Unicef has released its report (pdf) on child poverty and the news isn’t good for either the US or Germany:
The report by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) released in
Brussels Wednesday (Mar. 2) says up to 50 million children are living
in poverty in rich nations, and the proportion of poor children has
increased in 17 of the world’s richest countries since the early 1990s.
In Germany the percentage of children living in poverty more than doubled since 1990 to about 10%, so that at least 1.5 million German children are living below the poverty threshold. Die Zeit analyzes the statistics:
Alarmierend aber ist die überdurchschnittliche Armut von Kindern
Alleinerziehender und aus Zuwandererfamilien“, sagte Reinhard
Schlagintweit, Vorsitzender von Unicef Deutschland. Das Kinderhilfswerk
der Uno fordert deshalb die Bundesregierung auf, mehr zu tun, „um ein
Auseinanderdriften der Gesellschaft zu verhindern.“ Schließlich gäbe es
einen klaren Zusammenhang zwischen der Höhe staatlicher Aufwendungen
und der Kinderarmut. Diese sind zwar in Deutschland relativ hoch, doch
fließen die Sozialausgaben vorwiegend in Altersvorsorge und das
Gesundheitssystem.
That this scourge of child poverty remains largely hidden from view was made clear by the heartbreaking case of seven-year old Jessica who starved to death in a Hamburg apartment. Of course, nobody knew anything about this, erphschwester is justifiably outraged by the callousness of a society – especially Jessica’s relatives and neighbors – who could allow this to happen.
At least the German press has been reporting aggressively on the UNICEF report – Google News has over 90 entries from Germany. There are virtually no articles in the US press; Americans have become desensitized to child poverty. But the statistics are appalling – the rate in the US is more than twice that of Germany: 21.9% . "Compassionate Coservatism" means taking away resouces from children and funding preemptive wars and tax cuts for the wealthy. But Americans can be proud of the fact that we beat out Mexico again – by four percentage points. One happy piece of news: at least we’ve stopped executing kids.
