Free Republic

In a breathless, Drudge Report-linked headline, the Washington Post reported last week that the “Majority of U.S. public school students are in poverty.” A Huffington Post piece by Rebecca Klein, published 12 minutes earlier, sported a similar headline, “More Than Half Of American Schoolchildren Now Live In Poverty.” The only problem with these headlines, and the stories beneath them, is that they aren’t true—not even close. Both pieces were triggered by a report from the Southern Education Foundation. In 2013, some 19.9 percent of children in America were in families with income at the poverty line or below—in 2014, the...

Giving more benefits to poor families will not address child poverty because too many irresponsible parents will spend it on alcohol or drugs, Iain Duncan Smith has warned. The Work and Pensions Secretary said parental addiction—not family income—had emerged as the main factor in determining a child’s life chances. He insisted that the last government’s strategy of spending more than £170 billion ($269 billion) in additional welfare payments had failed comprehensively. … Duncan Smith said Labour’s approach was a “vicious trap” and had left a “disturbing number” of people trapped in poverty. “There are around 100,000 people claiming sickness benefits...

Higher government spending on families is needed, the UN says The US has one of the highest rates of relative child poverty among the world's wealthiest countries, according to a report by the UN. The US, which is second only to Mexico in the UN children's agency report, is nonetheless one of few countries to see a recent decline in child poverty. In total, Unicef says up to 50 million children are living in poverty in rich nations and the figure is rising. Children in Nordic countries are best off, due to higher social spending. Unicef looked at 24 of...