Poverty is one of the world’s biggest unsolved issues. Even though the United States is the wealthiest country in the world, it’s  masses still live in poverty every single day. According to the non-profit organization ‘Bread for the World,’ “more than one in five children live in households that struggle to put food on the table, and most Americans (51.4 percent) will live in poverty at some point before age 65.” Of that percentage, a huge chunk comes from broken homes, including single and teenage mothers. This chunk is being blamed for the poor social mobility in the U.S.

According to a survey in the book “From Parents to Children,” written by a group of scholars, “children born into poor homes in America — where single-parent and teen-parent homes are more common (than in other parts of the world)– tended to remain poor throughout their life, while Australian and Canadian children born into similar families were more successful in advancing themselves.”

One of the scholars who wrote the book, Ottawa University’s Miles Corak, a poverty and education expert, said, “the tie between the educational attainment of children and the educational attainment of their parents is much tighter in the UK and U.S. than not just Australia and Canada, but also the vast majority of comparable rich countries.”

Children in the United States that are born into poverty are considered less developed than children entering elementary school in Australia and Canada. By the time these children enter high school, the gap of development continues to widen. Additionally, according to NewsCore, students born into poverty are much less likely to further their education after high school than impoverished students in other industrialized nations.

In hopes of improving the lives of those born into poverty in the United States, there are several things that the public can do to contribute to the lives of those that are most affected. Educational Charity Sutton Trust, which works to address such inequalities, said, “if we can understand the reasons for the much higher levels of social mobility in nations such as Canada and Australia … then the hope is that we can develop policies that will improve the life prospects.”

‘Bread for the World’ outlines several solutions to end poverty and to change the current statistics of poverty in America. Better jobs with higher wages need to be created for adults to support their families, and work support programs need to expand for families to have access to affordable health care and child care.

Strengthening tax credits, such as the Earned Income Tax Credit and Child Tax Credit, which help working families, and child nutrition programs—school lunches and breakfasts, summer feeding programs, and the Women, Infants and Children (WIC) program—are critical to ending childhood hunger. When children receive the nutrition they need, they are more likely to move out of poverty as adults.

Image Courtesy of  Gerry Boughan / Shutterstock.com

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Statement attributable to Vicki Escarra, President and CEO of Feeding America:

On January 25 President Obama delivered his State of the Union Address to Congress and the nation.  The President spoke about the need to restore the American values of responsibility and fairness for all in order to ensure opportunity for all Americans.

Those values have been compromised in recent years by a struggling economy that has left 1 in 6 men, women and children in America at risk of hunger. There is no greater evidence of the need for long-term solutions to restore opportunity than the number of Americans struggling to put food on the table, including a number of middle class families seeking food assistance for the first time.

Feeding America strongly believes that feeding our neighbors is a shared responsibility. We are grateful for the many volunteers and donors who support our work in communities around the country, enabling us to feed 37 million Americans each year. We are also grateful that this value of shared responsibility is reflected in our federal budget through important anti-hunger programs like SNAP/food stamps, TEFAP, CSFP, and WIC.

We need the Administration and Congress to commit to ensuring that those confronting the greatest risks are not left behind as our nation looks to the future. The President laid out his vision for investing in skills for American workers, but we are sobered by the reminder that it does not matter what kind of educational and training opportunities we provide if Americans do not have enough to eat.

Children cannot learn if they are hungry, and workers cannot reach their fullest potential if they cannot afford to provide enough food for their families. That is why any investment in the future of America must be coupled with an investment in reducing hunger.

The annual cost of our nation’s hunger problem is estimated at over $167 billion per year in reduced educational outcomes, lost worker productivity, and increased health care costs. Fortunately, federal anti-hunger programs are an effective preventative investment that protect against hunger and promote nutrition and enable children and adults to reach their fullest potential.

Investing in nutrition programs is an investment in American values and an investment in America’s future. As a people that values helping our neighbors, there is no more fundamental expression of that value than to feed our most vulnerable citizens. And a country that promises a future filled with hope and opportunity for every citizen must be a country that invests in fighting hunger, because the long-term health of our nation lies in the health of its people.

We urge our nation’s leaders to work together to defend federal anti-hunger programs and to make sure that these vital programs, firmly grounded in American values, remain in place to protect hungry Americans.

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