From: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/18/opinion/18krugman.html
 Op-Ed Columnist
Poverty Is Poison
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: February 18, 2008
“Poverty in early childhood poisons the brain.” That was the opening of an article in Saturday’s Financial Times, summarizing research presented last week at the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
As the article explained, neuroscientists have found that “many children growing up in very poor families with low social status experience unhealthy levels of stress hormones, which impair their neural development.” The effect is to impair language development and memory — and hence the ability to escape poverty — for the rest of the child’s life.
So now we have another, even more compelling reason to be ashamed about America’s record of failing to fight poverty.
L. B. J. declared his “War on Poverty” 44 years ago. Contrary to cynical legend, there actually was a large reduction in poverty over the next few years, especially among children, who saw their poverty rate fall from 23 percent in 1963 to 14 percent in 1969.
But progress stalled thereafter: American politics shifted to the right, attention shifted from the suffering of the poor to the alleged abuses of welfare queens driving Cadillacs, and the fight against poverty was largely abandoned.
In 2006, 17.4 percent of children in America lived below the poverty line, substantially more than in 1969. And even this measure probably understates the true depth of many children’s misery.
Living in or near poverty has always been a form of exile, of being cut off from the larger society. But the distance between the poor and the rest of us is much greater than it was 40 years ago, because most American incomes have risen in real terms while the official poverty line has not. To be poor in America today, even more than in the past, is to be an outcast in your own country. And that, the neuroscientists tell us, is what poisons a child’s brain.
America’s failure to make progress in reducing poverty, especially among children, should provoke a lot of soul-searching. Unfortunately, what it often seems to provoke instead is great creativity in making excuses.
Some of these excuses take the form of assertions that America’s poor really aren’t all that poor — a claim that always has me wondering whether those making it watched any TV during Hurricane Katrina, or for that matter have ever looked around them while visiting a major American city.
Mainly, however, excuses for poverty involve the assertion that the United States is a land of opportunity, a place where people can start out poor, work hard and become rich.
But the fact of the matter is that Horatio Alger stories are rare, and stories of people trapped by their parents’ poverty are all too common. According to one recent estimate, American children born to parents in the bottom fourth of the income distribution have almost a 50 percent chance of staying there — and almost a two-thirds chance of remaining stuck if they’re black.
That’s not surprising. Growing up in poverty puts you at a disadvantage at every step.
I’d bracket those new studies on brain development in early childhood with a study from the National Center for Education Statistics, which tracked a group of students who were in eighth grade in 1988. The study found, roughly speaking, that in modern America parental status trumps ability: students who did very well on a standardized test but came from low-status families were slightly less likely to get through college than students who tested poorly but had well-off parents.
None of this is inevitable.
Poverty rates are much lower in most European countries than in the United States, mainly because of government programs that help the poor and unlucky.
And governments that set their minds to it can reduce poverty. In Britain, the Labor government that came into office in 1997 made reducing poverty a priority — and despite some setbacks, its program of income subsidies and other aid has achieved a great deal. Child poverty, in particular, has been cut in half by the measure that corresponds most closely to the U.S. definition.
At the moment it’s hard to imagine anything comparable happening in this country. To their credit — and to the credit of John Edwards, who goaded them into it — both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are proposing new initiatives against poverty. But their proposals are modest in scope and far from central to their campaigns.
I’m not blaming them for that; if a progressive wins this election, it will be by promising to ease the anxiety of the middle class rather than aiding the poor. And for a variety of reasons, health care, not poverty, should be the first priority of a Democratic administration.
But ultimately, let’s hope that the nation turns back to the task it abandoned — that of ending the poverty that still poisons so many American lives.
Welfare Programs Fail to Meet Canada’s Human Rights Obligations
Anti-poverty group urges reform of social assistance systems
Ottawa – Income support from Canada’s provincial and territorial welfare programs is generally so low as to violate the spirit and intent of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Canadian Human Rights Act, charges the National Anti-Poverty Organization (NAPO). The claim comes on the 60th anniversary of the Declaration and follows release of a new report on Canadian welfare incomes.
“Canada is failing to uphold the right of impoverished Canadians to social security as ought to be protected under the Declaration,” says Elaine Garland, President of NAPO. “The Declaration upholds that ‘everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of his family’. But if you are on welfare in any province and territory, you are in almost every case certain to be unable to meet your basic needs, including for food, shelter and clothing.”
The report by the National Council of Welfare, an advisory body to the Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development, states that “for the majority [of people on welfare], welfare incomes were woefully inadequate in 2006 and 2007, as they have been every year since 1986.” Moreover, says the Council, “the amount of the decrease in total welfare incomes [over many years] is severe.”
Across every province and territory, single persons considered by welfare administrations to be employable but who are on welfare receive incomes far below Canada’s unofficial poverty lines. Among the provinces, support for such persons in 2007 was the most generous in Newfoundland and Labrador ($9,348) and the stingiest in New Brunswick ($3,574).
Single persons with disabilities and who are on welfare also have it tough. Support for them in 2007 was highest in Ontario ($12,382) and lowest in New Brunswick ($8,275).
Indeed, of 53 welfare scenarios that the Council examined, only one – for a lone parent with one child in Newfoundland and Labrador – resulted in welfare income meeting or exceeding the Low Income Cut-Off After Tax (LICO-AT), a widely used proxy for poverty lines in Canada.
“The Canadian Human Rights Act envisions a Canada in which ‘all individuals should have an opportunity equal with other individuals to make for themselves the lives that they are able and wish to have,” says Rob Rainer, NAPO’s Executive Director. “By failing to provide welfare recipients with sufficient income to meet their basic needs, our Canadian governments are perpetuating poverty.”
NAPO proposes that the federal government create a federal poverty elimination strategy, within which welfare programs would be phased out to make way for a modernized system of social security that guarantees a basic income for all citizens.
For more information:
Elaine Garland, President, 902-695-6118
Rob Rainer, Executive Director, 613-789-0096; 613-314-7755 (cell)
Founded in 1971, the National Anti-Poverty Organization (NAPO) now called Canada Without Poverty is a non-partisan organization dedicated to the eradication of poverty in Canada. Based in Ottawa and governed by people who have experienced poverty, NAPO works to address the structural causes of and to promote lasting solutions to this challenge. NAPO holds that poverty is a human rights violation, and that “security of the person” under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms should be interpreted to include social security.
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