The New York Times reports that, in Ohio, the proportion of students receiving free or reduced price school lunches has gone from 33% in 2005 to 43% last year, and the proportion of disadvantaged students living in the suburbs has similarly increased. One suburb has gone from having 6% of students getting free or reduced price lunches in 2005 to 22% today.
That’s a lot of kids experiencing substantial deprivation, and it should serve as a real slap in the face to all the Republican politicians and pundits who’ve claimed that unemployment insurance encourages people to stay home or that jobless workers are just lazy. This is what unemployment looks like: kids asking their teachers if they’re going to have to move—while really worrying that they’ll be homeless. It’s not uncommon and it’s hitting people who had been comfortably middle class.
A few houses down from the Kehlers on Deer Creek Drive, Bill Cameron, who has three children in high school, has been out of work for two years since losing his $119,000-a-year job as a manager at American Electric Power.
Over on Eastland Court, Grace Koo and her now ex-husband, who have two children at Wilson Hill, were both laid off and went from making about $160,000 a year to zero. Ms. Koo, who had been a store design and construction director for Limited Brands, attributed the divorce to many things gone wrong, including their sinking economic status. "For months, both of us were home together, unemployed," she said. "We’d fight over money."
On Buck Trail Lane, the Hymers went from $150,000 a year to zero. Their son, Zachary, a second grader, and their daughter, Kennedy, who’s in fourth, qualified for reduced-priced lunches. The Hislopes on Friend Street also qualified for reduced-priced lunches, but as things worsened — the father, Mike, a shop foreman, has been out of work two years — they qualified for free lunches.
Many of these families may never get back to the lifestyles they once had:
While several parents interviewed for this column eventually got jobs, no one was making anything near their old salaries. The Hislopes, Hymers and Kehlers are making half. Ms. Koo is making a third. Mrs. Hislope’s two daughters have been able to continue playing sports because their schools waived participation fees and the sports booster clubs helped. The Hislopes were one of 10 families that the middle school picked to give $300 toward Christmas.
Those are parents who may not be able to put their children through college as they once planned; kids who will grow up with a sense of uncertainty and fear, with the memory that homelessness can seem like a real possibility.
Wall Street opposes companies hiring. But what about you? Do you really want our economy doing this to children and their hard-working parents?