Poverty in America

I read an interesting op-ed in Monday’s New York Times by Paul Krugman. In it, Krugman cites and comments on an article from the Financial Times which reported on new research by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Among other conclusions, he describes that

[N]euroscientists have found that “many children growing up in very poor families with low social status experience unhealthy levels of stress hormones, which impair their neural development.” The effect is to impair language development and memory — and hence the ability to escape poverty — for the rest of the child’s life.

While it may not be a surprise that it is very difficult to escape poverty, it might shock some to learn that poverty among children has actually increased over the past thirty years. “In 2006, 17.4 percent of children in America lived below the poverty line, substantially more than in 1969,” which was 14% according to Krugman. Is this a failure of our political system? Krugman thinks so. He attributes much of this failure to the conservative movement which took control of government throughout the 1980s and 1990s. While I don’t know enough to buy that claim or not, it did make me wonder where our current candidates stand on issues of domestic poverty. After all, poverty is still a serious issue in this country, and it’s worth looking up what the candidates think when we decide who to elect as president.

Here are the positions of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton on poverty. Notably, they both propose raising the minimum wage (Clinton offers a goal of $9.50 by 2011, and Obama proposes creating a living wage and to “index it to inflation”), creating more entry level job opportunities, and to help reintegrate ex-cons into the workforce, among other plans. I should also note that I searched John McCain’s website for a similar list of proposals to tackle domestic poverty, but I could find anything remotely like the comprehensive list of objectives offered by Clinton and Obama.

So as you make up your mind on who to vote for this year, remember that domestic poverty has yet to be solved by any means. In fact, it calls into question some of our basic American ideals. How can we take the “American Dream” seriously while millions of children don’t stand a chance to escape the poverty into which they were born? What does it say about “land of opportunity” when such opportunity simply does not exist for so many? Many say that these ideals have always been ideals, and have never reflected the truth about America. That doesn’t, however, mean that it has to stay like that. For the next president to restore our faith in American ideals, he or she must show us that our ideals can work. Efforts to break the poverty trap here at home would be a start.