Time - USA (2020-02-03)

24 Time February 3, 2020

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Seeing is

believing

Growing up, novelist

Charles Yu didn’t

see many people

who looked like him

on television. Today

he thinks a lack of

representation remains

a problem. “When you

grow up not seeing

yourself in TV America,

you don’t feel like

you’re part of real

America,” he writes.

By the book

According to the

Constitution, the

Chief Justice of the

United States is the

“Presiding Officer”

in an impeachment

trial. Martin London,

who served as former

Vice President Spiro

Agnew’s lawyer, argues

that this means John

Roberts has far more

power than Mitch

McConnell. “Will our

‘institutionalist’ Chief

Justice rise to the

occasion and do

the right thing

here?” he asks.

Rejecting

labels

Although Holly

Whitaker, author of

Quit Like a Woman,

acknowledges that

she stopped drinking

because she struggled

with alcoholism, she no

longer calls herself an

alcoholic. “Alcoholism

was a word that

invited other people to

use me as their own

personal navigation

system,” she writes.

America has long been resistant to ad-
equate poverty policies because of its strong
strain of thinking that the poor are respon-
sible for their own situations, no matter their
suffering, but child poverty is too harmful and
punishing to ignore. I, and a growing num-
ber of academics, believe there is a solution:
the government should give monthly cash al-
lowances, without conditions, to every fam-
ily with kids. (Higher-income families would
have much of that money taxed away.)
Today the official poverty line for a family
of four in the U.S. is about $26,200, but a
2013 Gallup survey found that people think
a family of four must earn $58,000 on average
just to get by. My own ideal definition of a
useful poverty measure would be this: the
level below which we
know that short- and
long-term damage is
being done to children.
A mountain of
evidence now shows
that poverty can
lead to cognitive and
emotional damage
in children. Despite
policies that have
expanded access to
insurance, poor kids are
still less healthy than
the rest of the young
population. They also
drop out of school at
higher rates, earn less
money over time and are incarcerated far
more often than their better- off peers. That
should be enough for us to recognize the
moral tragedy that is child poverty, but we
should note the broad effect too: reputable
analyses show that the nation’s GDP is up to
$1 trillion lower because of child poverty.
When Michael Harrington’s classic book,
The Other America, called attention to Amer-
ica’s general poverty rate of about 25% in
1962, Washington developed social programs
that brought the rate down sharply. Valuable
policies, including the Earned Income Tax
Credit and the Child Tax Credit, have been
enacted since then, but they are not enough:
1 in 3 children does not receive the full ben-
efits of these programs because their parents
do not earn enough to be eligible for them.

Poor children have many needs, but
research shows that money may matter
most. For example, a 2013 review of dozens
of studies by London School of Economics

researchers found that “Poorer children

have worse cognitive, social-behavioural

and health outcomes in part because they are

poorer, and not just because poverty is cor-

related with other household and parental

characteristics.” A family with two children

receiving $300 to $400 a month per child

could improve their standard of living imme-

diately. Money can buy food, heat, coats, eye-

glasses and regular doctors’ visits, including

transportation, and help pay for childcare.

It can also help reduce family stress and help

parents provide a psychologically nourish-

ing environment in which learning and social

development can germinate. Studies dem-

onstrate improved cognitive and educational

performance when families are simply given

more money.

An illustrative find-

ing is what happened

when a Cherokee tribe

passed on thousands

of dollars in casino

profits to its children

starting in the late

’90s. Follow-up analy-

ses showed that these

children dropped out

of school far less, were

incarcerated in lower

numbers and had

higher wages over time

than similar groups

with no access to cash.

The historian

Michael Katz correctly notes, “One of the

odd aspects of the history of writing about

poverty is the avoidance of the simple

view that people are poor because they

lack money,” yet both the left and the right

denigrate direct cash aid as a waste and an

inducement to laziness and abuse. It is good

that Democratic presidential candidate

Andrew Yang has stressed the benefits of

a universal basic income, citing studies that

show such cash allowances do not induce

the shirking of work, but his plan could cost

$2.8 trillion a year and the poor would have

to return welfare assistance like food stamps

to receive the outlay.

For far less money—about $100 billion—

the number of children living in official pov-

erty could be cut in half. Such a policy would

be a humane, practical, efficient victory for

a nation too willing to neglect its poor.

Madrick is the author of Invisible Americans:

The Tragic Cost of Child Poverty