Poverty costs us all. Resolving it will pay us back
Published December 14, 2015
Editorial by Fayetteville Observer, December 13, 2015.
This is not a good place to be poor. In fact, Cumberland County is one of the worst places in the country for children born into poverty.
They won't just stay poor here, but they'll actually fare worse than their parents. And this cycle will repeat itself, generation after generation.
We were stunned, earlier this year, when we came across the national study that documented this dismal fate for Fayetteville's impoverished children. Harvard economists studied the lifetime economic outcomes for children across the nation. They found that in some areas, poor children have a pretty good chance of doing better than their parents. In others, they're likely to stay at the same income level.
But here, they can expect earnings that are 18 percent below their parents'. According to the study, children in only 13 of the nation's 2,478 counties fare worse.
The study told us what was happening, but it didn't say much about why - although it did note some of the factors present in communities where children have better outcomes. The list includes elementary schools where students earn higher test scores, a higher percentage of two-parent families, greater public involvement in civic and religious groups, and better integration of lower, middle and upper-class families within residential areas.
How did Fayetteville get this way, and what are the routes out? Observer senior writer Greg Barnes spent months asking those questions and looking at the problem. His findings appear in a series - "Poverty's Price" - in the Observer this week.
As today's story points out, this extensive poverty has consequences, our crime rate foremost among them. The problem is well-known in cities across the country, so common that it has a self-descriptive name: the cradle-to-prison pipeline.
The syndrome that spins out of our poverty problem is making the rest of us poor, too. Fighting the crime and imprisoning the perpetrators is costing this community millions of taxpayer dollars every year. Breaking the cycle would have an enormous payoff. But that will require investment, and this state is moving in the opposite direction - cutting, for example, early-education funding instead of increasing it to meet community needs.
We hope our readers will follow "Poverty's Price" throughout the coming week and then begin a community conversation about what we need to do to improve our children's chances in life. We've all got a lot riding on it.
