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Alabama NewsAlabama Politics
The Cause of Child Poverty
By Gary Palmer
Posted on: August 29, 2005
The 2005 annual Kids Count report came out a few weeks ago and the news was not good. The report shows that the overall well-being of children in Alabama has gotten worse since last year, dropping the state's ranking from 47th to 48th.
The 2005 Kids Count report provides information about children and families that should give elected officials, the media, child and family advocacy groups, as well as the general public, some valuable insights into what needs to be done to improve the well-being of children. At least you would think that. But based on some reactions to the report, I am not so sure.
Take for instance, the child poverty rate. Alabama's child poverty rate is 24 percent, fully a third higher than the U.S. average of 18 percent which ties us with Arkansas and Kentucky for fifth highest. This means that almost a quarter of all Alabama children under 18 years old live in households with incomes under the federal poverty level, which in 2003 was $18,400 for a family of four.
Obviously, Alabama needs to do what it can to reduce the number of children living in poverty. And the first step toward solving any problem is figuring out what is causing the problem. This is where there is apparently a significant disconnect between some child advocates and others that are looking for solutions.
For instance, one editorial linked child poverty to Alabama's tax code. The editorial stated, "A major reason so many children in Alabama live in poverty is because of our immoral tax system. A family of four starts paying income tax when it makes $4,600 a year. That same family wouldn't pay a federal income tax until it closed in on $20,000 a year."
Most people would agree that Alabama's income tax threshold is too low. What I want to know is what does the income tax have to do with determining how much someone makes?
The correct answer is that an income tax does not determine how much someone makes. The income tax, along with other deductions, only determines how much of their income someone gets to keep. When calculating the poverty level, the federal government only counts income before taxes and does not include non cash benefits such as public housing, food stamps, and Medicaid. So obviously, the state's income tax is not a major reason so many children in Alabama live in poverty. However, with the income tax kicking in at such a low threshold it does create a substantially greater drain on the disposable income of low income families, which frankly, is what the editorial writer most likely meant.
Still, many people have a perspective that poor people are poor because someone else is well-off. They have a zero sum view of the economy that leads them to conclude that the economy has limited financial resources that are unequally distributed. Consequently, some advocate raising taxes on people who have earned more in order to more equitably redistribute wealth to people that are not earning as much or, in some cases, don't work at all.
While they may call this "caring for the least among us," it is basically a socialist policy of wealth redistribution and it does little to nothing to solve the real problems at the root of poverty in Alabama, which is the breakdown of the family structure, specifically the breakdown of marriage.
An honest evaluation of the Kids Count report bears this out. The report shows that the poverty rate in Alabama for children in a single-parent, female-headed household is almost five times higher than for children growing up in a two-parent family. Based on 2003 data, there were 1,094,533 children under the age of 18 in Alabama, and almost 500,000 of them lived in a household without one or both parents or in which their parents were not married. Moreover, from 2002 to 2003 the number of children in households headed by a single female increased by 23,000. In fact, eight of the ten Alabama counties with the highest percentage of single parent households also rank in the top ten counties with the highest percentages of child poverty.
The Kids Count report shows that in 2003 over 380,000 Alabama children lived in homes in which no adult had a job. While the Kids Count report does not specifically link the breakdown of marriage and family or the work ethic to child poverty, it also does not present any statistics that blame state taxes for the problem.
Finally, a report published by the Heritage Foundation found that nearly 80 percent of long-term child poverty occurs when children are raised in some type of broken family or by a parent who never married. Consequently, as long as the so-called child advocates continue to focus on taxes as "…a major reason so many children in Alabama live in poverty" while ignoring the real causes, the child poverty problem will never be solved.
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