E-mail a friendDoug Nelson
airdate September 28, 2004
Doug Nelson advocates on behalf of vulnerable families. Since 1990, he's been president of The Annie E. Casey Foundation, which works to build better futures for disadvantaged kids. Nelson previously served as deputy director of the Center for the Study of Social Policy and assistant secretary of the Wisconsin Department of Health and Social Services. He's written on a range of domestic social policy issues and earned a Pulitzer nomination in '76.
Doug Nelson
Tavis: Doug Nelson is the president of the Annie E. Casey Foundation, a foundation that helps millions of disadvantaged children in the U.S. Prior to that, he served as the deputy director of the Center for the Study of Social Policy. Doug Nelson joins us tonight from the city of Baltimore. Mr. Nelson, nice to have you on, sir.
Doug Nelson: Nice to be with you, Tavis.
Tavis: You've been doing this report now 15 years. What do we learn in terms of top-lining this, what do we learn about kids in America as we speak?
Nelson: Well, what we learned is that on most of the things that tell us how well our kids are doing in this country, looking over the last seven or eight years, things are improving.
On ten of the indicators that we use to measure the well-being of American children, eight of them are getting better, and they're getting better in most states. That's the good news. That's news, I think, propelled by a fairly decent economy in the late nineties, some thoughtful public policy, and lots of states in the late nineties, important reforms like the earned income tax credit that put a floor under the well-being of lots of families with children. That makes us, I think, all the more convinced that we can do well by our kids and by our families.
The bad news, though, or let me say, the alarming news is that despite a decade of progress, when we look at Americans between the ages of 18 and 24, there are about four million young adults in this country who are neither in school, they're not in the labor force, they're not in the military. And the more closely we look at these four million young Americans, the more convinced we are that they are at enormous risk of not contributing their share in the future, not earning their share in the future, and not being in a position to raise a well-provided-for generation of children that they're likely to bear.
These are kids at risk, young people at risk, and in a day and age, Tavis, when this country can't afford to lose a single young American in order to maintain our competitiveness globally, in order to support an aging population, and in order to build a fairer and healthier America, we're really letting four million kids make the transition from adolescence to adulthood without the probability of success as adults. That's a real issue for all of us.
Tavis: Let me talk more in a moment about those alarming numbers, about the bad-news part of this equation, but I want to go back to the good-news part of the equation, where you suggested that on eight of your indicators, the verdict is that things are getting better for kids in America. I want to come back to that, because that doesn't seem to square with what we get in the media all the time about children in America. Indeed, we talk about failing schools. We talk about youth violence. We hear about kids and drugs. I mean, I'm just trying to figure out how you guys found good news about our kids juxtaposed against what we typically hear about American kids, which usually ain't such good news.
Nelson: Yeah. Well, you know, I think, like lots of things about the United States, there are two generations of kids coming up. One, and I'm happy to say that they're the majority of our children, the majority of our youth who are, in fact, in successful trajectories toward adulthood. They're doing OK in school. They attend good schools. They have high aspirations and substantial supports and opportunities. That's most of our kids and the fraction of kids who are succeeding is slightly improving over this last decade. That's where the good news comes from. That should not, however, obscure the fact that not only are a significant fraction of kids, I'd say about 15% of all our kids are being left behind, but maybe being left farther behind. That is the gap between those who are advantaged while the advantaged sector's growing a bit. The disadvantaged are maybe even less likely to make their way in the future.
Tavis: So the gap between the have-gots and have-nots is growing.
Nelson: I think that that's right, and even if the have-nots group as a whole is shrunken a bit in the 1990s, we've gotta be concerned about whether their prospects have shrunk as well, that have-not group.
Tavis: All right, so since we're in election season, I know that the Annie E. Casey Foundation is not politically partisan, but let's assume that Mr. Bush and Mr. Kerry are watching right now. One of these guys is going to be the next president of the United States. For those young kids, those young Americans who are at risk, what does Annie E. Casey suggest that the next president do to shrink that gap between the have-nots and the have-gots?
Nelson: Well, the most important two things that we can do as a matter of national policy is we simply have to insist at the local, state and national level, that we lose fewer kids from the ranks of the high school graduates in this country. A good 10% to 15% of our young people are not graduating from high school. The percentages are larger for African American kids, much larger for Hispanic kids. These are kids that we're guaranteeing are at risk, vulnerable, and not likely to succeed as young adults and as future citizens of the country.
We simply can't afford... Whatever else we debate about educational policy in this country, making sure that 90%, 95% of all our children graduate from high school, that is a national priority, and if we fail to do that, we're going to continue, regardless of all the other details, to leave children behind. That's one.
The second is that we've really gotta be concerned about putting support under young families, particularly under young working families. Child care, access to healthcare, and decent incentives and tax policy that allows a young family, a young, low-income, working family to build some stability, to get some assets, to develop, in fact, real financial security. That is the best predictor of how well their children are gonna fare. And unless we do a better job of making sure that all young families have the supports, the opportunities, and incentives to succeed, we will continue to have this left-behind fragment of our population, which we can't afford.
Tavis: You've given me, and I thank you for it, your assessment of what we can do in the public policy arena, that is to say from the government's point of view. But the Annie E. Casey Foundation, as you well know, obviously, is a philanthropic organization, and I wonder what you think the role of philanthropy is these days to assist government, to assist corporate America in resolving so many issues that the American people face.
Nelson: The role that at least the Casey Foundation tries to play--and I think increasingly philanthropy is playing this role--is to help the public sector. Whether it's the public education system, the child welfare system, the welfare system, the juvenile justice and criminal justice system, we do a lot in those public systems with young people and with fragile families that turns out not to be as effective. It doesn't garner the results that we want. It doesn't produce the kind of positive outcomes for kids and families that we want.
A role that the Casey foundation tries to play is identify from around the country the best practices, the most cost-effective interventions, the wisest practices and program designs, and encourages not only the charitable sector to support those, but encourages those to become a model for what public education does, what the child welfare system does, so that all of the children and families touched by state and federal systems are really touched more effectively, more efficiently, and with better results.
Tavis: I assume, speaking of better results, I assume that these better results from this recent Kids Count study would suggest to me that you are hopeful about the future of America's kids.
Nelson: I am absolutely convinced that in our most at-risk kids there resides an enormous amount of talent, an enormous amount of energy and potential, and I'm confident and optimistic, and at the same time, I feel urgent about this. I think we know enough to untap that potential, to liberate it, and the real question is whether we've got the will in this country to apply what we know to more kids more deeply and more urgently so that we simply do not leave so many kids without the support and opportunities and incentives they need.
Tavis: I'm out of time. I assume that for people who want to get more on the Kids Count survey, your web site has information available?
Nelson: Absolutely. It's aecf.org.
Tavis: Aecf.org. It is the 15th annual Kids Count report put out by the Annie E. Casey Foundation. A fine report, and you want to read more about it, go to that web site, aecf.org. Doug Nelson, it's always nice to have you on. Take care of yourself.
Nelson: Thanks, Tavis.
Tavis: My pleasure. That's our show for tonight. As always, you can catch me on the radio on NPR, National Public Radio. I will see you back here next time on PBS. Until then, thanks for watching. Good night from Los Angeles, and as always, keep the faith.
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