Is This How We Should Judge Society?

   by: Spencer Hixon

 "U-S-A! U-S-A! We're number 1! We're number 1!"

    It's a pretty common thing to hear nowadays. Has been for decades, and I can't exactly blame people for believing that the United States is the best country in the world. Americans have made so many advances in technology and science and have controlled the flow of culture that the world would be an indistinguishable place otherwise. From literature, movies, and fashion to feats of industry, business, and medicine (and so much more), this country has made an indelible mark on nearly every life.

    But we are not without our problems.

    The United States is indeed number 1 in terms of money (1), Olympic medals (2), and military spending (3). But we are also number 1 in incarcerations AND incarceration rates (4), mass shootings in developed countries (5), guns, guns per capita (6), and school shootings (7). We appear to be a very violent people. But believe it or not, I'm not here to talk about guns.

    We have other problems, such as the 582,000 US citizens who are homeless (8), the 37.9 million US citizens who are in poverty (9), and fact that 6.7% of US citizens use illegal drugs (10). We are the most prodigious consumers of drugs in the entire world.

    But this article isn't about those things either. Then again, it is about all of them.

    When we are trying to determine how well a country is doing, perhaps the best place to look is to its foster care.

    The foster system in the US is, to put it mildly, broken (11). It's something no one seems to want to deal with. "Adopt, don't abort" is a nice sentiment, but if you do nothing to improve the adoption system then you are contributing to a host of problems in a feeble effort to deflect blame and claim some higher moral ground. Dumping kids in foster care is a terrible thing to be doing when the system seems designed to put them out on the street.

    Few people, it seems, are aware of the facts. I would like to change that a little.

• Over 50% of the homeless in the US were once fostered
• 40-50% of kids in foster care end up homeless within 18 months of aging out
• 65% of foster kids don't have a place to stay when they age out (12)
• Almost 20% of our inmates were once fostered
• 70% of foster kids who age out are arrested before they turn 26 (13)
• Foster kids are 3 times more likely to drop out of High School. Only half finish school
• Only 3-4% of fostered kids graduate from college with a 4-year degree. (14) This is in contrast to 36% of the general population
• Foster kids are 42% more likely to die than non-fostered kids (20)

    These do not equal a working foster system. What's worse, a disproportionate number of foster kids are black (15). Children of color in the fostering system wait longer to find a home than white kids do (16). They are more often abused.(17)

    So let's follow the conveyor belt of the fostering system.

    A child, through no fault of their own, ends up in foster care. In the first year, she lives in 4 different homes. (18)The child suffers abuse at the hands of their foster families and even other foster kids, but she isn't believed and nothing is done about it. Due to ever-changing family situations, neglect, or the fact that she ends up getting pregnant as a teen, she drops out of high school. After 15 or 20 homes (19), the child is too old for the foster system and is put out on the street. With no shelter, no money, no skills, no GED, and no family, she becomes homeless. In order to survive, she steals, turns to crime, turns to drugs and is subsequently arrested. Her child is born, but taken by the state due to neglect and put into the foster system. Chances are high that she will die young.

    The foster system is self-perpetuating. It is often poorly regulated. It contributes to many other problems in society. Yet we ignore the plight of these kids. Why?

    There are under 400,000 kids in our foster system right now. The government spends only about $15 billion on them, coming out to around $15,000 per foster kid per year. That is more than the US government claims makes someone poor (21) in most states. Yet that money clearly isn't being used well.

    This is a problem we can solve. It might take time, but increasing our spending on foster care, decreasing the amount of money lost by the system, adopting federal regulations, and providing housing and education for a certain number of years after aging out would do amazing things for these kids. In an ideal world, healthcare would be free for them for life, they would have a universal basic income, and a college education wouldn't cost them a dime. We obviously do not live in an ideal world.

    By this rubric, how we are handling our kids in foster care, the US is far from number 1. Yet, if we bothered to care and tried to solve this problem, it would improve the lives of every citizen and make this country stronger and better. We're the USA. We can do this.

    The catch is, do we want to?