Helping poor children
Published January 2, 2015
by Chris Fitzsimon, NC Policy Watch and NC SPIN panelist, published in Greenville Daily Reflector, January 1, 2015.
A new report about child and family poverty from the Annie E. Casey Foundation ought to be required reading for new and returning state lawmakers and Governor Pat McCrory and his staff ought to take a long hard look at it too.
It reminds us that twenty-six percent of children in North Carolina live in poverty. For children of color, the poverty rate is 40 percent. That’s shocking, but not news. Those shameful statistics were already out there, though somehow were not part of the debate in the recent election.
The new report, “Creating Opportunity for Family; A Two-Generation Approach,” powerfully makes the often forgotten point that to help low-income kids, you must help their families too.
There are 358,000 low-income families in North Carolina and in half of them no parent has a full-time, year-round job. And many that do are paid by the hour with no sick leave, no family leave, no way to get their child to a doctor or an after-school counseling session without losing pay or even putting their job at risk.
And it’s even tougher for poor families with young children. The report finds that there are more than 400,000 children in North Carolina age 5 and under in low-income families and 18 percent of their parents report that issues with child care affected their employment.
State lawmakers made things worse in that regard last session, changing the eligibility guidelines to make 12,000 low-income children no longer eligible for a child care subsidy. The justification was to reduce the waiting list to serve the poorest children by ignoring thousands of other low-income kids.
The other choice was to increase funding for the program to help more children, not fewer, but tax cuts and other priorities were apparently more important.
Almost a third of young kids in low-income families are at risk for developmental delays, yet the General Assembly keeps slashing early childhood programs that can help and offering fewer at-risk kids the chance to enroll in NC PreK which increases their chances of succeeding in school.
In 79 percent of the poor families, no parent has at least an associate degree. That means low-wage and unsteady work is all that is available if they are fortunate enough to find work at all.
Last year the General Assembly ended the state Earned Income Tax Credit that helps low-wage workers and their families. It was part of “tax reform” that gave corporations a huge tax break and millionaires a $10,000 windfall, costing the state at least $704 million this year.
That’s a lot of day care subsidies and PreK slots and tax credits for hard-working low-income families.
Expanding Medicaid would help too and Governor McCrory and outgoing House Speaker Thom Tillis seem to finally be realizing that it makes sense, though Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger shows no sign of softening his rigid ideological opposition to expansion, no matter how many families and children it would help and how many jobs it would create.
And then there’s education, where to no one’s surprise, low income students often struggle because of hurdles their poverty creates. Yet cuts continue to teacher assistants and school counselors. Teachers have larger classes and fewer people to support their students.
It’s not only a scandal that 26 percent of our state’s children live in poverty–with thousands more in families with meager incomes just above the arbitrary line — it’s the defining issue of our time.
The most well-known publication of the Annie E. Casey Foundation is called Kids Count. This latest report makes it clear that families count too.
Now if we can only get our policymakers to understand that and start doing something about it instead of making things worse.
http://www.reflector.com/opinion/fitzsimon/fitzsimon-helping-poor-children-2747769
January 2, 2015 at 8:48 am
Richard Bunce says:
Spending taxpayers money on government programs staffed by government bureaucrats is NOT the same as helping poor children.
January 2, 2015 at 11:55 am
Norm Kelly says:
Richard Bunce: salient point. Irrelevant in the mind of any lib. Their schemes, and the appearance, are more important than actually accomplishing anything.
More than 1/4 of the kids in our state live in poverty? Wow! What an incredible statistic. So high that it's virtually incredible - meaning hard to believe. What is the definition of 'poverty' for this survey? Does the family have Internet service, cable TV service, cell phones, flat-screen tv? How much of that is provided for them by the rest of us? What is the reason these kids are living in poverty? Is there a solution besides giving them MORE benefits? I know, Chris is a die-hard, thru-and-thru lib, and with libs there are no OTHER solutions besides increasing the size of the benefits given to 'the poor'. And if they can claim it's for the children, then there is absolutely NO LIMIT on the amount that should be TAKEN from US to GIVE to THEM!
Among children of color, the rate of those living in poverty approaches 40%! Wow! Even more incredible than the prior stat. What's the root cause? How much responsibility does the 'family' have for generating this statistic? I know, once again, because Chris is a lib, and any solution coming from him will be lib-centric, there is no such thing as 'responsibility' on the part of the family. The only responsibility is upon those of us who don't already do enough!
