Poverty trap keeps children poor, and a society poorer
Jeffrey Sachs says a society that invests generously in education and health for all children, rich and poor, is itself enriched, as Sweden shows
A country's economic success depends on the education, skills and health of its population. When its young people are healthy and well educated, they can find gainful employment, achieve dignity, and succeed in adjusting to the fluctuations of the global labour market. Yet many societies around the world do not meet the challenge of ensuring basic health and a decent education for each generation of children.
Some countries are simply too poor to provide decent schools. Parents themselves may lack adequate education, leaving them unable to help their own children beyond the first year or two of school, so that illiteracy and innumeracy are transmitted from one generation to the next.
Yet rich countries also fail. The United States, for example, cruelly allows its poorest children to suffer. Poor people live in poor neighborhoods with poor schools. Parents are often unemployed, ill, divorced, or even incarcerated. Children become trapped in a persistent generational cycle of poverty, despite the society's general affluence.
A remarkable new documentary film, The House I Live In, shows that America's story is even sadder and crueller than that, owing to disastrous policies. Starting around 40 years ago, America's politicians declared a "war on drugs", ostensibly to fight the use of addictive drugs like cocaine. As the film clearly shows, however, the war on drugs became a war on the poor, especially on poor minority groups.
What is crazy about this is that the US has missed the obvious point. To break the cycle of poverty, a country needs to invest in its children's future, not in the imprisonment of 2.3 million people a year, many for non-violent crimes that are symptoms of poverty.
The point is this: governments have a unique role to play to ensure that all young members of a generation have a chance.