{"id":68084,"date":"2015-10-21T10:28:25","date_gmt":"2015-10-21T15:28:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=68084"},"modified":"2015-10-13T13:31:52","modified_gmt":"2015-10-13T18:31:52","slug":"578yr-to-end-child-poverty-forever-whats-the-hold-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2015\/10\/21\/578yr-to-end-child-poverty-forever-whats-the-hold-up\/","title":{"rendered":"$578\/yr to end child poverty. What’s the hold up?"},"content":{"rendered":"

At Family Inequality<\/a>, sociologist Phil Cohen argues that it would be relatively easy\u00a0for Americans to raise the funds to end child poverty. All it would take is an average of $578 per non-poor family per year. Taxed on a sliding scale, the rich would pay more and the middle and working class less. This is what the tax would look like (more rich on the left, less rich on the right):<\/p>\n

\"eliminate<\/a><\/p>\n

Thinking that ending poverty for children is “hard” is part of the problem, he argues.<\/p>\n

Americans tend to think of poverty as a giant, intractable problem, combining intergenerational dynamics, complex policy tradeoffs, conflicting cultural values, and \u201cpersonal responsibility\u201d (not to mention genetics<\/a>).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Ideas like these are a resource for\u00a0conservatives who don’t want to help poor families or don’t want to help badly enough to let it come out of their pockets. They can argue complexity and shrug. But Cohen wants us to recognize that it would be easy.<\/p>\n

And, if it’s so easy, then the persistence of child poverty means that we just don’t want to do it.<\/p>\n

He concludes:<\/p>\n

Some people say the Pope should stick to religious matters, and not speak about politics. Some people also say a social scientist should stick to scientific analysis, and not make moral demands. You can ignore my moralizing, as long as you understand the fact that child poverty is a choice we\u00a0make with our policies. Eliminating child poverty does not require restructuring American families, mass contraception campaigns, or a new ethos of shame<\/a>. It just costs a little money.<\/p><\/blockquote>\nLisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em>American Hookup<\/a>, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em>Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a>.\u00a0You can follow her on Twitter<\/a> and Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At Family Inequality, sociologist Phil Cohen argues that it would be relatively easy\u00a0for Americans to raise the funds to end child poverty. All it would take is an average of $578 per non-poor family per year. Taxed on a sliding scale, the rich would pay more and the middle and working class less. This is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":68085,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-68084","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2015\/09\/61.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68084","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68084"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68084\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":68089,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68084\/revisions\/68089"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68085"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68084"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68084"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68084"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}