American RadioWorks is the national documentary unit of American Public Media. ARW is public radio's largest documentary production unit; it creates documentaries, series projects, and investigative reports for the public radio system and the Internet. ARW is based at St. Paul, Minnesota, with staff journalists in Washington, D.C., Duluth, M.N., San Francisco, C.A., and Durham, N.C.
Transcript of a segment of a May 1999 American Radio Works program called “The Forgotten Fourteen Million.” When this story was broadcast 20% of American children lived in poverty. In 2014, according “Basic Facts About Low-Income Children” published in February 2014 by the National Center for Children in Poverty the rate had grown to 23%. According to their website accessed June 3, 2019 the rate is 21%. In 30 years the rate has remained surprisingly, at least to me, stable.
The proportion of children growing up in poverty is more than twice as high in the United States as in Germany, France, or Scandinavia. The U.S. government spends billions on anti-poverty programs, but does not provide the kind of comprehensive safety net that's common in Western Europe. Some observers look for the explanation in American culture. Others say the answer can be found in the political culture of Washington, D.C.
Washington can give short shrift to the interests of low-income families – and get away with it – in part because so much of the public is misinformed, says [Larry Aber, who at the time was head of the National Center for Children in Poverty at Columbia University]. For instance, he points to that widespread stereotype of the poor as shiftless and unemployed.
"But the majority of poor children have parents who do work,", he says "and the issue is how to make work pay."
