Wednesday, February 25, 2004
A more sensible solution
A good op-ed in Saturday's New York Times on poverty in America:
About 35 million Americans live below the federal poverty line. Their opportunities are defined by forces that may look unrelated, but decades of research have mapped the web of connections. A 1987 study of 215 children attributed differences in I.Q. in part to "social risk factors" like maternal anxiety and stress, which are common features of impoverished households. Research in the 1990's demonstrated how the paint and pipes of slum housing — major sources of lead — damage the developing brains of children. Youngsters with elevated lead levels have lower I.Q.'s and attention deficits, and — according to a 1990 study published in The New England Journal of Medicine — were seven times more likely to drop out of school.
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Government is especially bad at connecting the dots. Health is over here, housing over there; budgets are separate and are protected by officials with entrenched interests. Practically every program has its own eligibility requirements and forms, and many working people simply can't take time off the clock to trek from waiting room to waiting room. One-third of those eligible don't get food stamps, according to the Census Bureau, and about 30 percent of the poor who are entitled to Medicaid are not enrolled.
One remedy, tried by community action centers created by the War on Poverty, put a variety of specialists under one roof. Their effectiveness unsettled politicians. "Mayors didn't like them because they were doing something that was very good," recalls Frances Fox Piven, a professor of political science and sociology at City University of New York. "They were badgering municipal agencies to provide services." The money for the centers eventually dried up.
Decades later we are still testing this idea, now called "one-stop shopping," as if it were some dubious proposition. Since last July in five California school districts, applications for subsidized lunches have been used as applications for Medicaid as well. What has to be proven for the rest of the state to follow? In Chicago, schools get computerized lists of children who are enrolled in the lunch program but not in Medicaid. Why not in all of America's schools? Job placement is done at a few public housing sites; why not at every one?
We need more than patchwork projects. We need a sweeping national program to create what could be called gateways. At private and public institutions that are frequented every day — clinics, schools, food banks, housing projects, police precincts and the like — a person should be able to find easy referrals to child-rearing instruction, drug treatment and other assistance.
posted by chris at 5:24 PM
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