FIGURE Political ideologies and party identification by nativity, SOURCE: Data from General Social Survey. Wong et al., ).The evidence suggests that immigrants are converging with the native-born in terms of political ideology, although immigrants tend to be less committed to one political party than the native-born (see Figure ).In , the largest percentage of both the Jan 12, · Eliza Schultz and Jamila Taylor, “The Benefits of Nutrition Assistance for African American Maternal and Infant Health,” Center for American Progress, May The John Adams: Architect of American Government exhibit is at the John Adams Courthouse. Using text, images, and audio, the exhibit describes the essential role that John Adams played in the development of our constitutional form of government both in Massachusetts and nationally
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A boy holds his little brother's hand after picking him up at the bus stop in Biddeford, Maine, April Nearly 11 million children are living in poverty in America. Here is how the crisis reached this point—and what steps must be taken to solve it. In America, nearly 11 million children are poor. As the COVID pandemic and resulting recession continue to devastate the United States, children are facing the consequences of failed leadership.
Since Aprilamerican government term paper, the share of children with at least one unemployed parent has consistently remained above reported rates during the american government term paper of the Great Recession. Already, some calculations are finding that the child poverty rate has increased dramatically since the onset of the coronavirus crisis.
While the pandemic has exacerbated and highlighted the economic precarity of too many children and families, the issues that cause such high rates of child poverty in the United States existed long before the public health crisis.
And ultimately, joblessness, caregiving responsibilities, single parenthood, and other common life events only put children at risk of economic insecurity because U. policies have allowed that reality.
Census Bureau, has long been criticized as narrow and outdated, in large part because it determines the resources a family needs based on a bare-bones food budget from the s. It does not take into account major expenses such as housing or child care, nor does it account for geographical differences in costs of living, american government term paper.
Because of this recognized failure in capturing the experiences of people facing economic deprivation, american government term paper, another measure, known as the Supplemental Poverty Measure SPMwas introduced in That measure counts resources such as nutrition benefits and housing subsidies, along with costs such as taxes and out-of-pocket medical expenses; it also determines a poverty threshold using a more diverse set of necessary expenses—not just food.
In About 6 percent were living in deep poverty, defined as 50 percent of the federal poverty measure, and almost one-quarter were living in poverty or at risk, defined as percent of the official measure. When using the SPM, which counts noncash benefits from government programs such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program SNAP and measures poverty more comprehensively, american government term paper, the child poverty rate in America is Children of color across most racial categories are more likely to experience poverty than their white counterparts.
see Figure 2 Black, Hispanic, and American Indian and Alaskan Native AIAN children have the highest rates of poverty. And while the broader category of Asian American and Pacific Islander children have lower rates of poverty, disaggregated data from past years show that serious disparities based on ethnicity persist with significantly higher rates for Bangladeshi, Pakistani, Burmese, and Hmong children, for example. Black, Hispanic, and AIAN children are also disproportionately represented among children living in poverty.
For example, while around 14 percent of children in the United States are Black, they make up more than one-quarter of children living below the poverty line. The poverty rate for children also differs by age, with the youngest children most likely to live under the official poverty line. see Figure 4 Children under the age of 5 have a poverty rate of Those differences are due, in part, to the higher expenses associated with younger children, such as child care, and because parents tend to be earning less earlier in their careers, when their children are younger.
Child poverty rates differ greatly depending on their family structure. see Figure 5 At a rate of The causes of child poverty cannot be separated from those of adult poverty. Expenses associated with raising children are one of the many reasons that families fall into poverty, along with job losses and pay cuts, a transition from a two-parent household to a single one, and a family member developing a disability.
Factors that make it difficult for people to meet their basic needs mean their children also grow up with economic instability and deprivation. The United States does not have a comprehensive social safety net to fully shield kids from the emotional, physical, neurological, and generational impacts of such instability.
Despite cycles of economic growth over recent decades, child poverty rates, calculated using only earned income, have remained high, american government term paper.
Income inequality has increased dramatically since the s, and as a consequence, inthe poorest 20 american government term paper of Americans received about 3 percent of total household income, while the richest 20 percent received more than half. Department of Agriculture report, 93 percent of the rise in rural child poverty american government term paper and can be attributed to income inequality.
For the millions of low-income children in families with at least one worker, employment is not enough to protect them from economic precarity. More than 15 million low-wage workers are raising children, and 1 in 10 are single parents. If wages had increased at the same rate as broader economic productivity, more than 4 million fewer children would be in poverty in a full-employment economy. Since the early s, family structure has played a much lesser role in child poverty rates than some experts claim.
