A Call to End Child Poverty Now

America is going to hell if we don’t use her vast resources to end poverty and make it possible for all of God’s children to have the basic necessities of life.
—Martin Luther King Jr.

They have become great and rich
they have grown fat and sleek. …
they judge not with justice
the cause of their fatherless …
and they do not defend the rights of the needy.
—Jeremiah 5:27–28  

Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide,
In the strife of Truth with Falsehood for the good or evil side;
Some great Cause, God’s New Messiah, offering each the bloom or blight,
Parts the goats upon the left hand, and the sheep upon the right,
And the choice goes by forever ’twixt that darkness and that light.
—James Russell Lowell

It is a national moral disgrace that there are 14.7 million poor children and 6.5 million extremely poor children in the United States of America – the world’s largest economy. It is also unnecessary, costly and the greatest threat to our future national, economic and military security.

There are more poor children in America than the combined residents in six of our largest U.S. cities: Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Philadelphia, Phoenix, and San Antonio with a combined total population of 14.6 million residents. There are more children living in extreme poverty in the United States (6.5 million) than there are total residents in 33 individual states and the District of Columbia.

The younger children are the poorer they are during their years of greatest brain development. Every other American baby is non-White and 1 in 2 Black babies is poor, 150 years after slavery was legally abolished.

America’s poor children did not ask to be born; did not choose their parents, country, state, neighborhood, race, color, or faith. In fact if they had been born in 33 other industrialized countries they would be less likely to be poor. Among these 35 countries, America ranks 34^th in relative child poverty – ahead only of Romania whose economy is 99 percent smaller than ours. 

The United Kingdom, whose economy, if it were an American state, would rank just above Mississippi according to the Washington Post, committed to and succeeded in cutting its child poverty rate by half in 10 years.  It is about values and political will. Sadly, politics in our nation too often trumps good policy and moral decency and responsibility to the next generation and the nation’s future. It is way past time for a critical mass of Americans to confront the hypocrisy of America’s pretension to be a fair playing field while almost 15 million children languish in poverty. 

The Children’s Defense Fund just released a groundbreaking new report, Ending Child Poverty Now, that calls for an end to child poverty in the richest nation on earth with a 60 percent reduction immediately.  And it shows that solutions to ending child poverty in our nation already exist and for the first time how, by combining expanded investments in existing policies and programs that work, we can shrink overall child poverty 60 percent, Black child poverty 72 percent, and improve economic circumstances for 97 percent of poor children at a cost of $77.2 billion a year. These policies could be and should be pursued immediately, improving the lives and futures of millions of children and eventually saving taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars annually.

Child poverty is way too expensive to continue. Every year we keep 14.7 million children in poverty costs our nation $500 billion – six times more than the $77 billion investment we propose to reduce child poverty by 60 percent. MIT Nobel Laureate economist and 2014 Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient Dr. Robert Solow in his foreword to a 1994 CDF report Wasting America’s Future presciently wrote: “For many years Americans have allowed child poverty levels to remain astonishingly high … far higher than one would think a rich and ethical society would tolerate. The justification, when one is offered at all, has often been that action is expensive: ‘We have more will than wallet.’ I suspect that in fact our wallets exceed our will, but in any event this concern for the drain on our resources completely misses the other side of the equation: Inaction has its costs too … As an economist I believe that good things are worth paying for; and that even if curing children’s poverty were expensive, it would be hard to think of a better use in the world for money. If society cares about children, it should be willing to spend money on them.”

It makes no economic sense to continue to spend on average three times more per prisoner than per public school pupil and continue to build a massive prison industrial complex that has become the new American apartheid. And it is profoundly unjust to continue making budget cuts in safety net programs to feed and house the poor and not provide an opportunity and decent wages for parents who work while increasing wealth and income inequality fueled by hundreds of billions of dollars of tax breaks for the top one percent from many tax loopholes described in the report.

