单选题
Eating Our Young
A. At Feltonville School of Arts and Sciences, a middle school in a poor neighborhood of Philadelphia, the school year began chaotically as budget cuts took effect. With the cuts meaning no school nurse or counselor, teachers fill the gaps, disrupting lessons to help students in distress. And the problems are not small: A boy was stabbed in the head with a pencil by a fellow student; a girl reported sexual assault by an uncle; another refused to speak after the brutal murder of a parent. And that was just the start of the school year. To make matters worse, budget cuts are hurting essential academic programs.
B. Across the United States, whether it's schools, food stamps, health care or entry-level jobs, the young are feeling the force of government cutbacks. This year, the young and vulnerable especially have been hit hard through automatic federal spending cuts to programs like Head Start, nutrition assistance, and child welfare. Financial crises in cities like Philadelphia and Detroit have meant another wave of school budget cutbacks. And the weak job market is hurting the youngest workers most, with youth unemployment more than double the national jobless rate.
C. This is not just an American problem. In Europe, too, rigid budgets are squeezing even basic education and health needs. As governments strain to cover budget shortfalls and
appease (缓解) debt fears, the young are losing out. 'We're underinvesting in our children,' said Julia Isaacs, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute and a child policy expert. 'Looking at future budget trends and the fact that Congress doesn't want to raise taxes, I can see children's programs continuing to be squeezed.'
D. That has implications for long-term economic growth. Cutting back on the young is like eating the seed corn: satisfying a momentary need but leaving no way to grow a prosperous future.
E. Is America overspending on its young? Public spending in the U.S. on children came to $12,164 per child in 2008, in current dollars, according to Kids' Share, an annual report published by the Urban Institute. Of that total, about a third came from the federal government and two thirds from state and local governments. Compare that to what we spend on the elderly, which primarily comes from the federal government. According to the Urban Institute, public spending on the elderly, in current dollars, was $27,117 per person in 2008, more than double the spending on children.
F. The trend is the same across the developed world. Julia Lynch, a political science professor at the University of Pennsylvania, studied 20 countries in the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development between 1985 and 2000 and found each spent more public funds on the elderly than on the young. But there were large differences among them. She found the most youth-oriented welfare states were the Netherlands, Canada, Australia, and in Scandinavia, while the most elderly-oriented were Japan, Italy, Greece, the U.S., Spain, and Austria. Somewhere in the middle were Germany, France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and Portugal.
G. Since the 1960s, federal spending on kids in the U.S. had been rising. That trend ended in 2011, when it dropped by $2 billion to $377 billion. A year later the figure plunged even more—by $28 billion. And spending on kids is planned to shrink further over the next decade. The Urban Institute has forecast that federal spending on kids will decrease from 1O percent of the federal budget today to 8 percent by 2023. That decline will occur even as federal spending is expected to increase by $1 trillion over the same period.
H. So, what is the federal government spending on? The budget can be roughly divided in the following way' 41 percent goes to the elderly and disabled portions of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid; 20 percent to defense; 10 percent to children; 6 percent to interest payments on the debt; and 23 percent to all other government functions. So if spending on kids does fall to 8 percent of the federal budget, and if interest payments rise along with higher interest rates over the same period, the federal government soon will be spending more on interest payments on the debt than on children.
I. What's driving government cutbacks? Much can be tied to fears of rising national debt. Paradoxically, advocates of debt reduction claim they are acting in the interest of the young; our debts seem be too heavy for the next generation. But in a supercompetitive global economy, nations investing today in the well-being and education of the young are writing the success stories of tomorrow.
J. Of course, the U.S. is investing in education. Roughly 65 percent of all public spending on kids is on education, and that's done primarily through state and local governments. But whether it's early childhood education, elementary, middle, or high schools, or universities and colleges, fewer resources are going into public education. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of teachers employed in kindergarten through year 12th grade, principals, superintendents and support staff, fell 2 percent between 2009 and 2011 while enrollment was steady.
K. The trend of putting fewer resources into public education is even more striking at the college level. Take the University of California for example: The average annual student charges for resident undergraduates have increased 275 percent in inflation-adjusted dollars since 1990 to 1991, while the university's average per-student expenditures have decreased 25 percent in inflation-adjusted dollars over the same period. So as California students pay much more for their education than their parents did, they're getting less.
L. Throughout the current downturn, unemployment has tailed the workforce. The hardest hit has been the young. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, unemployment for 16-to-24-year-olds in July was 16.3 percent. That compares with our national jobless rate of 7.3 percent. And there are also large numbers of the young who are underemployed. Gallup recently found that only 43.6 percent of Americans between the ages of 18 to 29 had a full-time job in June 2013.
M. High youth unemployment has implications for future earnings power. Economists who study the labor market have found that people who graduate from school without a job are likely to have lower wages in their career.
N. Even when the young land a job, investment in young workers isn't what it used to be. Training and education used to be part of any full-time job. Now, while global companies like Google advertise staff training, they tend to be the exception. Most companies have cut back over the years as corporate budgets are reduced and companies believe they can buy talent rather than grow it.
O. Whether because of government cutbacks or falling business investment, the young are facing tougher prospects than did their parents. And that raises irritating questions about the future. Starting with the youngest, without solid nutrition and basic health care, children can't become engaged and active students. Without resources to teach and a secure support system, public schools can't turn out educated, smart kids. With the costs of college rising beyond the reach of many, large groups are being left behind. And with entry-level jobs and training scarcer than ever, the human capital necessary to grow America's huge economy isn't being developed. The burden on today's young to support an aging society will grow—even as the resources they are provided don't.