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CHILD WATCHÔ COLUMN
THE NEED FOR A LIVING WAGE
By Marian Wright Edelman
Tabitha and her husband are raising three sons, ages 8, 6, and 20 months, near Tabitha and her husband are among the two million Americans who know that the minimum wage isn’t always a living wage. Throughout October, people are joining together across our country to hold Living Wage Days worship services and community events to bring attention to the plight of the working poor. The days of action were sponsored by the Let Justice Roll Living Wage Campaign, a partnership of more than 80 faith, labor, and community groups formed to mobilize support among Americans for raising the minimum wage at the state and federal levels. October’s events were the latest in a series of similar events Let Justice Roll has mounted to educate people about the tremendous challenges low wage working Americans face and what must be done to bring about change. They’ve played a leading role in recent state minimum wage increases in Why does a living wage matter? Without it, too many Americans are finding that having a job and working hard are still not enough to keep them from being close to or in poverty. Poverty matters deeply. Poverty kills. It also maims and stunts the growth and eclipses the dreams of hundreds of millions of children around the world. Here at home, many Americans don’t realize that Wages are tied to workers of course, but their children are always directly affected. A childhood spent in poverty can have negative impacts on an individual’s entire life. The multiple barriers associated with poverty build on one another and unjustly deprive children of the opportunity to reach their full potential as parents, employees, and citizens. The Children’s Defense Fund has identified poverty as the largest driving force behind the Cradle to Prison PipelineÒ crisis, which leads too many children to marginalized lives, prison, and premature deaths. Children in families with annual incomes below $15,000 are 22 times more likely to be abused or neglected than children in families with annual incomes of $30,000 or more, and children in poor families are more likely than nonpoor children to attend failing schools, get inadequate health care, live in unsafe housing, and suffer poor nutrition. Children who grow up in poverty are also more likely to become teen parents and, as adults, to earn less, to be unemployed more frequently, and to raise their own children in poverty. What can we do? CDF believes one solution is to support policies that make work pay, including raising the minimum wage to help ensure that workers at the bottom of the earnings scale are not left behind and expanding the Earned Income Tax and Child Tax Credits making the latter fully refundable. And all poor working families need to be informed about and helped to get current tax refunds and benefits for which they are eligible. I’m grateful for Let Justice Roll’s Living Wage Campaign and others who are helping all Americans see the too invisible working parents who constitute the majority of the poor today.
Marian Wright Edelman is President and Founder of the Children's Defense Fund and its Action Council whose Leave No Child Behind® mission is to ensure every child a Healthy Start, a Head Start, a Fair Start, a Safe Start, and a Moral Start in life and successful passage to adulthood with the help of caring families and communities.
Jodi Reid Children's Defense Fund Media Associate (202) 662-3602 Fax: (202) 662-3550 Be a voice for children! Visit CDF's website at: www.childrensdefense.org.
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