My new column on the second-round effects in the developing world of Covid-19, which are likely to be greater than the direct effects: A Cataclysm of Hunger, Disease and Illiteracy nytimes.com/2020/09/16/opi… Sadly, the rich world is myopic, self-absorbed and stingy.
Consider: The @UN estimates that there will be an extra 13 million child marriages because of Covid. That children will go blind because Vitamin A distribution is suspended. That polio eradication is set back, AIDS medication sometimes unavailable, and malaria control disrupted.
The great triumph of the modern world has been huge gains over the last 30 years against global poverty, illiteracy and child mortality. That long trend is now reversed, with a surge in extreme poverty this year.
In poor countries, the biggest impact of Covid is not the deaths of those infected. Rather it's the deaths of those who never had the virus but die of malnutrition or measles or diarrhea or TB, or who are forced to drop out of school or marry as children, because of this crisis.
There are no easy solutions, but the rich countries could help. Instead they are refusing to contribute much to a UN emergency response (only 25% raised), thus exacerbating the crisis -- and in the long term this will bite us in the butt. nyti.ms/3ksjfQe
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I take on what I think is a blind spot for many of my fellow liberals: the benefits to children, on average, of growing up in two-parent households. We try so hard not to be judgmental that we don't fully acknowledge the costs of growing family breakdown. nytimes.com/2023/09/13/opi…
Almost 30% of American kids now live with a single parent or no parent--highest in the world. And the blunt reality is that in the US, a household headed by a single mom is five times as likely to live in poverty as a married couple household.
You can't have a serious conversation about poverty in America without discussing race. But you also can't have such a conversation if you ignore the crisis of family structure in working-class America.
Life expectancy in Mississippi is now shorter than in Bangladesh. Infants are 70% more likely to die in the US than in other wealthy countries. Newborns in India and Venezuela have a longer life expectancy than newborn Native Americans. What's wrong? nytimes.com/2023/08/16/opi…
It's not just mortality. What struck me in reporting this story was the amputations: The US is a world leader in toe, foot and leg amputations (150,000/year) because of poorly managed diabetes, leading to suffering, disability and early death.
This is the third in my series, "How America Heals," and my focus is not just on the tragedy but above all on how to fix it. I deeply believe that journalism should offer more in the way of solutions, and I explore some in this essay. No. 1: expand Medicaid.
For all the grim news in the world, I argue that historians may look back and say that the most important thing happening in the world today is stunning progress in human wellbeing early in this century, including plummeting child and maternal mortality: nytimes.com/2023/06/03/opi…
Just about the worst thing that can happen to any person is to lose a child, and historically almost half of all children died before adulthood. That didn't change for millennia. We happen to live in a transformational age when 96 percent of children survive to become adults.
We journalists pounce upon crises, and aid workers and advocates do the same -- and for good reason. Yet I fear that this conveys the misimpression that everything is always going wrong, and that this leaves people too exhausted and hopeless to try to change things.
As we look at how we can fix America's education problems, look at Mississippi -- and, no, that's not a joke. Mississippi has made huge progress in 4th grade reading and math. For kids in poverty, it ranks near the top in the US: nytimes.com/2023/05/31/opi…
This is the second part of my series on fixing America's problems, and I had not expected to find any solutions in Mississippi. But the improvements in reading, math and graduation rates are undeniable, and there are lessons for the rest of the country.
The most important lesson is this: "Poverty is no excuse." Mississippi hasn't fixed child poverty, hasn't fixed ill health or dysfunctional homes. But it has gone a long way to improve education, without even spending a ton of money. And it did it with the support of teachers.
President Biden should stop dribbling out military equipment and give Ukraine what it needs to win and end this war. That means ATACMS missiles, Gray Eagle drones, F-16 fighters--and acceptance that they will be used against Russians in Crimea. My column: nytimes.com/2023/02/18/opi…
Pres Biden is concerned with the risks of escalation, a legitimate concern. But there are also risks of this war dragging on endlessly--including the continued slaughter of Ukrainians and Russians alike. And it's essential that we send Xi Jinping a message that invasions fail.
Four-stars who know warfare tell me, on the record, that the way to end this war is to give Ukraine long-range precision weapons so it can isolate and pressure the Russians in Crimea. That's when Putin sees he has no military path forward and may be willing to negotiate.
Two-thirds of American kids can't read proficiently! Eighth graders actually read worse than in 1998. So maybe there's a problem with how we teach reading? We've learned from neuroscience and experiments about how to fix this, and we don't. So kids lose: nytimes.com/2023/02/11/opi…
Literacy experts tell me that a majority of American kids still get flawed reading instruction. There is growing awareness of the research and science, and things are changing, but too slowly. For many kids, it'll be too late.
One lesson: Politics and ideology sometimes blinded us. We wanted more interesting curricula as a social justice issue, so we tried new approaches that didn't work. George W. Bush embraced phonics, so liberals doubted it. In fact, phonics was necessary, though insufficient.