If society cares about children

The radio news report this morning said Sunday's snowstorm dumped 16.7 inches at Detroit Metro Airport. That makes it Detroit's third largest storm, measured in depth of snow. It was also the most snow fallen in one day. I guess the bigger storms lasted more than a day. And … it started snowing today about mid-evening. Predictions are for about 3 inches by tomorrow morning. We set a record for snowfall last year. We don't need to do it again.



Rochelle Riley is a columnist for the Detroit Free Press. In her column this past Sunday she wrote about the more than 40 years that Marian Wright Edelman, head of the Children's Defense Fund, has been advocating for children in poverty. One of several statistics Riley includes from this year's CDF report: Poor parents don't have time to read to their kids. Those kids hear a lot fewer words and are exposed to a much smaller vocabulary. They are less likely to know their letters, count to 20, and write their names. These are disparities that are quite difficult to overcome.

But this year's report, titled "Ending Child Poverty Now," adds specific recommendations for action to its advocacy. For example: The current defense budget is $578 billion. That is 37% of the world's military expenditures to protect 5% of the world's population. Cut that by 14% and $81 billion becomes available for lifting children out of poverty.

This caught my attention: There are 15 million children in poverty in this country. Lifting 9 million (60%) out of poverty would cost $70 million. Keeping all these kids poor would cost $500 billion – half a trillion.

I could make a great point that it seems crazy to not spend that $70 million when it would save $500 billion. But there are clues in the story that make me doubt that $70 million. First, that works out to $8 a child. Second, the few changes to the federal budget (only one described above) that are covered by Riley add up to $330 billion. Why raise $330 billion when only $70 million is needed?

So I followed the link Riley provided to the report that Edelman wrote. Alas, Riley may not have been an accurate journalist. Here's the important part:

Child poverty is too expensive to continue. Every year we keep 14.7 million children in poverty costs our nation $500 billion – six times more than the $77 billion investment we propose to reduce child poverty by 60 percent. MIT Nobel Laureate economist and 2014 Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient Dr. Robert Solow in his foreword to a 1994 CDF report Wasting America’s Future presciently wrote: “For many years Americans have allowed child poverty levels to remain astonishingly high…far higher than one would think a rich and ethical society would tolerate. The justification, when one is offered at all, has often been that action is expensive: ‘We have more will than wallet.’ I suspect that in fact our wallets exceed our will, but in any event this concern for the drain on our resources completely misses the other side of the equation: Inaction has its costs too…As an economist I believe that good things are worth paying for; and that even if curing children’s poverty were expensive, it would be hard to think of a better use in the world for money. If society cares about children, it should be willing to spend money on them.”

Not only does child poverty cost far more than eliminating it would, we have so many better choices that reflect more just values as well as economic savings. We believe that food, shelter, quality early childhood investments to get every child ready for school and an equitable education for all children should take precedence over massive welfare for the rich and blatantly excessive spending for military weapons that do not work. We cannot let our leaders spend $400 billion, without offsets, to make permanent tax breaks to wealthy corporations and others and then say we cannot afford to ensure every child is housed and fed.

As for those series of suggestions that I totaled up to $330 billion, only one of the suggestions is needed to raise the necessary $77 billion. That works out to about $8500 a child. The report aims for 60% of those 15 million children because the money and effort would have an immediate effect on those kids.

That half-trillion in costs when kids remain in poverty was computed as $170 billion in lost productivity, $170 billion in increased crime, and $160 billion in worse health.

I can now get back to the point I wanted to make, though with revised figures. It seems crazy to not spend that $77 billion when it would save $500 billion. To me that means child poverty is not an issue of money, but an issue of power.