An increasing number of children are living in poverty. Children under 18 account for one third of the people in poverty in the United States. Statistics show that as at the end of 2007, the poverty rate of children younger than 18 was 18 percent, up from 17.4 percent in 2006. The poverty rate of children in single female-headed families reached as high as 43 percent (Income, poverty, and health insurance coverage in the United States: 2007, issued by the U.S. Census Bureau in August 2008, www.census.gov).According to a report released on October 14, 2008 by the Working Poof Families Project, one third of children live in low-income working families in 2006. In New York City, 41.6 percent of children in single-parent families live under the poverty line. At the end of 2007, 8.1 million children under 18, or 11 percent of the total, were uninsured, (Income, poverty, and health insurance coverage in the united states: 2007, issued by the U.S. Census Bureau in August 2008, www.census.gov).
The conditions of American students are worrisome. According to the U.S. Department of Education, more than 223,000 students were corporally punished in 2007. More than 200,000 public school students were punished by beatings during the 2006-2007 school year. In 13 states, more than 1,000 students were corporally punished per year (US: end beating of children in public schools, http://www.hrw.org/en/new/2008/08/19). Corporal punishment is legal in 21 states, according to a report released by American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights Watch on August 19, 2008. Alcohol abuse, gambling and drug use are pervasive on campus. Between 1999 and 2005, 157 college students died of alcoholism and 750,000 youths were addicted to drugs. A report on teen drug use issued by University of Michigan researchers on December 11, 2008 shows that 11 percent of eighth graders, 24 percent of tenth graders and 32 percent of 12th graders reported using marijuana in the prior year. Use of any illicit drug in the prior year was reported by 37 percent of 12th graders, 27 percent of 10th graders and 14 percent of eighth graders (The China Press, December 12, 2008).
There is no guarantee of children's security. The Children's Defense Fund said in its 2008 annual report that 3,006 children and teens died in 2005 from firearms. According to a survey by the Center for Children, Law and Policy, University of Houston, guns kill eight children and teens every day in America, which means the Virginia Tech shooting occurring every four days, or a child or teen being killed by guns every three hours (Children and teens firearm deaths increase for first time since 1994, http://www.childrenandthelawblog.come/2008/06/19). Each year about1.8 million children are reported lost. More than 3 million children are reported as victims of physical, sexual, verbal and emotional abuse, neglect, abandonment, and death (Facts you should know about violence against children, http://www.loveourchildrenusa.org). There are about 1,500 child-abuse fatalities every year (Abuse more a risk in non-traditional families, http://usatoday.com). Sexual abuse against children is serious. One in five children were reportedly sexually abused by the age of 18 (Facts you should know about violence against children, http://www.loveourchildrenusa.org). In a Texas polygamist sect, some girls as young as 12 were forced into marriage with middle-aged men (The China Press, September 23, 2008). A research by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that one fourth of teenage American girls, or 3 million, had a sexually transmitted disease (STD). African-American teenage girls were mostly severely affected. Nearly half of the young African-American women were infected with an STD, compared with 20 percent of young white women (Sing Tao Daily, March 12, 2008).