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A
new study shows that the majority of public school children in the United
States are living in poverty. The
report, conducted by the Southern Education Foundation, drew its conclusions
from data revealing how many public school children qualify for free or
reduced-price school meals.
RT.com reports that for
the first time on record, 51 percent of students are living in poverty. There
are an estimated 74 .5 million children in the US.
Study
authors said they have noticed a continuing trend of increased poverty levels
since 1989, when 32 percent of students qualified for these types of meals. By
2000, the number had risen to 38 percent. In 2013, it had gone up another 13
percent, according to information from the National Center for Education
Statistics.
"No longer can we consider the problems and
needs of low income students simply a matter of fairness," the
Southern Education Foundation report says, quoting from a previous analysis.
"Their success or failure
in the public schools will determine the entire body of human capital and
educational potential that the nation will possess in the future."
Students
are eligible for free meals if their families are already on benefit programs
or if household income is no more than 135 percent of the poverty level. They
qualify for reduced-price meals if household income is no more than 185 percent
of the poverty level. The federal poverty level in 2013 was measured as $23,550
for a family of two adults and two children.
Of
the states with a majority of low-income students, 13 were located in the
South, and six in the West.
Three
states were shown to have the highest concentrations of low-income students:
Mississippi led with 71 percent – almost three out of every four public school
children needed help. New Mexico was next, with 68 percent, followed by
Louisiana with 65 percent.
"That deepening poverty likely will
complicate already fraught political discussions on how to educate American
students, as prior research has shown students are significantly more at risk
academically in schools with 40 percent or higher concentrations of
poverty," wrote Education Week.
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News
of this latest trend comes about two months after a separate study revealed
another disturbing development: the growing number of homeless children.
The
National Center on Family Homelessness found that one child in every 30 was
homeless in 2013, marking an all-time high for 2.5 million American children,
which is attributable to high poverty rates and the lack of affordable housing,
among other causes.
The
report, 'America’s Youngest
Outcasts,' was prepared using the “most recent federal data that comprehensively counts homeless
children, using more than 30 variables from over a dozen established data sets.”
From
2012 to 2013, child homelessness in the US went up by eight percent overall, as
31 states and the District of Columbia had increases, according to the report.
Shahera
Hyatt, director of the California Homeless Youth Project and a former homeless
youth herself, told AP she was not surprised by her state’s dismal ranking and
the high number of homeless kids.
"These terms like 'couch surfing' and
'doubled-up' sound a lot more polite than they are in practice,"
she said. "For teenagers,
it might be exchanging sex for a place to stay or staying someplace that does
not feel safe because they are so mired in their day-to-day survival
needs."
The
report says that solutions to youth homelessness must include more affordable
housing, education, employment opportunities for homeless parents, and special
services for mothers forced into homelessness due to domestic violence.
“Without decisive action and the allocation of
sufficient resources, the nation will fail to reach the stated federal goal of
ending family homelessness by 2020, and child homelessness may result in a
permanent Third World in America,” the report concludes.
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