On Thursday (Sept. 22, 2011) I joined Irwin Sandler and Bill Beardslee in presenting the findings of the Institute of Medicine report on prevention to the National Prevention Network. NPN members working, with limited resources, to prevent tobacco, alcohol, and other drug use all over the nation. Bill, Irwin, and I were on the committee that wrote the report and, unlike most IOM committees we have continued to make presentations around the country (and the world) about the many programs, policies, and practices that can help to ensure that every young person develops successfully.
We are seeing significant progress. All around the country, schools, family support organizations, and neighborhoods and communities are starting to adopt these evidence-based preventive interventions. But even as we begin to see effective prevention being adopted, there is a problem growing in this country that threatens to swamp all of these efforts. The problem is poverty.
I reviewed some of the evidence at the NPN meeting. Children living in poverty are more likely to have problems developing self-regulatory skills, which are foundational for developing social and academic skills. They are more likely to have mild developmental delays, to fail in school, to become depressed, to smoke, to become addicted to other drugs, and to engage in crime.
Some might argue that these correlations don’t prove that poverty causes these problems. Maybe people are poor because they have all these problems, which keep them from climbing out of poverty. But the evidence doesn’t support that idea.
For example, one of the members of our IOM committee, Jane Costello found that when families suddenly get more money, some of these problems go away. She and her colleagues at Duke University were studying about 1300 children over an eight year period. Midway through the study an Indian tribe, which had 300 children in the study opened a casino. This led to an increase in income for their families of $5000 per family member. To her surprise, Jane found that the number of children with mental disorders went down significantly. Just having more money was a balm for these children.
Poverty does not make families more nurturing. It reduces the time that parents have to be with their children, when parents have to work multiple jobs. It increases the stress for every family member. It makes parents more likely to argue with and criticize their children.
So reducing poverty is not just a “nice” thing to do for people; it is a matter of public health.
Unfortunately, poverty is bad and getting worse in this country. The U.S. has the highest rate of children in poverty of any economically developed country. The follow figure shows that more children live in poverty than any other age group. Old people used to be the poorest in society, but thanks to social security and Medicare, they are now the group least like to be poor. The latest census report showed that the number of children in poverty is even higher than it was when this chart was created. All told, we have a greater percentage of people living in poverty than at any time in the last fifty years.
There are things that can be done about this problem. In the coming weeks I will enumerate some of the things that can be done. Most of them involve changes in public policy. But achieving those changes will require that we mobilize society to understand the importance of reducing poverty and advocate for these policies.
I hope you will share these posts with as many people as possible. If we are going to achieve the kind of nurturing society that we all hope for, we will need to mobilize action by millions of people. It has been done before and it can be done again.
From your mouth to the ears of the mighty and the hands of the voters! These are appalling statistics, all the more so, because we now know so much about how to make things better for children, families and communities. To have those efforts stifled for the lack of money in the richest country in the history of the world is shameful. I mean the gut wrenching, middle of the night, “Why, oh, why didn’t we do the right thing. We could afford it! It would have made life better for all of us! And we didn’t do it because we listened to the evil siren song: poor people have only themselves to blame.”
Let’s stop listening to lies and taking the easy way out. Everybody’s children are our future. Families and communities that are able to nurture their children make a bright future possible for all of us. Families and communities that are not able to do so will make a bleak inheritance for all of us.