartisan tax bill, saying it could make President Joe Biden “look good” and improve Democrats’ chances of holding the White House in the 2024 election. Grassley said re-electing Biden could hurt Republican hopes of extending Trump-era tax cuts.

...

The problem is not that the Iowa Republican opposes the underlying legislation; the problem is that his principal concern is avoiding governing successes that might make President Joe Biden “look good” in an election year.

The longtime GOP senator could put country over party, but by his own admission, he’s reluctant to do so. To hear Grassley tell it, reducing child poverty is fine, but helping the Republican Party’s electoral strategies is better. [...]

[porterdavis]

Poverty is a policy choice

[enbycrip]

Thing to remember if you are writing anything involving class and working class people, including game design: poverty is a major cause of AND a major result of disability and chronic illness.

If you write something where every working class person, every person who comes from a working class background, or every poor person, is healthy and physically strong, and just as much or more so if you bake that into a game system by giving people from those backgrounds high Health or Strength stats, you are making an active *choice* to erase a substantial part of the experience of and results of poverty.

Disabled people exist *everywhere*. In every setting - even when there’s magical healing or nanobots or whatever, frankly, erasure of disabled people and the experience of disability is an active narrative choice to erase us. So we *certainly* exist in *every* real world present-day and historical setting, and the fact that you don’t think so is due to active cultural erasure of disabled people and the experience of disability.

While disability is *absolutely* present in every strata of society, the experiences of disability and poverty are deeply and inherently entwined. Given that the vast majority of people are workers, and primarily physical workers throughout history - and if you don’t think disability massively impairs your ability to do call centre work, let alone food service, care work, retail work, or most of the other low-paid jobs in our current service economy, even if they are not habitually classified as heavy physical work, you need to massively expand your understanding of what disability actually is.

Poverty is generational in all sorts of ways, but one of them is that gestational and childhood poverty affects a person for their entire life. There are so many illnesses that one is predisposed to by inadequate nutrition during gestation and childhood, or by environmental pollution during those times (most likely in poverty-stricken areas). Disability and illness in parents and family members so often sees young children go without essentials and older ones forced into forgoing education and opportunities so they can care for family members or enter paid work. It’s a generational cycle that has held depressingly true in urban and rural areas, and that’s before even considering the impact of genetic illnesses and predisposition to illnesses.

Not to mention that a great deal of neurodivergence is incredibly disabling in every strata of society - yes, bits of it can be very advantageous in certain places, jobs, roles and positions, but the *universality* of punishment for not intuiting the subtle social rules of place and social environment again and again means most ND folk end up with a massive burden of trauma by adulthood. On top of the poverty that means in loss of access to paid work and other opportunities, trauma is incredibly shitty for your health.

Yeah; it might not be “fun” to write about or depict. But by failing to do so you are actively perpetuating the idea that the class system, whatever it is, is “just”. That poorest people do the jobs they do because they are “best suited for them” instead of because of societal inequality and sheer *bad fortune* without safety nets to catch people. It is very much worth doing the work to put it in.

[lesbiansandgayssupporttheminers]

Honestly, this country is a disgrace. No child should be in the situation where they don't have enough to eat, or can't access education due to lack of money.

At my current place, we also give away basic stationery, period products etc to students in need. It does put you at a disadvantage when you're the kid in the class who can't afford £10 for a calculator.

There are schools doing laundry for kids, providing them with clothes, even bedding in some cases.

But schools are increasingly running short on money (as are teachers themselves)- having schools as a sort of social safety net of last resort is a situation that's going to fall apart at some point, unless schools get proper funding.

But wouldn't it be better to ensure students aren't in this situation in the first place?

[odinsblog]

This new statistic is just completely heartbreaking and deeply disappointing. It's also a specific choice. A spike in child poverty like this didn't need to happen. Congress had the chance to extend these programs that would keep our children fed and boost working families out of poverty. But it didn't. It's shameful. In the richest country in the world, no child should have to go through this. And now it's on us to fix this problem that shouldn't have been created in the first place.

