Poverty: the Killing Field

Poverty kills more children in the United States than any other single cause. Not traffic accidents. Not suicide. Not abusive parents. Not leukemia or heart disease. Poverty.

How does poverty kill? Infants die because they weigh too little at birth. One out of eight of those deaths might be prevented if women had adequate care during pregnancy. But too many pregnant women do not know what to eat, do not know that alcohol and tobacco are harmful, do not know when to seek medical help. Infants die because of handicaps that might have been prevented with proper prenatal care.

Poor children die when their parents, often women raising children alone, run out of money to pay for housing. A 1984 Department of Housing and Urban Development study shows that 22% of those living in shelters for the homeless are children. Poor children also suffer when parents are forced to leave them alone or in second-rate child-care centers when they go to work.

Children depend on parents for love and attention and much more--food, shelter and medical care. When parents can afford only love and attention, others must help. But once again this year the Reagan Administration gives more attention to protecting its defense budget than to protecting the defenseless. Under its budget, programs already in place to help children would be cut once again.

In its annual examination of the federal budget, the Children’s Defense Fund, a Washington-based research and advocacy group that focuses on child-oriented programs, has concluded that poor children and families will lose $5.2 billion in program assistance during the coming fiscal year. That figure includes $1.3 billion in reductions in student financial aid that probably should be detached from any study of direct detriments to health. But analysts at the fund list proposed cuts of $20 million in the popular supplementary food program for women, infants and children, $686 million in child nutrition programs and $1 billion in Medicaid. They point out that programs affecting children already have been cut $10 billion since President Reagan took office.

The Children’s Defense Fund wants to reverse the trend of Reagan budget cuts and to expand successful concepts such as Head Start and maternal and child health and nutrition programs. At meetings this week in Washington the group and its allies launched a campaign to try to reduce teen-age pregnancies below the 1983 figure of 525,000 and to encourage early prenatal care for all women. These efforts deserve every encouragement.

No one suggests that the government bring up babies. But neither should anyone want the government to turn its financial back on proven programs that have helped youngsters get a decent start in life. The federal deficit must be cut, but that can be done without producing a deficit in concern for America’s children.