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Thursday, July 25, 2013

The cost of child poverty: $500 billion a year

The cost of child poverty: $500 billion a year:

The cost of child poverty: $500 billion a year

Colorful USA map with states and capital citiesThe United States has the second-highest child poverty rate among the world’s richest 35 nations, and the cost in economic and educational outcomes is half a trillion dollars a year, according to a new report by the Educational Testing Service.
The report, called “Poverty and Education, Finding the Way Forward,” says that 22 percent of the nation’s children live in relative poverty, with only Romania having a higher rate in the group of 35 nations. (Next are Latvia, Bulgaria, Spain, Greece, Italy, Lithuania, Japan and Portugal, it says; the country with the lowest child poverty rate is Iceland, and the second lowest is Finland.) The report notes, though, that the official U.S. poverty rate is incomplete, and that other data show that 48 percent of the population had incomes in 2011 that are considered inadequate or not livable. (Relative 
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