Not only does child poverty cost far more than eliminating it would, we have so many better choices that reflect more just values as well as economic savings. We believe that food, shelter, quality early childhood investments to get every child ready for school and an equitable  education for all children should take precedence over massive welfare for the rich and blatantly excessive spending for military weapons that often do not work. If we built 485 fewer of the planned 2,500 F-35s that still don’t work reliably and are over budget we could fund the $77 billion required to lift 60 percent of our children from poverty now as their minds and bodies are developing. 

President Eisenhower, a former five star general, reminded us that: “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies…a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, and the hope of its children.” Yet we are spending $48.2 billion a month; $11.1 billion a week; $1.6 billion a day; $66 million an hour; $1.1 million a minute; and $18,323 a second on the military. 

If we love America and love our children we must all stand against the excessive greed and militarism that tramples millions of our children entrusted to our care. America’s Declaration of Independence says, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, and are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights.” After more than two centuries, it is time to make those truths evident in the lives of all poor children and to close our intolerable national hypocrisy gap and show the world whether democratic capitalism is an oxymoron or can work in a majority non-White world desperate for moral example. Please download a copy of Ending Child Poverty Now, share it widely with your networks and then take action. Together, acting with urgency and persistence, we can end preventable and devastating child poverty across our country. A nation that does not stand for its children does not stand for anything and will not stand tall in the 21^st century world or before God.

How to End Child Poverty for 60 Percent of Poor Children and 72 Percent of All Poor Black Children Today

Poverty hurts children and our nation’s future. This stark statement is backed by years of scientific research and the more we learn about the brain and its development the more devastatingly true we know this to be. Childhood poverty can and does scar children for life. Yet in the largest economy on earth we stand by as 14.7 million languish in poverty. Here’s a snapshot of who our poor children are today:

• Every other baby is a child of color. And 1 in 2 Black babies is poor – the poorest child in America.
• 1 in 3 Hispanic children under 5 is poor during their years of rapid brain development.
• More than 1 in 4 urban children and nearly 1 in 4 rural children is poor.
• 1 in 5 of all children in America is poor—14.7 million children.
• 1 in 6 Black children is extremely poor living on less than $8 a day.
• 1 in 7 Hispanic children under five is extremely poor.
• 1 in 8 Hispanic children is poor.
• Less than 1 in 9 White children is poor; 4.1 million children.

A child of color is more than twice as likely to be poor as a White child. Of the 14.7 million children living beneath the poverty line in 2013, defined as a family of four living on less than $23,834 a year, or $16.25 a person a day, over 40 percent lived in extreme poverty on less than $11,917 a year, half the poverty line – barely $8 a person a day.

The 14.7 million poor children in America exceeds the populations of 12 U.S. states combined: Alaska, Hawaii, Idaho, Maine, Montana, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Vermont, West Virginia and Wyoming and is greater than the populations of Sweden and Costa Rica combined.

Our nearly 6.5 million extremely poor children exceeds the combined populations of Delaware, Montana, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Vermont and Wyoming and is greater than the populations of Denmark or Finland.

It is a national disgrace that so many poor children live in the United States of America –the world’s richest economy. It doesn’t have to be this way. It’s costly. And it’s the greatest threat to our future national, economic and military security.

The Children’s Defense Fund has just released a groundbreaking report called Ending Child Poverty Now showing for the first time how America could end child poverty, as defined by the Supplemental Poverty measure, for 60 percent of all poor children and 72 percent of all poor Black children. We can make this happen by investing another 2 percent of the federal budget to improve existing programs and policies that increase parental employment, make work pay and ensure children’s basic needs are met. Poverty for children under 3 and children in single parent households would drop 64 percent and 97 percent of all poor children would experience improvements in their economic circumstances.

CDF contracted with the non-partisan, independent Urban Institute to generate real numbers on the costs to implement improvements to existing policies and programs and the number of children who would benefit. CDF’s report shows how relatively modest changes in policies we know work can be combined to significantly reduce child poverty, and implemented right now if our political leaders put common good, common sense and economic sense for children first to improve the lives and futures of millions of children, and save taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars each year.

