Home » Opinion » Foreign Views
US wealth disparity puts children at disadvantage
Print Edition
CHILDREN, it has long been recognized, are a special group. They do not choose their parents, let alone the broader conditions into which they are born. They do not have the same abilities as adults to protect or care for themselves. That is why the League of Nations approved the Geneva Declaration on the Rights of the Child in 1924, and why the international community adopted the Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1989.
Sadly, the United States is not living up to its obligations. In fact, it has not even ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The US, with its cherished image as a land of opportunity, should be an inspiring example of just and enlightened treatment of children. Instead, it is a beacon of failure — one that contributes to global sluggishness on children’s rights in the international arena.
Though an average American childhood may not be the worst in the world, the disparity between the country’s wealth and the condition of its children is unparalleled. About 14.5 percent of the American population as a whole is poor, but 19.9 percent of children — some 15 million individuals — live in poverty. For some groups, the situation is much worse: More than 38 percent of black children and 30 percent of Hispanic children are poor.
None of this is because Americans do not care about their children. It is because America has embraced a policy agenda in recent decades that has caused its economy to become wildly unequal, leaving the most vulnerable segments of society further and further behind. The growing concentration of wealth — and a significant reduction in taxes on it — has meant less money to spend on investments for the public good, like education and the protection of children.
Income inequality is correlated with inequalities in health, access to education, and exposure to environmental hazards, all of which burden children more than other segments of the population. Indeed, nearly one in five poor American children are diagnosed with asthma, a rate 60 percent higher than non-poor children. Learning disabilities occur almost twice as frequently among children in households earning less than US$35,000 a year than they do in households earning more than US$100,000.
These inequalities in outcomes are closely tied to inequalities in opportunities. At America’s most elite universities, for example, only around 9 percent of students come from the bottom half of the population, while 74 percent come from the top quarter.
Policy action
Most societies recognize a moral obligation to help ensure that young people can live up to their potential. Some countries even impose a constitutional mandate for equality of educational opportunities.
But in America, more is spent on the education of rich students than on the education of the poor. As a result, the US is wasting some of its most valuable assets, with some young people — bereft of skills — turning to dysfunctional activities. American states like California spend about as much on prisons as on higher education, and sometimes more.
Without compensatory measures — including pre-school education, ideally beginning at a very young age — unequal opportunities translate into unequal lifelong outcomes by the time children reach the age of 5. That should be a spur to policy action.
To generate the political will that such reforms require, we must confront policymakers’ inertia and inaction with the grim facts of inequality and its devastating effects on our children. We can reduce childhood deprivation and increase equality of opportunity, thereby laying the groundwork for a more just and prosperous future — one that reflects our own avowed values.
Joseph E. Stiglitz, a Nobel laureate in economics, is a professor at Columbia University. Copyright: Project Syndicate 1995-2014
- About Us
- |
- Terms of Use
- |
-
RSS - |
- Privacy Policy
- |
- Contact Us
- |
- Shanghai Call Center: 962288
- |
- Tip-off hotline: 52920043
- 沪ICP证：沪ICP备05050403号-1
- |
- 互联网新闻信息服务许可证：31120180004
- |
- 网络视听许可证：0909346
- |
- 广播电视节目制作许可证：沪字第354号
- |
- 增值电信业务经营许可证：沪B2-20120012
Copyright © 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.
