aGameOfThrones
02-16-2012, 02:22 PM
But 15-year-old Josh, as a boy who lives in the South in a household headed by a single woman, is characteristic of the exploding numbers of children in the USA living in poverty — numbers exacerbated by the recession that has pushed many families into poverty for the first time.
Twenty miles away, Kenneth Moody, 70, and his wife, Margie, 65, say they, too, are struggling, especially because of high out-of-pocket medical bills. They stay off the poverty rolls because of the $2,000 they receive from Social Security every month. They pay more than $300 a month for prescription drugs but say their medical costs would be even higher if they didn't have Medicare.
Struggling in Randolph County
Jessica Stevens, 22, grew up poor. She says she can't remember a time in her life when her family didn't receive public assistance of some kind.
Now a single mother of two children, she receives public assistance in the form of food stamps and a $272 check every month from the state of North Carolina.
She says she doesn't want the same fate for her 3-year-old daughter, Kmarie, and 1-year-old son, Necota.
"We struggled for a long time," she says of her upbringing. "I don't want my kids to be like that."
After a rocky start — she's getting a divorce from her husband, and she and her children have bounced around different homes — she's attending a community college with financial help from the state and Randolph County. She lives with her mother and brother in a threadbare three-bedroom house where she shares a room with her children that has no door.
She hopes her circumstances — and by extension, her children's — will improve when she graduates next year with a degree in accounting and business administration.
For now, though, her children are among the increasing numbers who are poor in Randolph County.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/story/2012-02-16/child-senior-poverty/53107636/1
Twenty miles away, Kenneth Moody, 70, and his wife, Margie, 65, say they, too, are struggling, especially because of high out-of-pocket medical bills. They stay off the poverty rolls because of the $2,000 they receive from Social Security every month. They pay more than $300 a month for prescription drugs but say their medical costs would be even higher if they didn't have Medicare.
Struggling in Randolph County
Jessica Stevens, 22, grew up poor. She says she can't remember a time in her life when her family didn't receive public assistance of some kind.
Now a single mother of two children, she receives public assistance in the form of food stamps and a $272 check every month from the state of North Carolina.
She says she doesn't want the same fate for her 3-year-old daughter, Kmarie, and 1-year-old son, Necota.
"We struggled for a long time," she says of her upbringing. "I don't want my kids to be like that."
After a rocky start — she's getting a divorce from her husband, and she and her children have bounced around different homes — she's attending a community college with financial help from the state and Randolph County. She lives with her mother and brother in a threadbare three-bedroom house where she shares a room with her children that has no door.
She hopes her circumstances — and by extension, her children's — will improve when she graduates next year with a degree in accounting and business administration.
For now, though, her children are among the increasing numbers who are poor in Randolph County.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/story/2012-02-16/child-senior-poverty/53107636/1