From the Spokesman-Review: Effects of growing up in poor households can be lifelong

When Lori Pfingst considers the statistics that will tell the tale of this recession, she isn’t thinking about GDP or unemployment.

She’s thinking about teen pregnancy. Low birthweight babies. WASL scores and college enrollments.

As the recession swells the ranks of the impoverished, it takes a particular, long-term toll on children, experts say. In Washington state alone, nearly 40,000 children are expected to slip into poverty by 2010; nationwide, an additional 800,000 kids entered poverty between 2007 and 2008, before the recession really hit.

And however quickly the economy begins its official recovery, the consequences for kids living in poverty are wide-ranging. Children who grow up in poor households tend to do worse in school and end up in trouble with the law. They’re less likely to go to college and more likely to get pregnant at a young age. They’re more likely to commit crimes or become victims of crimes, and more likely to grow up and live in poverty themselves.

—The impact of this really can’t be overstated,— said Pfingst, assistant director of Washington KidsCount, an annual statistical survey of children’s well-being. —When children are born into poverty, it affects every single outcome of their lives.—

A new report from Duke University asserts that the recession will undo decades of progress for children and families. Duke’s Child and Youth Well-Being Index measures a range of categories; it estimates that all progress made in —family economic well-being— since 1975 will be wiped out by this recession.

The Duke index predicts that families will suffer from the expected kinds of effects, such as joblessness, lower incomes or homelessness. But it also suggests that children will pay other prices, in greater obesity and health problems, because families will be more likely to rely on low-cost fast food; on social relationships and stability, as families are forced to move; and on increased behavioral problems and crime, with young people as both victims and perpetrators.

—The impact of the current recession on children will be dramatic,— the Duke report concludes…

Two things. First, simply said, a tragedy that none of the Wall Street moguls will ever consider or reflect on. Second, in spite of negative pressures caused by the recession we have an underlying current of hopelessness far greater than that ever experienced by the poor and nearly poor of generations past. Their grounding in faith, neighborhood, and family stood as a bulwark against just these sorts of pressures.

When I look at our great Fraternal, the PNU, and the history of the PNCC, in fact most of the faith communities inhabited by immigrants, I see people who counted what was important. They knew that with God in front, family and co-workers in union, they could withstand whatever the world could throw at them; not only withstand, but struggle and succeed. I may be a hopeless romantic, or too nostalgic, but I believe that we are capable of the same today. Being poor does not equate with hopelessness and lifelong despair, it is the crucible in which we are tested. We are challenged, not to re-create the past, but to build a new and re-grounded future.