And in those decades, the profile of unmarried parents has shifted; parents are now more likely to be fathers raising children alone or cohabiting with a partner than in previous years, and the share of single mothers raising children without a spouse or partner now hovers at around 50 percent, compared with 88 percent in Women and people of color—and women of color in particular—are disproportionately represented in jobs with low pay and inadequate workplace benefits and protections.
While 8. This occupational segregation, along with other factors of discrimination, also contributes to racial and gender wage gaps. For example, Black men, on average, earned 70 cents for each dollar earned by white, non-Hispanic men in ; Black women earned 63 cents.
For caregivers, and especially solo mothers, a lack of paid leave and child care support can force people to cut back on the hours they work, leave american government term paper workforce entirely, or sacrifice necessary time with their families in order to pay the bills. Nearly half of low-wage workers, meaning those in the bottom quarter of earners, do not have access to a single paid sick day to protect their health or care for a sick family member without risking a paycheck.
Those disparities are exacerbated by a lack of affordable child care, which is one of the biggest expenses for families today. For families in poverty, whose jobs already tend be unstable, inflexible, and inadequately compensated, the decisions surrounding child care can have dire consequences for their family budgets and potential future employment, american government term paper. Low wages are not the sole factor perpetuating child poverty and making it difficult for families to make ends meet; other labor market factors such as unemployment play an important role as well.
Losing a job is one of the leading triggers for falling into poverty. And, once again, discrimination and systemic racism built into the labor market means that Black people face persistently higher rates of unemployment than whites, contributing to racial disparities in the poverty rates among their children.
Formerly incarcerated people and those involved in the justice system even without a conviction37 immigrants and refugees regardless of citizenship status, 38 LGBTQ individuals, 39 and people with disabilities 40 often face serious barriers to employment.
Widespread discrimination and exclusionary policies that target those communities, paired with the broader issues listed above, leave them and their children more vulnerable to american government term paper and deprivation. Savings and assets help people to invest american government term paper their own futures and those of their children; they help families endure difficult times, support economic american government term paper, and have been tied to better outcomes for children.
Black and Latino families are twice as likely as their white counterparts to have zero or negative wealth, and almost 40 percent of Black families had negative or zero wealth in Children do not work and cannot earn their way out of poverty, but they face long-term harm because the right to having their basic needs met is not guaranteed. Yet the social safety net, in its inadequate and fragmented current form, includes burdensome work requirements, excludes those with no or very little income, and leaves jobless people and their families with few stable options.
This reality is no accident. It is the result of concerted efforts over the past 50 years to decentralize and defund programs such as SNAP, Medicaid, and unemployment insurance UI as well as a prevailing false narrative that insists that the jobless and others facing hardship are undeserving of comprehensive government support.
One particularly egregious example is the federal program formerly known as Aid to Families with Dependent Children AFDCa New Deal-era cash assistance program targeted to low-income children. When the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity American government term paper Act converted it to a more restrictive—and underfunded—Temporary Assistance for Needy Families TANF block grant to supposedly encourage work, participation in the program decreased dramatically.
Such circumstances exist because economic inequality is inextricably linked to other structural inequities in incarceration, education, housing, health, and more. For example, more than 1 in 10 children live in neighborhoods with concentrated poverty, and African American and American Indian children are seven times more likely than their white counterparts to live in neighborhoods that, due to histories of redlining and chronic underinvestment, are less likely to have job opportunities for parents and safe places to play.
The same forces that created segregated neighborhoods of concentrated poverty have also resulted in the segregation of primarily low-income students and students of color into underresourced schools that struggle to american government term paper their needs. In the absence of a strong federal role, the vast majority of states have distributed educational funds through systems that do not target schools with higher rates of student poverty. In some ways, the institutions charged with supporting children and keeping them safe have contributed to cycles of criminalization and hardship instead.
For example, disciplinary practices in American schools disproportionately target low-income, disabled, and Black students and can ultimately lead to incarceration in what is known as the school-to-prison pipeline. These examples of the many structural inequities in U. Policymakers need to make sure every child has access to the basics—food, housing, and health care—and ease the financial burdens that families face when raising children. The millions of children living in poverty right now do not have the luxury of waiting for changes that can take decades to fully realize.
