Raising the Alarm: American children's well-being

How does poverty, homelessness and hunger affect us? It arouses our compassion on a humanitarian level, but the effects of it will impact this generation's children on a deeper level. In adulthood, this generation of healthy, achieving individuals will have to deal with the societal costs and consequences of today's deprived children, who will also be adults and perpetuating the cycle in their own offspring. The healthy, achievers will be faced with enormous numbers of a population who are mentally deficient, suffer from anti-social and behavioral problems, and are members of the hard-core poor. The negative health effects of childhood hunger and the emotional and psychologic effects of the insecurities of being hungry and homeless will possibly be a causative factor in the increase of criminal behaviors.

This post presents an editorial from the Houston Chronicle re: American children's well being. Houston is a huge, rich city. The conditions written of here probably reflect conditions across the nation. Following articles relate the physiological effect of hunger on today's children, who will be tomorrow's adults. Hunger is not merely a discomfort suffered by the afflicted; it is a physically damaging, even killing condition.

WHAT IS THE LEGACY WE ARE LEAVING TODAY'S CHILDREN?

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http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/editorial/4751165.html

Editorial

Feb. 21, 2007, 6:42PM
Raise the alarm
Two surveys point to the abysmal and deteriorating state of American children's well-being

Copyright 2007 Houston Chronicle

Two recent surveys, one international, one local, show that America's and Houston's children are suffering enormous deficits to their well-being. The studies' findings should be raising alarms, not being met with the widespread indifference typical of past reactions to such news.

A recent United Nations survey of the overall welfare of children in 21 economically advanced countries resulted in abysmal ratings for the United States and the United Kingdom: The United States came in at No. 20 on the list, saved only by Brittain, ranked 21st, from the ignominy of last place. The Netherlands ranked No. 1, followed by Sweden, Denmark and Finland.

The survey assessed all aspects of children's well-being in six broad categories: material well-being; health and safety; education; peer and family relationships; behaviors and risks; and the children's own subjective sense of well-being. Children apparently fared worst in Britain and the United States because of the marked disparity between rich and poor and the *lack of support for poor families and children — a sorry state of affairs for two historic world powers.

U.S. officials quibbled that the survey defined poverty differently than the United States, but raised no objections to the data. The British, at least, paid attention, with officials calling the results "a moral issue" and "a crisis at the heart of our society" — this last from the Children's Commissioner for England. (Now there's a novel idea, a senior official just for children.) Only Hungary had a worse record of infant mortality than the United States, only New Zealand had a higher death rate for children under 19 and only British children smoked and drank and beat each other up more than American children.

On the heels of this report comes the latest survey on the state of children in Harris County from Children at Risk, an advocacy group that has been monitoring trends for the past 16 years. Its findings show that 20.8 percent of the country's children live in poverty, 6.5 per 1,000 die before age 1 and 38 percent drop out of high school. (Make that 67 percent for minority males in HISD.)

Even more troubling, these numbers are steadily getting worse:Since the last report two years ago, more children are living in poverty. The rate of infant mortality has increased every year since 2000, and the number of children who received medical coverage under the Children's Health Insurance Program declined from more than 90,000 in 2002 to 57,718 in May 2006. In 2005, Houston's air quality was so poor for 45 days that children were told to stay indoors. In 2004, that total was 38 days. Despite increasing need, fewer children are receiving mental health services.

Dr. Robert Sanborn, president and CEO of Children at Risk, said,** "We're not giving the next generation a level playing field. If they're high-school dropouts or sick, they don't even get to start the process of making a better life for themselves."

While some valiant souls in government fight the good fight, too many politicians prefer to wax lyrical about the American Dream and how anyone with gumption can pull himself up by the bootstraps and grasp that golden ring. [ The Bush/Neocon/Fundie attitude.WA]

They seem to forget that children are too short to reach that high without a helping hand.
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[THIS IS A NATIONAL SHAME AND DISGRACE. WE SHOULD BOMBARD OUR REPS TO REJECT THE NEW BUDGET, DECREASE THE WAR ALLOTMENTS AND INCREASE FUNDING FOR THE POOR. WA]

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Health Consequences of Hunger:
Hunger and undernutrition contribute to a number of negative health consequences:
A joint analysis released by the Center on Hunger and Poverty at Brandeis University and the Food Research and Action Center (FRAC) ....

According to FRAC's survey of families living below 185 percent of poverty -- the Community Childhood Hunger Identification Project (CCHIP) -- hungry children suffer from two to four times as many individual health problems, such as unwanted weight loss, fatigue, headaches, irritability, inability to concentrate and frequent colds, as low-income children whose families do not experience food shortages.

According to CCHIP, hungry children are more likely to be ill and absent from school.
The infant mortality rate is closely linked to inadequate quantity or quality in the diet of the infant's mother. In 1996, the infant mortality rate in the United States was 7.3 deaths per 1,000 live births. Black infants in the U.S. died at more than twice the rate of white infants, according to the National Center for Health Statistics.
[stats 10 years old. numbers increasedWA]

Stunting (low height for age) in children results from inadequate nutrition. According to the U.S. Public Health Service, the Surgeon General's 1990 goal of eliminating growth retardation of infants and children caused by inadequate diets was not met because significant numbers of low-income children continued to suffer retarded growth. In 1992, almost twice as many low-income children as would be expected were short for their age.

