The Rural Child

76 Presentation THE RURAL CHILD L.C. DORSEY, D.S.W. Executive Director Delta Health Center, Inc. Post Office Drawer 900 Mound Bayou, Mississippi 38762 Children born today in rural America begin life with numerous strikes against them. The quality of rural life is determined by distance, which affects access to health care. Rural children born in Mississippi are at greater risk of dying during the first year of life than are their urban counterparts in any other state. Rural African-American children in Mississippi are twice as likely to die during the first year of life than are their white counterparts. The rural child born today has less access to quality education, and in some states, such as Mississippi, will have difficulty receiving the higher education and skills needed to compete in the job market in the 21st century. The rural child is more often poor and bears the brunt of the spiritbending deprivation of rural poverty. Rural children today live in a world of dichotomous images. On the one hand, scenes from color television tease them about a life of bountiful materialism. On the other, the realities of the world around them, which often include inadequate housing, food, health care, and clothing, mock the televised images. The rural child is increasingly threatened with the problems of inner-city urban living: drugs, crime, gang violence. Rural children also face mounting environmental problems: agricultural chemicals in the air and water, and diminishing water tables caused by the proliferation of such water-based agricultural projects as catfish ponds, rice paddies, and increased irrigation of other crops. Rural children are at risk of never receiving adequate health care, competitive education, a livable income, or cultural enrichment. However, they are at greatest risk of neglect. Societal indifference to children and the importance of considering children as a priority were recently explored by well-docuJournal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved, Vol. 2, No. 1, Summer 1991 ___________________________________Dorsey________________________________77_ mented presentations at the World Summit for Children, where leaders from over 30 countries gathered to discuss the plight of 150 million children under five years of age who suffer from malnutrition, 30 million whose homes are the streets, and seven million children who live in refugee camps due to war or famine in their homelands.1 Our neglect of American children is the result of neither war nor famine, yet children rank low on our national priority list. On any given day in the United States, a child drops out of school every eight seconds, and every 26 seconds, a child runs away from home. A child is abused every 47 seconds, and a teen gives birth every 67 seconds. Every seven minutes, a child is arrested for a drug-related crime; a child is killed or injured every 36 minutes by a gun; and a staggering 135,000 children bring guns to school every day.2 Rural and urban leaders in America seem unwilling to address the underlying causes of these statistical profiles. In 1988, over 12 million children in the United States—one in five—were living in poverty, a condition long recognized as a cause of crime.3 AfricanAmerican and Hispanic children are among America's poorest citizens and are at great risk of becoming school dropouts, unemployed adults, victims of crime, and prison inmates.4 In addition, African-American children are at high risk of premature death as victims of homicide, accidents, and chronic disease. The number of American children living in poverty increased 23 percent between 1979 and 1988.3 Despite these alarming trends and social indicators, Congress has consistently failed to enact policies which would protect our children.1 At a time when the United States commands the technology to send men to the moon or to rapidly deploy hundreds of thousands of soldiers to a desert halfway across the world, the plight of our children is represented by these basic facts: • One in five children lives in poverty.3 • More than 12 million children and more than 14 million women of childbearing age have no health insurance.3 • The United States ranks 19th in the world in preventing infant deaths, behind Hong Kong, Spain, and war...