We don't seem to care about our children

It's stunningly immoral

Data point after data point seems to prove that our country simply doesn’t care about our children. While we monitor the ups and downs of the stock market on a daily basis we seem to spend little time monitoring the safety and well-being of our kids. And that’s stunningly immoral.

Some disturbing numbers

Below are just a few of these heart wrenching data points:

1. From 2007 to 2022, infants (<1 year old) in the US were 1.78 times more likely to die than infants in the more well-off developed countries (OECD18)

2. From 2007-2022 1- to 19-year-olds were 1.80 times more likely to die in the US than in the OECD18 nations

3. A child in the US in 2023 was 15% to 20% more likely to have a chronic condition compared with a child in 2011.

4. From 2007-2008 to 2021-2023, childhood obesity rates for 2- to 19-year-olds in the U.S. significantly increased from 17.0% to 20.9%

5. About one in five children (17%) in our country are food insecure

6. Firearms contributed to the deaths of more children ages 1-17 years in the U.S. than any other type of injury or illness. The child firearm mortality rate has doubled in the U.S. from a recent low of 1.8 deaths per 100,000 in 2013 to 3.7 in 2021. Other developed countries aren’t even close to our firearm chaos.

7. At least one in seven children experienced child abuse or neglect in the past year in the United States. In 2021, 1,820 children died of abuse and neglect in the United States.

The bottom line

In the 1960s, children in the US were dying at about the same rate as in countries with similar incomes, but that started to change in the 1970s. The US now has about 54 excess child deaths per day compared with the other OECD18 wealthy countries.

Something is horribly wrong. And our country should be ashamed.