The latest news, analysis and opinion on the state of low-income women and their families from Spotlight on Poverty and Opportunity. For the week ending 4/29/2011: The U.S. has the highest percentage in the developed world of children being raised by a single person, typically a woman. A woman is charged with stealing $16,000 worth of education for her son after enrolling him in the wrong school district.
Spotlight on Poverty and Opportunity, a national foundation-led initiative, is excited to collaborate with The Women’s Foundation to bring you the latest news and analysis on women and poverty. Spotlight is the go-to site for news and ideas about fighting poverty.
Here’s this week’s news:
• The New York Times reports that Tanya McDowell, who is homeless, pled “not guilty” to stealing $16,000 worth of education for her son by enrolling him in her babysitter’s school district in a court case that has enraged many public advocates and stands as a reminder of educational inequalities in the U.S.
• A recently released OECD survey finds that the United States has the highest percentage of children in the developed world who are raised by a single parent, usually a single mom, increasing the likelihood that these children will grow up in poverty, according to the Boston Globe.
• In an op-ed piece in the Indianapolis Star, Dan Carpenter rebukes the state legislature for cutting off funding to Planned Parenthood-provided “medical services to poor women in the service of religious ideology,” stating that taxpayer money does not go toward abortions.
• Gov. Haley Barbour signed House Bill 999 into law, which requires local school boards to implement abstinence-only education into its local school district’s curriculum; a move that Mississippi hopes will lower its high teen pregnancy and STD rates, attributed by the CDC to poverty and lack of access to health education, as reported in the Clarion-Ledger.
• The Associated Press announces state health officials’ findings that maternal mortality is on the rise in California, with African-American, low-income, and less educated women being the most likely to experience deadly complications from childbirth.
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The Spotlight on Poverty and Opportunity team