Iron-deficiency anemia in children can lead to adverse health effects such as *developmental and *behavioral disturbances that can affect children's ability to learn to read or do mathematics, and increased susceptibility to lead poisoning. Anemia remains a significant health problem among low-income children, according to the Centers for Disease Control.

Pregnant women who are undernourished are more likely to have low-birthweight babies. These infants are more likely to suffer *delays in their development and are more likely to have *behavior and *learning problems later in life.

Hungry children are less likely to interact with other people or explore or learn from their surroundings. This interferes with their ability to* learn from a very early age.

Hunger has a negative impact on children's ability to learn in school. School-aged children who are hungry cannot concentrate or do as well as others on the tasks they need to perform to learn the basics. Research indicates that low-income children who participate in the School Breakfast Program show an improvement in standardized test scores and a decrease in tardiness and absenteeism compared to low-income students who do not eat breakfast at school.

According to the Tufts University Center on Hunger, Poverty and Nutrition Policy, evidence from recent research about child nutrition shows that, in addition to having a detrimental effect on the cognitive developement of children, undernutrition results in lost knowledge, brainpower, and productivity for the nation.

Hunger and malnutrition *exacerbate chronic and acute diseases and speed the onset of degenerative diseases among the elderly. This not only leads to an unnecessary decrease in the quality of life for many older people, but also increases the cost of health care in the United States. National data for people ages 65 to 75 show that a majority are not consuming even two-thirds of the nutrients they need to stay healthy.

Hunger, and insecurity about whether a family will be able to obtain enough food to avoid hunger, also have an emotional impact on children and their parents. Anxiety, negative feelings about self worth, and hostility towards the outside world can result from chronic hunger and food insecurity.

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Physiologic effects of hunger on children:

http://www.emedicine.com/ped/topic1360.htm
Excerpt:
Background: The World Health Organization defines malnutrition as "the cellular imbalance between supply of nutrients and energy and the body's demand for them to ensure growth, maintenance, and specific functions." Malnutrition is globally the most important risk factor for illness and death, contributing to more than half of deaths in children worldwide. Protein-energy malnutrition (PEM), first described in the 1920s, is observed most frequently in developing countries but has been described with increasing frequency in hospitalized and chronically ill children in the United States.

In addition to PEM, children may be affected by micronutrient deficiencies, which also have a detrimental effect on *growth and *development. The most common and clinically significant micronutrient deficiencies in children and childbearing women throughout the world include deficiencies of iron, iodine, zinc, and vitamin A and are estimated to affect as many as two billion people. Although fortification programs have helped diminish deficiencies of iodine and vitamin A in individuals in the United States, these deficiencies remain a significant cause of morbidity in developing countries, while deficiencies of vitamin C, B, and D have improved in recent years. Micronutrient deficiencies and protein and calorie deficiencies must be addressed for optimal growth and development to be attained in these individuals.

Pathophysiology: Malnutrition affects virtually every organ system. Dietary protein is needed to provide amino acids for synthesis of body proteins and other compounds that have a variety of functional roles. Energy is essential for all biochemical and physiologic functions in the body. Furthermore, micronutrients are essential in many metabolic functions in the body as components and cofactors in enzymatic processes. In addition to the *impairment of physical growth and of *cognitive and other physiologic functions, *immune response changes occur early in the course of significant malnutrition in a child.

These immune response changes correlate with poor outcomes and mimic the changes observed in children with acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS). Loss of delayed hypersensitivity, fewer T lymphocytes, impaired lymphocyte response, impaired phagocytosis secondary to decreased complement and certain cytokines, and decreased secretory immunoglobulin A (IgA) are some changes that may occur. These immune changes predispose children to severe and chronic infections, most commonly, infectious diarrhea, which further compromises nutrition causing anorexia, decreased nutrient absorption, increased metabolic needs, and direct nutrient losses.

Early studies of malnourished children showed changes in the developing brain, including, a slowed rate of growth of the brain, lower brain weight, thinner cerebral cortex, decreased number of neurons, insufficient myelinization, and changes in the dendritic spines.More recently, neuroimaging studies have found severe alterations in the dendritic spine apparatus of cortical neurons in infants with severe protein-calorie malnutrition. These changes are similar to those described in patients with mental retardation of different causes. There have not been definite studies to show that these changes are causal rather than coincidental.

Other pathologic changes include fatty degeneration of the liver and heart, atrophy of the small bowel, and decreased intravascular volume leading to secondary hyperaldosteronism.
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[All red highlighted text for emphasis in above posts by Worried]

Hunger, poverty, homelessness hurts. It damages. It kills. It creates a terrible legacy for the future, with which today's generation of children (your children) will have to cope. Yet our President presents a new budget which cuts aid and benefits for the poor. In addition to an unprecedented massive national debt he will pass on for succeeding generations, he helps create social and more economic hardships for them.