In a rather disturbing trend, statistics reveal that the number of children in Iowa living below or at the poverty line is growing.

According to the National Center for Children in Poverty, an average of 44,000 children in Iowa under the age of six lived in poverty between 1990-94.

The poverty line was $15,141 for a family of four in 1994.

While Iowa’s child-poverty rate of 17.5 percent in that age group was below the national average of 25 percent, the number of children living in poverty is growing.

National trends also show that the United States child-poverty rate is disturbingly high, with the American rate at least one-third higher than in any of the 12 other Western industrialized nations included in the study.

With our child-poverty rate growing both in Iowa and around the country, a serious examination of our welfare system and other avenues designed to supplicate (or at least address the issues of) the poor must be examined.

The stereotype of the young mother cranking out babies for extra government money is being illustrated as a fallacy as we come to grips with the reality that it is our children who are suffering.

The number of poor, both children and adult, will continue to increase, despite the fact that the earning power of the average American household has remained approximately the same for 40 years.

This fact is misleading, as what a household could earn on a single income in the 1950s and ’60s now requires two incomes in a modern household.

What will America do when three incomes are required to maintain our standard of living?

America must immediately address the issues of the poor, especially our children living in poverty.

Their futures, as well as ours, depend on it.