When Entitlements Hurt Children in Poverty
The US Census report for 2010 reports a significant rise in the number of people in poverty in 2009 as compared to 2008. I don’t think this is a surprise to most people. The New York Times reported in September 2011 that more people are living in poverty today than at any time in the 52 years that the bureau has been keeping records.
The increasing number of vacant office buildings and empty retail spaces in small towns across America are ominous signs that something is seriously wrong with our economy. It’s not just the high unemployment rate that is causing depression among Americans either.
There is an eerie sense that something is wrong with America, that we are on the decline. When our government stops counting people, the so-called “unemployed people who have quit looking for a job,” you know that doesn’t sound right.
Just take a look at this map, produced by the US Census report of 2010 on the poverty increases sorted by state. 
When our government extends unemployment benefits for years, instead of weeks, we are enabling famiies to remain in poverty for years, if not generations. Our government entitlements programs are ignoring the negatives of extending entitlements, at the cost of losing generations of young people to poverty.
When children see first hand that their parents have become dependent upon the goveernment for survival, and when they see how it is impacting their own personal lives at home, and in the neighborhood, and at school, it causes them to lose a sense of security. It affects their sense of self-worth.
Parents who raise their children on government entitlements are, through example, altering the child’s view of the desirability of upward social mobility. In other words, our government, in the process of extending entitlements over a period of years, is actually withdrawing attention from an equally important social process, namely, that of vertical social mobility.
It is easy to justify government acts of extending unemployment benefits as an act of helping a “needy soul.”
But is this necessarily true? One may well question whether money always renders real help. The negative effect upon the entire family to whom help is extended must be considered. Is the burden on their children truly lessened?
Are our government’s actions forcing future generations into poverty by encouraging parents to be slothful, to neglect frugality, and to disrespect the principle of self-sufficiency? Make no mistake about it; the children are impacted by the behaviors of their parents.
These are litigimate questions, not only from a sociological point of view, but also as to how our entitlement programs ultimately impact the future of this nation?
Well and good to feel the desire to help, lest the spirit of brotherhood and charity perish from our society, but equally important is the knowledge of what kind of help is really needed.
It might be that in handing out money without conditions, we are actually interfering, quite unwittingly in the natural order of things, the integral and unique human qualities of pride, dignity and gratitude for the ability to make it on our own.
I’m speaking of those intangible qualities that make human beings special in God’s world, our ability to adjust to any adverse circumstances which can be achieved in no other way than through some measure of suffering.
When we take away those intangibles, I believe we are taking away a part of a person’s dignity. Since the beginning of time, hard work and suffering has brought forth progress for both humans and society — however painful the experience may seem at the moment.
When society interferes with the natural state of humans, we are destroying the fabric of that which makes us unique, and when that happens, then society itself is in peril.
America can’t save the world and we cannot eliminate poverty. But we can do a lot more to save children born into impoverished families, and that is where our goverenment can make substantial progress in reducing poverty rates in the future. Focus more on what’s is best for the children, and then we can save future generations from repeating the cycle of poverty.