Thus the push for more immediate assistance must be paired with a forward-thinking strategy to fix policies that promote inequality, limit economic mobility, and perpetuate marginalization. The following recommendations are just some of the american government term paper solutions that can contribute to ending child poverty in the United States. Programs such as SNAP and the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children WIC are fundamental in ensuring that families can afford to eat.
Both programs have been tied to positive outcomes for mothers and infants, and children with access to the programs can experience significant health gains and improved long-term health, american government term paper, educational, and economic outcomes. Despite the clear advantage of funding and supporting nutrition assistance programs, 58 they have been the target of regulatory attacks 59 and budget cuts. Lawmakers must also ensure that the WIC program is fully funded and that all of its benefits, including those beyond food assistance such as american government term paper counseling, are available to all eligible families.
Another vital program for ensuring that children are guaranteed the food they need, the National School Lunch and Breakfast programs serve almost 30 million students each day.
Those with family incomes at or below percent of the federal poverty level receive free lunch; those with incomes american government term paper percent and percent of the poverty level pay a reduced price 30 cents for breakfast and 40 cents for lunch ; and all other students pay full price for their meals. Instead of a means-tested program that can add burdens for both families and school administrators, with complicated paperwork for applications and reimbursements, lawmakers should enact a universal free lunch program at public schools and child care centers.
Three-quarters of very low-income families pay more than half of their incomes on rent; 67 inalmost 1. To ensure that all children and their families are housed, policymakers must invest in fair and equitable housing policies, american government term paper.
The program is intended to help very low-income people rent, lease, or purchase safe housing in the neighborhoods of their choice, but its potential is marred in part by widespread discrimination against voucher holders and a yearslong waiting list. As a result, millions of low-income families are often left with limited options and impossibly long waits for a voucher to become available.
Children in low-income families tend to have worse health outcomes than other kids, with even short stays in poverty being associated with higher rates of asthma, american government term paper, malnutrition, trauma, and other chronic diseases.
Health care costs also drive millions of families into poverty, forcing them to make difficult financial trade-offs to afford care.
That percentage is higher than 15 percent in states such as Texas and Wyoming that have not chosen to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act ACA. The federal government must ensure that all children, no matter their household incomes, american government term paper, have access to comprehensive and affordable health care. Doing so would not only create better health outcomes and future opportunities for those children but would also remove a financial burden for parents.
And for the many low-wage workers who do not receive health care through an employer, stable coverage for their children is even harder to find. Recent attacks on Medicaid and CHIP have increased bureaucratic burdens, narrowed eligibility, and discouraged immigrant families from applying even american government term paper eligible—all of which contribute to increasing rates of uninsurance.
Future changes to the health care system must ensure stable, affordable coverage for low-income children and provide early and consistent screening, diagnostic, and treatment services so that children have access to the comprehensive and preventive health services that they need.
While UI programs are intended to help families make up for lost wages, they are often characterized by state variations, american government term paper, burdensome application processes, and inadequate benefit amounts. Despite its flaws, there is proven evidence that the program works. Induring the Great Recession, UI benefits lifted almost 1 million children out of poverty. The United States is the only industrialized country without a national paid leave program, leaving many low-wage and part-time workers—who are disproportionately women—without a viable option for paid time off in times of need.
A permanent national paid sick leave law would help workers protect their health and care for sick family members without risking their livelihood. A american government term paper national paid family and medical leave program, with comprehensive reasons for leave and a progressive wage replacement, would allow workers to take time off to welcome a new child or care for themselves and their families during illness without experiencing a massive decline in income or losing their job american government term paper. According to a Congressional Budget Office analysis, more thanchildren would be lifted over the federal poverty line by increasing the minimum wage alone.
For poor families, american government term paper for child care can amount to almost one-third of their already limited budgets. Investing in affordable, high-quality child care and universal preschool is a smart decision—not just for the economy and families as a whole but also as a strategy to reduce child poverty in the coming years, american government term paper.
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T he modern era of American government is usually traced to the s response to the Great Depression The Great Depression was a n ational indeed, a global economic crisis that the American public expected the national governmen t to address. a constitution is merely paper or words without much to back them up With the commitment, a con On-line term paper, research paper, and essay service since The Paper Store is one of the oldest and most trusted Research Paper and Essay Services available to students.. We were established in and have assisted well over 5 million students by providing quality research and writing for all types of term papers, essays, book reports, dissertations and theses Jan 12, · Eliza Schultz and Jamila Taylor, “The Benefits of Nutrition Assistance for African American Maternal and Infant Health,” Center for American Progress, May
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