Child Poverty as related to U.S. Economy

Introduction

Although priceless to their parents, enslaved children were economically worthless to owners until they entered the world of work. Owners or employees classified them as fractional hands—one-quarter, one-half, or three-quarter hands—until they performed chores ordinarily expected of able-bodied adults. The value of children's work was inestimable in actual dollars but could not be overlooked. Examples abound: One slaveholder observed the work of her six-year-old house servant and wrote, “You have no idea how useful she is. . . . I could hardly get along without her.”1 In 1859 the Wake County, North Carolina, planter Alonzo T. Mial noted that it was “mostly women and small boys and girls” who produced a bountiful crop. Physical development, intellectual maturation, and endurance were more significant than chronological age in determining when children began toiling in homes, in mills, in shops, in fields, or on docks (Cleveland, pp.47).

According to the Texan Jacob Branch, “Us chillen start to work soon's us could toddle. First us gather firewood.” In all probability Branch was referring to gathering wood chips or kindling used in igniting fires but not gathering much heavier cordwood. That he began working at an early age is of greater significance than the weight of the wood he fetched. Like Branch, Mingo White claimed that he too began working at an early age. “I weren't nothing but a child endurin' slavery,” he said, “but I had to work the same as any man (Connell, pp.14).” White's comment suggests that he was young chronologically but sufficiently mature physically to complete more meaningful jobs than picking up wood chips or gathering twigs. That enslaved children began working at early ages is undisputed; however, Frederick Douglass added depth when he wrote, “We were worked in all weather. It was never too hot or too cold; it could never rain, blow hail, or snow, too hard for us to work in the field.” According to the slave-born autobiographer, “Work, work, work, was scarcely more the order of the day than of the night.” The needs of persons who owned or hired slaves determined which chores they completed and when (Corsaro, pp.12).

Causes of Poverty

Children may be contributing to family poverty because they are a drain on family resources; however, research shows that in countries with more family-friendly policies, disposable income falls only moderately when families have children. In 2007, Wendy Sigle-Rushton, London School of Economics, and Jane Waldfogel, Columbia University School of Social Work, used data from seven Western, industrialized countries to compare gaps in gross and disposable family income between families with and without children. They found that differences in earnings and labor market participation of women were major drivers in the gap in gross and disposable income; taxes and government transfers also narrowed the differences (Daly, pp.34). This means that poverty rates are strongly related to parents—especially mothers—having access to the labor force, the wages they receive, and government policies aimed at assisting families in obtaining and holding decent-paying, stable employment.

Many studies have ...