Major question that is ignored by libs. Who was in control for virtually the entire last 100 YEARS, that's a century for those in Rio Linda, that allowed this stat to be created? The LIBS! What program of the libs did anything to reduce this number? How much money have lib schemes taken from producers to GIVE to 'the poor' in the last 100 years that this problem hasn't been resolved? What exactly is the cause for lib schemes failing? What exactly do libs propose to do different that will have a positive impact on these stats? And if the majority of voters, legal and otherwise, chose to put a (mostly) black man in the office of President, what has HE done to change this stat? What scheme of the libs who ran Raleigh reduced this number? When I waste my time to go back to finish reading this drivel, will Chris point out how wonderfully lib schemes had previously reduced this number a significant amount? I doubt it because there are NO lib schemes that reduced this number 'significantly'.
'18 percent of their parents report that issues with child care affected their employment'. Why? The schemes put in place by libs means that they are eligible for subsidized day-care for their kids. And, speaking of personal responsibility, why is it that 'families' who can't afford to have kids are having kids? Why is it that these 'families' believe they can have kids and it will be someone else's responsibility to pay for them? And what would Chris, or any other lib, consider sufficient wealth transfer to claim that we ARE doing enough? Two questions no lib ever answers. First, how much tax is appropriate for 'the wealthy' to pay? How much of personal income should any level of government TAKE from someone who produces before it's considered theft or immoral? Second, how many schemes should be in place to pay people for failing to take personal responsibility? How many government programs should be in place in order to support people who don't take care of themselves and EXPECT others to do it for them? How many people should be on food-stamps, for instance, before it's considered sufficiently funded or sufficiently broad?
'the General Assembly keeps slashing early childhood programs'. You mean the ones that show BY 3rd grade, the difference between those enrolled in subsidized day-care (i mean childhood programs) and 'regular' kids disappears? Shouldn't every government program TARGET the most needy among us? Or should the net be so broad that virtually anyone can qualify. Except those who are responsible for paying the bill that is!
If we can only get our policy makers to realize that allowing the PRIVATE SECTOR to create jobs, unhindered by government interference, then perhaps we can reduce spending on give-away programs even more! Is it better to increase government subsidies to 'families' or provide an opportunity for some of these people to actually get a decent paying job? Raising the minimum wage in someplace like a fast-food joint, where the applicants will be overpaid and underqualified, could simply reduce the opportunity for some of these people to have A JOB! Think about the teenage kids of these 'families' who would love to have a job working to earn their own money instead of relying on government subsistence payments. (i assume some of them would rather work, but this may be my own bias about being self-sufficient!) If these kids have no skills, which is what libs tell us, then they are not qualified to do anything else. And if they can't earn their own money, how will they afford to attend college? Play the lottery?
There HAS TO BE an answer OTHER than increasing socialism in our nation. This is the ONLY answer put forth by the demon party, libs in media, and editorial writers like Chris. Is there ANY other solution that any of these libs would consider? It appears not from the way they react when alternatives are provided. Kinda like when the unqualified community organizer occupier wanted to force socialized medicine upon the masses and claimed, falsely, that the Republican party was offering NO alternative. They offered alternativeS that his highness didn't like, didn't concentrate more power in Washington, so he simply said that no alternatives were offered. A provable lie, but since when does that stop any lib or most pols!? While libs, and Chris, are pondering how much they hate, despise, oppose conservatives, would it be too much to ask that they think about some alternatives to socialism? Is it too much to ask for libs to propose a plan that has a limit, an end date, a measure of success? Generational poverty, generational reliance on government subsistence programs, are more of a concern, embarrassment than the lack of funding for socialist schemes. Or should be! Continually increasing the amount of government payments should indicate that there is a root cause to the problem that spending money just won't solve. Kinda like the education establishment. The only solution ever proposed by libs is to increase 'funding'. There is NO correlation between money spent and results, but they ALWAYS, ceaselessly, continuously, tell us that increasing education establishment funding will 'solve' the problem. Perhaps libs are just defining the problem wrong. Maybe their 'problem' is solved by spending more, but the actual root cause problem of the failures of government monopoly schools has NOTHING to do with money and everything to do with EDUCATING! Is there a relationship between spending on education, spending on poverty, and libs failure to accurately define the problem?
