{"id":16593,"date":"2015-01-20T09:39:33","date_gmt":"2015-01-20T08:39:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=16593"},"modified":"2015-01-20T09:40:12","modified_gmt":"2015-01-20T08:40:12","slug":"why-almost-half-of-american-children-live-in-or-near-poverty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=16593","title":{"rendered":"Why almost half of American children live in or near poverty"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>&#8220;Fifty years ago, when Lyndon Johnson declared a \u201cwar on poverty,\u201d most of the poor didn\u2019t work. They were too old or infirm, or they couldn\u2019t find jobs. Today, most of America\u2019s poor do work \u2013 \u201cwelfare reforms\u201d starting in the 1990s have required them to work as a condition of receiving any benefits. But they and their families are still poor because their jobs pay so little and benefits don\u2019t go far enough.<\/p>\n<p>As a result, according to new data, almost half of US children \u2013 some 30 million \u2013 now live in or near poverty. We haven\u2019t witnessed this extent of child poverty in half a century. Raising the minimum wage and expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit are critically important to the well-being of our nation\u2019s children.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>This is a Facebook comment from\u00a0Professor Robert Reich of Berkeley University which I&#8217;m reposting on the day of President Barack Obama&#8217;s State of the Union address. I hope that Obama has some ideas to tackle this situation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Fifty years ago, when Lyndon Johnson declared a \u201cwar on poverty,\u201d most of the poor didn\u2019t work. They were too old or infirm, or they couldn\u2019t find jobs. Today, most of America\u2019s poor do work \u2013 \u201cwelfare reforms\u201d starting in the 1990s have required them to work as a condition of receiving any benefits. But [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16593","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-us-current-affairs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16593","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16593"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16593\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16604,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16593\/revisions\/16604"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}