Child poverty rising in Alabama
Tuscaloosa News – Dec. 14
…About three-quarters of Alabama’s 67 counties saw a rise in the poverty rate among children ages 5 to 17 between 2007 and 2009, according to a study released this month by the University of Alabama. Data studied by UA’s Center for Business and Economic Research looked at U.S. Census estimates through 2009. The center found a higher percentage of children living in poverty in West Alabama than in the state as a whole…Gary Hoover, a UA professor of economics who has done studies on income and poverty, said children who are raised in poverty are more likely to remain in poverty as adults. Children who grow up in an environment where they see people get up and go to work will see work as the norm and are more apt to follow that example, he said. But children growing up in families plagued by chronic unemployment see a different example, and the probability of them remaining poor is much higher, he said. “It is called the cycle of poverty,” Hoover said. Many people have lost jobs in the recession and that has affected their families, Hoover said…The economy is not only in a jobless recovery but “is rapidly changing to a technology-driven and information-driven economy,” Hoover said. That will make it continuously harder for the unskilled and uneducated laborer to make a living, he said. The challenge is to train those people in new skills and to lift their children out of poverty through early intervention programs like Head Start, he said. Children who were in Head Start, a preschool education, nutrition and health program for poor children, do better in school and later in life, he said. But with the government facing calls for fiscal cutbacks, the challenge of breaking the cycle of poverty has become more difficult. “To break that cycle, we have to have a long-term investment with immediate costs that we will not see the benefit from for 20 years,” he said.
WVUA (Tuscaloosa) – Dec. 13
ABC 33/40 (Birmingham) – Dec. 13