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Children's Defense Fund says an unfathomable one in seven children in the U.S. lives in poverty. In this land of the free and home of the brave, a child is abused or neglected every 54 seconds. As WalletHub researchers pointed out (because they are a financial website, after all), even if you aren't moved by the plight of that many children living an American nightmare, perhaps you will be moved to act by the $592 billion in lifetime economic costs from just one year's worth of child maltreatment cases.
And the thing is, those are the averages. In West Virginia and Ohio, the numbers are even more grim.
In WalletHub's "States with the Most Underprivileged Children" report, West Virginia ranks second (only Mississippi is worse), and Ohio ranks 16th.
Over and over, for decades, politicians in our region have sailed into office shouting about the importance of children and families, only to drop the mask in favor of whatever backward-looking, control-grabbing policy is in front of them at the moment.
And our children suffer mightily.
Ohio ranks 15th for worst socio-economic welfare, 15th for worst children's health and 21st for worst education.
West Virginia ranks third for worst socio-economic welfare, third for worst children's health, 11th for worst education, first for the most children in foster care, fifth for the percentage of children in households with below-poverty incomes and fourth for the percentage of maltreated children.
"West Virginia has the fourth-highest share of maltreated children in the nation, along with the highest share of 9th-12th-graders who felt sad or hopeless almost every day for two consecutive weeks during the past year," wrote the report's authors. "This depression may also explain why West Virginia has the fourth-highest share of kids ages 16 to 19 who are neither enrolled in school nor employed."
In states where generational poverty and hopelessness is combined with a willful disregard on the part of the political class for building a future that looks even a little different from the extraction-and-exploitation era, these numbers are not the surprise they should be.
Though we've become numb to them, as if they’re simply the way things have always been, we MUST be shocked out of complacency.
The folks in Charleston and Columbus have been bent lately on clawing as much control for themselves in the capitols. That control has not been accompanied by a desire to expand and diversify our states' economies, or improve quality of life in a way that prevents so much suffering for our youngest residents.
In November, voters will not forget.