Wednesday, November 25, 2009

For young blacks, a recession would be an improvement

"Joblessness for 16-to-24-year-old black men has reached Great Depression proportions -- 34.5 percent in October, more than three times the rate for the general U.S. population," according to the Washington Post. The numbers for young black women are awful too.

Thursday, November 19, 2009

Watch video, read documents from the 11/19 meeting of the Speaker's task force

The Speaker's Task Force on Children in the Recession held its third meeting on Thursday, November 19, 2009, at the Legislative Office Building in Hartford. It took testimony from state and national experts on the following topics:

  • The State of Working Connecticut
  • Unemployment and Welfare in a Recession
  • The American Dream and Hopes for College
  • Youth: Gaps and Opportunities

Watch CT-N coverage of the meeting and read meeting documents

NOTE: The Task Force, as part of its plan to hear testimony from residents of each of Connecticut's five congressional districts, will hold a hearing for the 1st District at 10 a.m. on Saturday, December 5, at the Legislative Office Building in Hartford. Directions

The 1st District, represented in Congress by John B. Larson, includes these communities: Barkhamsted, Berlin, Bloomfield, Bristol, Colebrook , Cromwell, East Granby, East Hartford, East Windsor, Glastonbury, Granby, Hartford, Hartland, Manchester, Middletown, New Hartford, Newington, Portland, Rocky Hill, Southington, South Windsor, Torrington, West Hartford, Wethersfield, Winchester, Windsor, and Windsor Locks.

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Children in the Recession Task Force meets Thursday, November 19

The legislative task force formed by House Speaker Christopher G. Donovan to address the needs of Connecticut children and families impacted by the recession will meet at 10 a.m., Thursday, November 19, in Room 2-E of the Legislative Office Building in Hartford. Agenda (PDF) | Task force home page

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Nearly half of all U.S. children will use food stamps, study finds

A new study finds that 49 percent of all U.S. children will, at some point during their childhoods, live in households that use food stamps.

The study, co-authored by professors Mark R. Rank of Washington University in St. Louis and Thomas Hirschl of Cornell University, is based on an analysis of 30 years of information taken from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) and looks at children between the ages of 1 and 20. The PSID is a longitudinal survey of a representative sample of U.S. individuals and their families interviewed annually since 1968.

The study's findings are consistent with a wider body of research demonstrating that U.S. children face considerable economic risk throughout their childhood years, according to Rank.

"Rather than being a time of security and safety, the childhood years for many American children are a time of economic turmoil, risk, and hardship," he says in a Washington University press release.

The study also found that:

-- 90 percent of black children will be in households that uses food stamps. This compares to 37 percent of white children.

-- Nearly one-quarter of all American children will be in households that use food stamps for five or more years during childhood.

-- 91 percent of children with single parents will be in households receiving food stamps, compared to 37 percent of children in households head by married couples.

-- Children who are black and whose head of household is not married and has less than 12 years of education have a cumulative percentage of residing in a food stamp household of 97 percent by age 10.

"Understanding the degree to which American children are exposed to the risks of poverty and food insecurity across childhood is essential information for the health care and social service communities," Rank says. "Even limited exposure to poverty can have detrimental effects upon a child's overall quality of health and well-being."

The study, "Estimating the Risk of Food Stamp Use and Impoverishment During Childhood," is published in the current issue of the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine.

View video of a University of Washington interview with Dr. Rank here.

Monday, November 2, 2009

Great Recession vs. Great Depression: We regard kids differently

Or so thinks New York Times blogger Judith Warner. And from her viewpoint, today's kids don't fare well in the comparison: "Overall, the Depression-era consensus regarding care for children and families appears to be shattered, or at best, deeply fragmented."

She quotes historian Steven Mintz as saying: "We seem to care little about what it means to a child to lose a home or have stressed-out parents. The difference between then and now is striking."

"Is it an overstatement," Warner asks, "to say that we’re at risk of losing a generation of children if we don’t step up to the plate to provide additional support for families under duress? We are, at the very least, at risk of helping erode children’s most basic sense of security and safety, as well as their hopes for the future. Families are keenly under pressure. We ignore them at our collective peril."