Roanoke Times Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc. DATE: TUESDAY, January 25, 1994 TAG: 9402010242 SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A6 EDITION: METRO SOURCE: DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Recent government statistics suggest 1993 was the economy's best year since 1988. Industrial production was up; retail sales were up; the deficit is actually shrinking; and December's unemployment rate was the lowest in three years. Boom times may not lie ahead, but at least bust times have ended.
Here in Virginia, meanwhile, the thaw is on, spring is just around a 53-day corner - and Gov. George Allen's administration is still a bright, shiny penny of hope for positive changes to come. It would seem appropriate, perhaps, to hum a few bars of Bobby McFerrin's child-like ditty, "Don't Worry, Be Happy."
Unless, that is, you are a child.
Last week, the Children's Defense Fund issued its State of the Union report. Its statistics provide a sad, even horrifying picture of a besieged generation of youngsters for whom life in these United States is getting not better, but worse.
We'll spare you no bad news:
More American children - about 15 million, or 22 percent - now live in poverty. That's more than at any time in the past 30 years. If current trends go unchanged, there will be 17 million children living in poverty by the year 2001. And every year thereafter, about another million babies will be born into impoverished families.
One of those current trends is, of course, teen pregnancy. In 1990, a half-million babies were born to mothers between the ages of 15 and 19. Now, 2,781 American teen-agers get pregnant every day.
Not only are children having children. Children are killing children. While the number of arrests for murder and manslaughter for adults rose 11 percent between 1982 and 1991, the corresponding number of juvenile arrests rose an astounding 93 percent. The past decade saw a 79 percent increase in the number of youngsters, aged 10 to 17, who used firearms to commit murder.
As for victims, a child growing up in America today is 15 times more likely to be killed with a gun than a child in Northern Ireland. In 1990, twice as many 10- to 14-year-old American kids were shot to death than citizens of all ages who died from gunfire in Sweden, Switzerland, Japan, Canada, Great Britain and Australia combined.
Kids who escape bullets have other menaces to contend with. In 1992, more than 2.9 million American children were reported abused or neglected - about triple the number in 1980. Close to 450,000 children lived in foster care - nearly 70 percent more than a decade earlier. One in every eight children had no health insurance.
Every single day in America:
f\ Zapf Dingbats f-b f-inoAbout 145 babies have very low birthweight (less than 3.25 pounds); 63 babies die before they live a month; 101 babies die before their first birthday.
f\ Zapf Dingbats f-b f-inoA total of 480 teen-agers will get syphilis or gonorrhea; 1,115 teen-agers will have an abortion; 1,340 teen-agers will have a baby; 2,255 teen-agers will drop out of school; 5,703 teen-agers will be victims of violent crime.
f\ Zapf Dingbats f-b f-inoThere are 100,000 homeless children. Another 1.2 million latchkey kids go home to houses in which there is a gun.
America's economy is on the upswing, but the changing condition of children does not conform neatly to the business cycle. This is a secular trend, with causes as much cultural as economic - and it appears to be headed downward.
Tonight, President Clinton will not be talking to America's children. If he speaks, as expected, about health-care reform, welfare reform, initiatives to combat crime and to keep the economy improving, he'll be talking to adults who vote.
But most of the programs about which he'll speak affect children, and some may affect the odds of ever reversing the Children's Defense Fund's grim statistics. We'd better have an effect soon, or in this country that likes to say its children are its future, the State of the Union isn't good.
by CNB