CDF’s report estimates a cost of $77.2 billion a year for the combined proposed policy improvements and suggests multiple tradeoffs our country can make to pay for this huge, long overdue and urgently needed reduction in child poverty without raising the federal deficit including:

• Closing tax loopholes that let U.S. corporations avoid $90 billion annually in federal income taxes by shifting profits to subsidiaries in foreign tax havens; or
• Eliminating tax breaks for the wealthy by taxing capital gains and dividends at the same rate as wages, saving more than $84 billion a year; or
• Scrapping the F-35 fighter jet program already several years behind schedule and 68 percent over budget and still not producing fully functioning planes. For the $1.5 trillion projected costs of this program, the nation could reduce child poverty 60 percent for 19 years, potentially breaking the cycle of intergenerational poverty.

Download CDF’s new report and share it widely with your child advocacy networks and faith communities to learn changes that can be made at the national, state and local levels. Fifty years after President Lyndon Johnson declared a war on poverty, it’s time for all Americans to work together to finish the job beginning with ending child poverty in our nation with the largest economy on earth.

Is America a Sheep or a Goat?

When the Son of Man comes in his glory…all the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats…Then the king will say to those at his right hand, “Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.” –Matthew 25:31-36

There is nothing new about poverty. What is new, however, is that we now have the resources to get rid of it. Not too many years ago, Dr. Kirtley Mather, a Harvard geologist, wrote a book entitled Enough and to Spare. He set forth the basic theme that famine is wholly unnecessary in the modern world. Today, therefore, the question on the agenda must read: Why should there be hunger and privation in any land, in any city, at any table, when man has the resources and the scientific know-how to provide all mankind with the basic necessities of life?

In January 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. took a very rare “sabbatical” at an isolated house in Jamaica far away from telephones and the constant pressures of his life as a very public civil rights leader to write what would become his last book: Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? The excerpt above could have been written yesterday. Professor Mather’s book arguing that mankind had achieved the ability to move beyond famine was published in 1944, yet in 2015, despite seventy more years of unparalleled advances in scientific and technological capability and global resources and wealth, hunger and want are still rampant – most shamefully in the United States with the world’s largest economy. Hear again Dr. King:

There is no deficit in human resources; the deficit is in human will ... The well-off and the secure have too often become indifferent and oblivious to the poverty and deprivation in their midst. The poor in our countries have been shut out of our minds, and driven from the mainstream of our societies, because we have allowed them to become invisible. Ultimately a great nation is a compassionate nation. No individual or nation can be great if it does not have a concern for ‘the least of these.

When Dr. King died in 1968 calling for a Poor People’s Campaign, there were 25.4 million poor Americans, including 11 million poor children. Today there are more than 45.3 million poor Americans, including 14.7 million poor children, living in our boastfully rich nation. The question is why we allow poverty still to exist, especially among our children who are the poorest age group of Americans, and the answer remains the same: the deficit in human will and genuine commitment to a fair playing field for all by a critical mass of leaders and citizens in our morally anemic nation. How can it be that the top one percent of Americans enjoy more of the nation’s wealth than the bottom 90 percent combined and that millions of children are hungry and homeless and poorly educated? If the qualification for individual and national greatness is genuine concern for the "least of these" as those of us who are Christians say we believe, and if nations and our concurrent role as members of nations and not just as individuals are accountable, then too many of our political, corporate, and faith leaders and citizens – all of us who live in America – are failing.

The national holiday celebrating Dr. King’s birthday is over, but I hope we will heed and act on his 1967 declaration —“the time has come for an all-out world war against poverty”—and work to win the first victory right here at home in the biggest economy on earth and end the shame of 14.7 million children being the poorest Americans by ending child poverty now.

