Poor North American Kids

In a new paper released by the National Center for Childrenin Poverty (NCCP), a research center at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, researchers find that many children living in large cities in the U.S. are living in poverty.

The poverty rate for all children in general living in the U.S. in 2013 was 19.9 percent, but the child poverty rate for all large cities in the U.S. is at 30.6 — a significantly higher percentage that shows big cities are the most affected.

Nearly three out of five children in Detroit are poor, a rate that has grown by 10 percent since the Great Recession in 2007. The report also found that the majority of kids living in Cleveland and Buffalo, N.Y. live in poverty, in addition to half of children in Fresno, Calif.; Cincinnati, and Memphis, Tenn. Meanwhile, Newark, N.J.; Miami, St. Louis, and Milwaukee all top the list of some of the poorest cities for children.

According to the NCCP, economic hardship and deprivation can have “profound effects” on a child’s development and future prospects, such as their ability to learn. Poverty can exacerbate behavioral, social, and emotional problems as well, not due to the lack of income, but because of the instability associated with fluctuating incomes.

Poverty can have an impact on child health as well. A 2007 study pointed out that “children in families with greater material resources enjoy more secure living conditions and greater access to a range of opportunities that are often unavailable to children from low-income families,” the authors wrote. “On average, children living in low-income families or neighborhoods have poorer health outcomes.”

It’s been 25 years since members of Parliament unanimously voted to eradicate child poverty. Their self-imposed deadline came and went almost 15 years ago.

In that time, millions of children in Canada have grown up in deplorable conditions, often cold, hungry and ill — and some of them are now raising their own kids in the same situation.

On the anniversary of the government’s unfulfilled pledge, almost 1.2 million children go to school hungry, don’t have a good winter coat or can’t afford to play sports. The problem is particularly acute in Toronto, which despite its wealth, is still the worst city in Canada for children, according to The Hidden Epidemic report released last week. Here, 29 per cent of kids live below the poverty line, a greater percentage than anywhere else.

Mary Jo Leddy, a philosophy professor, theologian and co-chair of the Keep The Promise initiative, which has organized a renewed push to get child poverty back on the political agenda said “What’s lacking is not the knowledge, not the smarts, not even the money. It’s the will, the desire, the urgency to really, really do this.”