—John Fetterman, on the new child poverty statistics caused by allowing pandemic response programs to expire

[thoughtportal]

The Philosophy of the Black Panther Party

[mask131]

Here is the video I just saw that echoed this post I reblogged earlier. A simple test: can you get anti-abortion protesters to sign a petition against child hunger? It gives very interesting results. "For the children". Yeah yeah, sure...

[drafty-castle]

Eloquently put.

[reasonsforhope]

Teen births have fallen by more than three-quarters in the last three decades, a change of such improbable magnitude that experts struggle to fully explain it. Child poverty also plunged, raising a complex question: Does cutting teen births reduce child poverty, or does cutting child poverty reduce teen births?

While both may be true, it is not clear which dominates... Ms. Marsaw, who waited until 24 to have a child — a daughter, Zaharii — has considered the issue at length and embraces both views.

“This is a very, very, very good topic — it touches home with me in so many ways!” she said, adding that teen pregnancy and child poverty reinforce each other. “If you escape one, you have a better chance of escaping the other.”

Teen births have fallen by 77 percent since 1991, and among young teens the decline is even greater, 85 percent, according to an analysis by Child Trends, a research group that studies children’s well-being. Births have fallen at roughly equal rates among teenagers who are white, Hispanic and Black, and they have fallen by more than half in every state. [Note: They have FALLEN at similar rates, but there are unfortunately still disparities in the rates themselves due to the many profound impacts of racism.]

The decline is accelerating: Teen births fell 20 percent in the 1990s, 28 percent in the 2000s and 55 percent in the 2010s. Three decades ago, a quarter of 15-year-old girls became mothers before turning 20, according to Child Trends estimates, including nearly half of those who were Black or Hispanic. Today, just 6 percent of 15-year-old girls become teen mothers.

“These are dramatic declines — impressive, surprising, and good for both teenagers and the children they eventually have,” said Elizabeth Wildsmith, a Child Trends researcher who did the analysis with a colleague, Jennifer Manlove.

Not all teen mothers are poor, of course, and many who do experience poverty escape it.

The reasons teen births have fallen are only partly understood. Contraceptive use has grown and shifted to more reliable methods, and adolescent sex has declined. Civic campaigns, welfare restrictions and messaging from popular culture may have played roles.

But with progress so broad and sustained, many researchers argue the change reflects something more fundamental: a growing sense of possibility among disadvantaged young women, whose earnings and education have grown faster than their male counterparts.

“They’re going to school and seeing new career paths open,” said Melissa S. Kearney, an economist at the University of Maryland. “Whether they are excited about their own opportunities or feel that unreliable male partners leave them no choice, it leads them in the same direction — not becoming a young mother.”

Sex Is Down, Contraception is Up

On the surface, the decline in teen births is easy to explain: Contraception rose, and sex fell.

The share of female teens who did not use birth control the last time they had sex dropped by more than a third over the last decade, according to an analysis of government surveys by the Guttmacher Institute. The share using the most effective form, long-acting reversible contraception (delivered through an intrauterine device or arm implant), rose fivefold to 15 percent. The use of emergency contraception also rose.

Contraception use has grown in part because it is easier to get, with the 2010 Affordable Care Act requiring insurance plans, including Medicaid, to provide it for free.

At the same time, the share of high school students who say they have had sexual intercourse has fallen 29 percent since 1991, Child Trends found. Some analysts, including Brad Wilcox, a sociologist at the University of Virginia, say the postponement of sex, which has intensified since 2013, stems in part from the time teens spend in front of screens.

Abortion does not appear to have driven the decline in teen births. As a share of teenage pregnancy, it has remained steady over the past decade, although the data, from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, omits medication abortions, and analysts say the recent Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, eliminating the constitutional right to abortion, could cause teen births to rise.

If adolescent girls are more cautious with sex and birth control, what explains the caution? A common answer is that more feel they have something to lose. “There is just a greater confidence among young women that they have educational and professional opportunities,” Mr. Wilcox said.