Dr. King’s voice guides us if we are willing to hear and act on it and use it as a road map for action no matter the political weather. Reflecting on the direction the struggle for civil rights and social justice should take in Where Do We Go from Here?, he shared a story about the need to commit to difficult struggles for the long haul and described a nine and a half hour flight he had taken from New York to London in an older propeller airplane. On the way home, the crew announced the return flight from London to New York would take twelve and a half hours. When the pilot came out into the cabin, Dr. King asked him why. “‘You must understand about the winds,’ he said. ‘When we leave New York, a strong tail wind is in our favor, but when we return, a strong head wind is against us.’ But he added, ‘Don’t worry. These four engines are capable of battling the winds.’”
Dr. King concluded:

In any social revolution there are times when the tail winds of triumph and fulfillment favor us, and other times when strong head winds of disappointment and setbacks beat against us relentlessly. We must not permit adverse winds to overwhelm us as we journey across life’s mighty Atlantic; we must be sustained by our engines of courage in spite of the winds. This refusal to be stopped, this ‘courage to be,’ this determination to go on ‘in spite of’ is the hallmark of any great movement.

As I ponder the miraculous progress sparked by ordinary citizens and people of grace and courage who risked limb and life to crumble the seemingly impenetrable fortresses of Jim Crow and unjust racial segregation in our land during the Civil Rights Movement, portrayed movingly in the film Selma which I hope every American, especially young people, will see, let it inspire us to put on new shoes of courage and will now to ensure that never again will our children and grandchildren have to fight those same battles as the forces of regression seek to turn our nation’s racial and social progress backwards. African American, Latino, Native American, and Asian American youths need to be taught our history and remember that they can never take anything for granted in America – especially now as racial profiling, intolerance, and poverty resurge over our land.

Some are as blatant as the disproportionate killing of Black males at the hands of law enforcement personnel entrusted to protect life, huge racial disparities in school discipline policies against Black males and children with special needs, unequal educational offerings for poor children of color, and a mass incarceration system fueled by a Cradle to Prison Pipeline™ which feeds 1 in 3 Black and 1 in 6 Latino boys born in 2001 into prison. Incarceration has become the new American apartheid.

Other forms of racism are more subtle, technical, and very polite. Although they may be wrapped up in new euphemisms and better etiquette, as Frederick Douglass warned, it’s still the same old snake. So, inspired by the movie Selma’s timely jogging of our collective memory about where we have come from against all odds, I hope a critical mass of citizens will rev up our engines of courage and will today and persistently and strategically combat the fierce head winds of poverty, racism, and education and economic inequality and greed that threaten to undo the progress of the last 50 years. Let’s stay true to the course Dr. King set for us and take up his last campaign to end poverty in America, beginning with our children, especially those of color, whose minds, bodies and spirits are being formed today. They cannot wait.

Celebrating Dr. King Through Serving

"If you want to be important--wonderful. If you want to be recognized--wonderful. If you want to be great--wonderful. But recognize that he who is greatest among you shall be your servant. That's a new definition of greatness. And this morning, the thing that I like about it: by giving that definition of greatness, it means that everybody can be great, because everybody can serve. You don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have to make your subject and your verb agree to serve. You don't have to know about Plato and Aristotle to serve. You don't have to know Einstein's theory of relativity to serve. You don't have to know the second theory of thermodynamics in physics to serve. You only need a heart full of grace, a soul generated by love."

These well-known words are from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s sermon “The Drum Major Instinct,” delivered at Ebenezer Baptist Church on February 4, 1968. Dr. King was explaining that we all start out with the ingrained instinct to be “drum majors”: everyone wants to be important, to be first, to lead the parade. Watch a group of children try to form a line and right away you’ll see this instinct in action. But Dr. King said too many people never outgrow this instinct—and by constantly struggling to be the most powerful or famous or wealthiest or best-educated, we forget one of the Gospels’ and life’s largest truths: the real path to greatness is through service.

Watch Dr. King's Sermon

This is one of the key lessons we should teach our children about Dr. King. Many of them have just studied Dr. King in school in the days leading up to his birthday, and many have learned to see him as a history book hero—a larger-than-life, mythical figure. But it’s crucial for them to understand Dr. King wasn’t a superhuman with magical powers. Just as the extraordinary new movie Selma is reminding a new generation of filmgoers, our children need to be reminded that Dr. King was a real person—just like all of the other ministers, parents, teachers, neighbors, and other familiar adults in their lives today. 


