Ohio Gov. John Kasich evoked a lot of empathy for struggling Americans in his 2016 candidacy
announcement Tuesday, but he hasn't produced results for some of the neediest kids in his own state,
reports The Columbus Dispatch:
There are 53,000 more Ohio children living in poverty and the overall rate is higher than during the recession in 2008, according to 2015 Kids Count data released today by the Annie E. Casey Foundation.
The state’s child-poverty rate rose to 23 percent last year from 18 percent in 2008, the report showed. Ohio is 31st worst in the nation in child-poverty rate and 23rd overall, about the same as last year.
Ohio's economy is a decidedly mixed bag, with production and employment rates bouncing back faster than in many parts of the country. But the number of employed people still hasn't exceeded where the state started before the 2008 downturn and it has slowed in recent years.
Ohio's employment was down 2 percent from December 2007. Meanwhile, overall U.S. employment has recovered.
Head below the fold for more on who has been left behind.
But whatever Ohio's recovery entails, guess who's been left behind: kids of color.
Black children are three times as likely to live in poverty areas in Ohio, and twice as likely to be in a single-parent family, while Latino children are most likely to be in a household where the parent isn’t a high-school graduate.
“The data show that wide gaps remain between the living standards of many children of color and other children,” said Dawn Wallace-Pascoe, the Kids Count project manager at Children’s Defense Fund-Ohio.
Kasich, who bucked Republican party orthodoxy by expanding Medicaid in his state through Obamacare, spent a good deal of his
speech talking about those who felt the American Dream was out of reach for them.
"There are those who say 'Just work harder.' 'Pull yourselves up by your bootstraps.' I believe in all of that. Some people just don't have the fortune we have," he said. [...]
"The Lord wants our hearts to reach out to those who don't have what we have," he said. "That shouldn't be hard for America, that's who we are. Empathy. Don't be so quick too judge."
If that's indeed what he's aimed to do, he's failed the state's most needy children.