Quote of the Day, October 18, 2012
Like music or religion, poverty’s causes can be many and varied. Calhoun County is the perfect example. That so many of our children live in poverty — 1-in-3 in 2010 — is the painful proof.
So, a question: What are we going to do about it?
It’s too convenient, and too easy, to chalk up the county’s meteoric rise of child poverty to the effects of the Great Recession. Did it have an effect? Absolutely. But, as the annual Kids Count report released Tuesday by Voices for Alabama Children explained, Calhoun County’s poverty rate increased 10 percent in the last 10 years. Too many area children were living in extreme low-income situations before the recession took full flight in the fall of 2008.
Chief among childhood poverty’s causes is the chain reaction of bad economies, substandard education, tepid job markets and, in some cases, poor decisions by parents. Sadly, some children live without because of all of those factors. Others are affected by only one. Either way, the result is largely the same.
Children suffer. -excerpted from Anniston Star – Another epidemic Alarming childhood poverty rate should force us into action