I first heard Dr. King speak in person at a Spelman College chapel service during my senior year in college. Dr. King was just 31 but he had already gained a national reputation during the successful Montgomery Bus Boycott five years earlier. He became a mentor and friend. Although I do remember him as a great leader and a hero, I also remember him as someone able to admit how often he was afraid and unsure about his next step. But faith prevailed over fear, uncertainty, fatigue, and sometimes depression.  It was his human vulnerability and ability to rise above it that I most remember. “If I Can Help Somebody Along the Way” was his favorite song. He was an ordinary man who made history because he was willing to stand up and serve and make a difference in extraordinary ways as did the legions of other civil rights warriors in the 1950s and 1960s. We need to teach our children every day that they can and must make a difference too. “Everybody can be great, because everybody can serve.”


Towards the end of “The Drum Major Instinct,” Dr. King told the congregation he sometimes thought about his own death and funeral. He said when that day came he didn’t want people to talk about his Nobel Peace Prize or his degrees or hundreds of awards: “I’d like somebody to mention that day that Martin Luther King, Jr., tried to give his life serving others. I’d like for somebody to say that day that Martin Luther King, Jr., tried to love somebody. I want you to say that day that I tried to be right on the war question. I want you to be able to say that day that I did try to feed the hungry. And I want you to be able to say that day that I did try in my life to clothe those who were naked. I want you to say on that day that I did try in my life to visit those who were in prison. I want you to say that I tried to love and serve humanity. Yes, if you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice. Say that I was a drum major for peace. I was a drum major for righteousness. And all of the other shallow things will not matter. I won’t have any money to leave behind. I won’t have the fine and luxurious things of life to leave behind. But I just want to leave a committed life behind. And that’s all I want to say.” Dr. King was assassinated two months to the day after giving this sermon. But a recording of “The Drum Major Instinct” was played at his funeral, and many people think of these moving words in Dr. King’s voice as his own eulogy. He knew how he wanted to be remembered.


Americans across the country now celebrate Dr. King’s birthday as “a day on, not a day off” and use this day to come together for community service and action­. But we shouldn’t wait for the holiday to come back around to remember and honor him this way. We can honor Dr. King’s legacy best by serving every day and standing together to build a movement to realize Dr. King’s dream and America’s dream and by following his lead in being a drum major for justice.


As our country faces morally and economically indefensible child poverty rates, wealth and income inequality, and grandstanding politicians who put party and politics ahead of principle and sound policy, I hope they will hear and follow our great 20^th century prophet. In his last speech in Memphis the night before he was assassinated he gave us our marching orders: “...I’m always happy to see a relevant ministry. It’s all right to talk about long white robes over yonder, in all of its symbolism, but ultimately people want some suits and dresses and shoes to wear down here. It's all right to talk about streets flowing with milk and honey, but God has commanded us to be concerned about the slums down here and His children who can’t eat three square meals a day. It’s all right to talk about the new Jerusalem, but one day God’s preacher must talk about the new New York, the new Atlanta, the new Philadelphia, the new Los Angeles, the new Memphis, Tennessee. This is what we have to do.” His mandate was not just to God’s preachers but also to all of God’s people. That’s all of us.

Every Child Deserves a Fair Chance

“A population that does not take care of the elderly and of children and the young has no future, because it abuses both its memory and its promise.” 
-- Pope Francis            

For many, the start of a new year is a chance to turn over a new leaf and take a hard look at the gap between who we say we want and need to be and who we are. As a nation it’s time to close our hypocrisy gap in the treatment of our children and value and protect our children—all of them. We need to examine with urgency how we treat our children and the gap between what we say and what we do.
If we did, we’d find: 

