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From Poverty to Prosperity: A National Strategy to Cut Poverty in Half |
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The lost potential of children raised in poor households, the lower productivity and earnings of poor adults, the poor health, increased crime, and broken neighborhoods all hurt our nation. One in eight Americans now lives in poverty. In February of 2006, the Center for American Progress convened a diverse group of national experts and leaders to examine the causes and consequences of poverty in America and make recommendations for national action. Poverty imposes enormous costs on society in the lost potential of children, lower worker productivity and earnings, poor health, increased crime, and broken neighborhoods. They do not count all of the other costs that poverty might impose on the nation, such as environmental impacts and much of the suffering of the poor themselves. In 1999, The U.K. committed itself to ending child poverty by 2020, with interim goals of cutting child poverty by one quarter and one-half. In 2005, one-fourth of all workers (24 percent) were in jobs for which year-round, full-time work would not pay enough to keep a family of four above the poverty threshold. Twenty-nine percent of working women and twenty percent of working men were in such jobs.
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