In 2013, the economists David Autor and Melanie Wasserman found that women in their mid-30s were nearly 25 percent more likely than men to have a four-year college degree, and at every educational level earnings had grown faster for women than men...

A Brighter Future

For Ms. Alvarez, [an undocumented immigrant and the child of a teen mother,] the story is simpler: Her future unfolded as planned. [She successfully avoided teen pregnancy.] Though still working on her English, she managed the transition to the University of the District of Columbia. In her second year, fortune smiled: She boarded a city bus and ran into Fredy, the man who had pursued her in high school.

Like Ms. Marsaw, she no longer feared pregnancy as she had in her teens. When a lapse in contraceptive use had a predictable effect, the news solidified her plans more than it disrupted them. She married shortly before giving birth at 23. “You’ve never ready to become a mother, but I felt like I can do this,” she said.

A baby did slow her educational progress. Working two jobs, she took six years to earn a bachelor’s degree, then started a job at Mary’s Center, the clinic that had encouraged her to seek scholarships.

She coordinates care for cancer patients and has legal protection under Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, a program for undocumented migrants who came to the United States as youths. With a family income above the national average, she and her husband recently bought their first house.

“If I die tomorrow, I can say I achieved the American dream,” Ms. Alvarez said. “But if I had gotten pregnant as a teenager? I’m not sure, but I don’t think so.””

-via The New York Times, 12/31/22

[possiblyunhinged]

Honestly, how can Labour talk about supporting children's futures while thousands of children are waiting years for mental health support, and since they were put in power, 10,000 MORE children have been plunged into poverty? Meanwhile, munching on a boot while Israel's most recent demonstration of its 'right to defend herself' shows is attacking a hospital? How many children's futures have been decimated in the Middle East historically due to British politics? Have we learned anything at all? And how about Britain's spineless approach to their futures now?

Like, what children are they supporting lmfaoooo

[porterdavis]

Child poverty is a policy choice, full stop.

[eaglesnick]

Broken Britain: Labour’s Policy

Homelessness

According to Shelter 109,000 households are homeless in temporary accommodation - up 10% in a year -  including 142,490 children – up 14% in a year.

Labour does NOT include ending homelessness in Keir Starmer’s “Five Missions" that are at the centre of his party's promise to voters.

Child Poverty

4.3 million children were living in poverty in the UK during the period 2022/23 – 30% of ALL the nations children.

Labour does NOT include ending child poverty in Keir Starmer's “Five Missions"

Food Banks

Nearly 3 million emergency food parcels were distributed by food banks between April 2022 and April 2023, 760,00 people using food banks for the first time. The number of children in "material deprivation" wherein families cannot afford to feed themselves was 1.9 million.

Labour does NOT include ending    poverty in Keir Starmer's “Five Missions"

Water Pollution

According to the Environment Agency there were 3.6 million hours of spills of raw sewage into Britain’s waterways and beaches compared to 1.75 million hours in 2022. Not a single river in England is now rated as healthy.

Labour does NOT include environmental cleanup and protection in Keir Starmer's “Five Missions"

Social Care of the Elderly

Chronic under-funding, severe staff shortages and a growing elderly population has brought the social care sector to crisis point and on the verge of collapse. According to Age UK 2.6 million people over 50 years of age have unmet social care needs, while many thousands languish in hospital for lack of a social care plan for living in their own homes.

Labour does NOT include social care reform   in Keir Starmer's “Five Missions"

The Labour Party’s number one priority isn’t to help the poor, the homeless, the elderly or to protect the environment. It is to secure:

…“the "highest sustained growth" in the G7 group of rich nations, made up of the UK, US, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, and Japan, by the end of Labour's first term.” 

Strangely enough within Sunak’s “five promises” he emphasizes growing the economy above all else. Its all very well “growing the economy", but WHO are we growing the economy for, and who will benefit from any future growth?

After 14 years of Tory government the poor have become steadily worse off while the rich have prospered. The continued redistribution of the nation's wealth from poor to rich is a national scandal, leading to the UK “having some of the highest levels of inequality in Europe.”  Unfortunately, even if Labour should win the next election, this inequality is likely to continue.