استحقاق، کودکان در فقر و رفاه جمعی

Rising numbers of children and families have been thrust into poverty. However, debates about poverty policies and aid are in fact debates about ourselves—our logic of life and our humanity—as a nation, a culture, a people; and social welfare programs will always be underfunded and of limited effectiveness if people don't believe in them due to their ambivalence and confusion about poverty. Because poor children are innocent and indisputably dependent on adult caretakers, they may be our route out of this malaise. Their circumstance and our aspirations as a nation to be just, fair, and progressive, force us to resolve the confusion, conflict and ambivalence that fuel ineffective and inhumane social welfare policies and practices.

Pronouncements of the number of people in poverty, especially children, were ubiquitous during the first term of President Barack Obama (2009–2012) and through the recent presidential election that ended in November 2012. The Children's Defense Fund, the National Urban League and the Urban Institute, the Casey Foundation's Kids Count, think tanks, and poverty institutes and centers used major news outlets and the Internet to report increasing numbers of children in poverty and increasing knowledge on the consequences of these numbers. Yet, there has been almost no policy response to this news and no real movement aimed at addressing childhood poverty. Why no national, populist upheaval about poverty and the state of children? Are the majority of Americans not concerned about the harmful effects of poverty on children? Do we not understand or accept how the well-being of children is connected to the well-being of their families (i.e., parents and caretakers), their communities, and society at large?