Anyone with a hankering to solve the social ills of a country or a community would do well to master the game of dominoes first.
Last week an organization called Bread for the World released its annual report on "Causes of Hunger." The book measures hunger around the world, tracking whether nutrition has gotten better or worse from year to year and decade to decade.The short answer for the United States is that poverty and hunger have increased since the early 1980s. Last year, 26 million people used food pantries and soup kitchens that are affiliated with the Second Harvest national food bank network. (Many others, including most food banks and emergency pantries in Utah, are not counted because they aren't part of that
network.) Bread for the World found that 27 million Americans used food stamps in April 1993. One year later, that number was 28 million.
The bad news keeps growing. The report also says that in 1992, the inflation-adjusted median household income was $2,000 less than in 1989. Poverty is up. And a good portion of the poor work, but at low-paying jobs.
Are you beginning to see a pattern to these findings?
Social ills interconnect. You can't hop on your white horse and ride out to conquer gang violence without recognizing its relationship to other things, like education levels and poverty and family background. To really make a difference, you have to factor in alcohol and drug use, child abuse, self-esteem and more.
You can't tackle poverty either unless you recognize all the things that crash together there. Teenagers who don't complete school are more apt to become pregnant out of wedlock. Single parents - and especially very young, unskilled ones - are more likely to be poor. People without education are more apt to get low-paying jobs without benefits, which leads to poverty. And in case you missed it, poverty also increases the chances that a youth will drop out of school and thus get a low-paying job, which leads to unemployment and/or poverty...
People who are poor are less likely to have adequate health insurance than people who have high-paying jobs with good benefits. And having a medical crisis without insurance is a good way to become poor...
Children in poor families are often at risk for hunger. And hunger can make a child sick. Or make it hard to learn in school. And if you're sick, you'd better have insurance...
And if you're not learning in school, you're likely to drop out, which could lead to a low-paying job that severely limits your prospects for the present and the future...
Abuse drugs and alcohol and just see what happens to your employment and family situations. Not to mention how it affects your educational prospects. And without those...
"Causes of Hunger" puts cause-and-effect reality this way: "This report shows how hunger is one piece of a complex of interrelated social ills. Hungry people in the United States depend on food stamps, but many would not need food stamps if they had access to good jobs. Hungry people in Sudan need food aid, but if they were not living in a war zone, they would be able to plant and harvest crops needed to survive."
When someone says he wants to solve one of society's ills - whether he's speaking of gangs or hunger or homelessness or illiteracy - he'd better realize that it interlocks with other problems, like poverty.
Too often, our policymakers approach problems from one direction, at the expense of programs that address the interrelated issues.
Even the most inexperienced gardener knows you can't get rid of a rogue weed unless you kill its roots.