Time for the Just Post Roundtables again. As every month Mad, Jen, and me have gathered a wide variety of posts about social justice.
According to a study by unicef countries like Denmark and Finnland have the lowest levels of child poverty among the rich countries, and the United States have the highest. What is so alarming about my own country here is that there are more and more people getting poor, especially children, while the rich get richer and richer. The most children in poverty live in either immigrant families or with single parents.
The article I have linked to in the paragraph above was written in 2005. Since then the whole thing has become worse instead of better. It’s a shame that in one of the richest countries in the world there are 1.5 million children living in poverty, almost ten percent of all children. Of single parent families forty percent live in poverty.
In the US, by the way, that number is 20%. Every fifth child lives in poverty. And being poor makes it much harder to be healthy, successful, and employed.
If you want to know more about it, here’s a link to the unicef report from 2005 as a pdf-download: Child Poverty in Rich Countries.
And now the rest of the table:
Beth with growing new hope for refugees
Bipolar Lawyer Cook with don we now our gay apparel
Bon with dignity
Cecileaux with Argentina’s farmers are not exactly old, that 70’s oil crisis is baaack and oh those gay and lesbian sinners
Chani with we are all special just like everyone else and Wellness Wednesday: eliminating pain
Defiant Muse with balancing the scales and kicking and screaming
Emily with not into yoga?
Erin with Calling All Steel Magnolias: Come Out From Behind Your Ruffles
Grilgriot with only wild animals act like that and a little video slap
Hel with Truth recedes only to re-appear
Jen with Untitled, twenty four years two months nine days and I think it was the fourth of july
Jenn with Up from the ashes
Julie Pippert with ‘Whatever’ is not an actual salary and it really doesn’t buy the groceries, either
Kyla with doors
Magpie with hardwood in burma
Mary with broken string
MOMocrats with Dockworkers Display War Opposition Strength in Historic Ports Shut Down
Stella with impacts
Susanne with Why I mostly eat organic food
Suzanne Reisman on blogher with Genocide, Childlessness, and Female Guilt
The Dana Files with Apparently I just need more training
The little green house with happy birthday wesley
The r house with color consciousness not color blindness
Thor with more sleeps
Walk with me with what’s a girl to do
Why Mommy with spring cleaning
Won’t fear love with because children are our future
As always thank you very much for writing, for pointing us to other’s posts, and for reading. And please, go over to Mad and Jen as well to see what they have to say.
Mad Hatter says
…and there is Canada in the bottom third with 14.9% of children living in poverty. It’s a travesty. Thanks for linking to this report, Su.
dana says
Coming over to thank you as well, for the nomination. I’m humbled to know that others heard (read?!) my words and understood where I was coming from. Thanks again. 🙂
hele says
“For children, the statistics show that between 57 percent and 75 percent of children in South Africa are living in poverty [depending on the poverty measure used].”
“When using an absolute poverty measure of R490 [about US $62 at the current exchange rate] household income per month as the minimum income required for basic needs, survival, and a healthy life, 75 percent of 0- to 17-year olds live in poverty – an estimated 14.3 million,” the Children’s Institute found.
All we can do is work harder to change these figures – one child does not even make a dent in statistics yet that one child’s life is their entire experience. So I am trying to keep my eyes of the statistics and each child whose live can touch that of their children.
Otherwise I sometimes feel like just running away.
Emily R says
Part of the problem, in my opinion, is that we as a society do not realize how much child poverty costs us.
Julie Pippert says
Why is that such a large and rising problem in Germany, what is the speculation (am sure there are tons of fingers pointing and wagging)?
Of course here we all blame W and we are right and wrong in that. He is dreadful but all can’t be laid at his feet. His policies are horrid, but “every man for himself” and “let the market take care of itself” has been an American philosophy for a long time.
We shall be judged harshly in the future for the benchmarks: how we care for the old, the young and the weak, sick and hurt.
Does Germany blame the victim, as we do here, in the “land of opportunity?” And what attitude does it generate?
I’m so curious for a broader view.
ewe_are_here says
Child poverty numbers are up quite a bit here in the UK, too. Under a labour government. And that’s BEFORE housing costs, which are quite exhorbitant, are taken into account, which means they’re even higher than is being reported.
sigh
it really sucks