Child Poverty Wrong

“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). At this point, we are in hell; more than 16 million children in the United States - live in families with incomes below the federal poverty level (nccp.org). This is a serious issue for children due to the fact that poverty can have a physical and intellectual effect on a child’s mental development. The vision as a society should be to end child poverty by first ensuring that all parents and caregivers have the resource to support and nurture their children through livable wages, affordable childcare, basic needs for nutrition, and housing assistance. Child

Today in a country known as the land of the plenty, there are millions of children going to bed with an empty stomach. Thanks to free school lunches, those millions of children know that they will at least eat one meal a day, but that is still not enough to get a child through the day without starving. A child not knowing when or if he or she will have their next meal can affect their health and their ability to learn. In order to prevent child hunger, government should create more domestic food programs that provide families with non-perishable foods that will satisfy a families nutritional needs. Secondly, in order to prevent child hunger there needs to be a program created that will provide summer meals for low-income families.. The summer months can be a difficult time for children who rely on school meals, therefore a program like this would benefit many children by receiving nutritious meals when school is not in session. Another solution to prevent child hunger is to create more community gardens to provide low income families with nutritious, sufficient foods that will eliminate food insecurity. “In 2010, 14.5% of households in the Us suffered food insecurity [10] Of these, 40% were households with incomes below the Federal poverty line [11]. Community gardens are one way inner-city residents can start to combat food insecurity” (Food Security). Community gardens are a way of assuring that low income families will be provided with fresh, healthy food, and overcome

Research shows that children who experience homelessness, bad school quality, successive moves that result in changes of school, and poor housing can affect a child’s academic performance. Children who are involved in these situations have a higher chance of dropping out, repeating a grade and doing poorly on tests. When a child is constantly changing schools, they suffer learning gaps due to the fact that they are repeatedly missing school days and are being taught material differently. Housing assistance can reduce these housing related problems low income families are exposed to. In order to guarantee that children and their families have a stable, sanitary place to live, government needs to invest in the Housing Choice Voucher Program. “But many children in the Housing Choice Voucher Program continue to live in extreme- poverty neighborhoods, where crime rates are likely to be high and school performance inadequate, despite the better options that a voucher should make available to their families. A quarter of a million kids receiving Housing Choice Voucher assistance-- spread across almost every state-- live in these troubles neighborhoods (Barbara Sard).” Recently HCV has not seen funding increase and for this reason waiting lists for the assistance are very long. Although this program assists very low-income families by paying the balance of a rent payment that exceeds 30% of a renters monthly income, investing in it and bettering it on its potential to expand