-- A public school student is suspended every 2 seconds.* -- A public high school student drops out every 9 seconds.* -- A child is arrested every 24 seconds. -- A public school student is corporally punished every 30 seconds.* -- A baby is born into poverty every 35 seconds. -- A child is abused or neglected every 47 seconds. -- A baby is born without health insurance every minute. -- A baby is born into extreme poverty every 68 seconds. -- A baby is born to a teen mother every 2 minutes. -- A baby is born at low birthweight every 2 minutes. -- A child is arrested for a drug offense every 4 minutes. -- A child is arrested for a violent offense every 8 and a half minutes. -- A baby dies before his or her first birthday every 22 minutes. -- A child or teen dies from an accident every hour. -- A child or teen is killed by guns every three hours and 18 minutes. -- A child or teen commits suicide every four hours and 11 minutes. -- A child is killed by abuse or neglect every five and a half hours. -- A baby’s mother dies from pregnancy or childbirth complications every 11 hours and eight minutes. *During the school year.

What do these numbers tell us about who we are as a nation and whether we value the life and potential of every child? Why do we choose to let children be the poorest age group in our rich nation and stand by as millions of children suffer preventable poverty, hunger, homelessness, sickness, neglect, abuse, miseducation, and violence? Why do we continue to mock God’s call for justice for children and the poor and our professed ideals of freedom and justice for all?
It’s time to realize the promise of a fair playing field for all children. We can and must do better.

Prayers for Our Children for the New Year

In a world rife with war, religious, racial, gender, sectarian, and political strife, when so many children lack safety, enough food, shelter, health care, and education and suffer unthinkable losses of parents to disease, violence, and war, I hope this New Year will bring adults closer to our common sense and moral responsibility for children’s well being.
If the child is well all of us are well. So I offer two prayers for the New Year.
_______________________________________________________
O God of the children of Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea,
Of Nigeria and Syria, Afghanistan and Pakistan,
Of Iraq and Iran and Israel,
Of El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala,
Of Darfur, Detroit, and Chicago,
Of Ferguson, Cleveland, and New York City
Help us to love and respect and protect them all.
O God of Black and Brown and White and Albino children and those all mixed together,
Of children who are rich and poor and in between,
Of children who speak English and Russian and Hmong and Spanish
and languages our ears cannot discern,
Help us to love and respect and protect them all.
O God of the child prodigy and the child prostitute,
Of the child of rapture and the child of rape,
Of runaway or thrown away children who struggle every day
without parent or place or friend or future,
Help us to love and respect and protect them all.
O God of children who can walk and talk and hear and see
and sing and dance and jump and play
and of children who wish they could but can’t,
Of children who are loved and unloved, wanted and unwanted,
Help us to love and respect and protect them all.
O God of beggar, beaten, abused, neglected, homeless,
and AIDS-, Ebola-, drug-, violence-, and hunger-ravaged children,
Of children who are emotionally and physically and mentally fragile,
and of children who rebel and ridicule, torment and taunt,
Help us to love and respect and protect them all.
O God of children of destiny and of despair, of war and of peace,
Of disfigured, diseased, and dying children,
Of children without hope and of children with hope to spare and to share,
Help us to love and respect and act to protect them all.
_______________________________________________________
Dr. Benjamin E. Mays, the great president of Morehouse College, who shaped so many of my generation including Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., said: “I am disturbed, I am uneasy about men because we have no guarantee that when we train a man’s mind, we will train his heart; no guarantee that when we increase a man’s knowledge, we will increase his goodness. There is no necessary correlation between knowledge and goodness.” So I share this prayer for 21^st-century children of privilege.
God, help us not to raise a new generation of children
with high intellectual quotients and low caring and compassion quotients;
with sharp competitive edges but dull cooperative instincts;
with highly developed computer skills but poorly developed consciences;
with a gigantic commitment to the big “I” but little sense of responsibility to the bigger “we”;
with mounds of disconnected information without a moral context to determine its worth;
with more and more knowledge and less and less imagination and appreciation for the magic of life that cannot be quantified or computerized;
and with more and more worldliness and less and less wonder and awe for the sacred and everyday miracles of life.
God, help us to raise children who care.