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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Has the political fever broken in America? I'm skeptical. There's a socio-political despair and dysfunction across America that unravels families and communities. To heal the body politic, we have to tackle this broader dysfunction. My column: nytimes.com/2022/12/10/opi… A few metrics of this broader dysfunction: 300,000 Americans dying annually from "deaths of despair," 1 in 7 prime-age men not employed, Mississippi has a shorter male life expectancy than Bangladesh, 1 in 8 kids growing up with a parent with an addiction. Hope frays.

Oregon has the highest rate of illicit drug use in the US, a new federal study finds, but ranks No. 50 in access to treatment for substance use disorder. Anybody who thinks we save money this way doesn't understand the toll of addiction. My free Substack:
nickkristof.substack.com/p/what-state-h… The addiction crisis is part of a broader mental health crisis, particularly involving children. Kids undergoing mental health turmoil are regularly kept in hospital E.R.'s for days, because there are no beds available for them in dedicated facilities in Oregon.

1. I'm disappointed to see that two years after Oregon passed long-awaited paid family and medical leave policies, state government support has been delayed at the expense of workers. oregonlive.com/politics/2021/… 2. Though Oregon had a nice-sounding plan, it fell far short on follow-through and implementation, so workers will have to wait for desperately needed financial support when they can't work because of illness or the need to care for a loved one.

Remember Tanitoluwa Adewumi, the homeless chess champion? At 10 he just won the North American Youth Chess Championship for under-12s! All credit to Tani and his family, to @chessinschools & to his school for letting him in chess club when he was homeless and couldn't afford dues @chessinschools Tani will now be a FIDE chess master, a step up from just chess master. He's a reminder of how much refugees can enrich our country. But this happened only because his homeless shelter was in a school district that had a chess club that welcomed and nurtured him.

Five years ago I helped a brilliant, self-taught Afghan teenage girl leave Kandahar and study in the US. Yesterday she showed me an article she published in a professional journal about quantum mechanics. So many brilliant Afghan girls now won't be able to hold up half the sky. I'm getting frantic pleas from Afghans, many of them women, trying to find a visa and passage out of the country. They're desperate. I'm particularly concerned for girls who are at risk of being forcibly married to Taliban fighters; that would destroy a girl's life and future.

After my last columns about Israel and Gaza, some readers pushed back and said I was unfair. So I look at their arguments and try to answer them: nyti.ms/3fJGsy0 Some readers ask: What would you want Israel to do when it's shelled? That ignores the role that Israel played in creating Hamas and in provoking the shelling. It's not as if Hamas started shelling Israel out of the blue -- not that that excuses Hamas war crimes, or Israel's.

With lots going wrong in the world, here's much-needed inspiration: A Nigerian refugee, Tani Adewumi, who learned chess in 2nd grade in NYC & became state champion as a 3d grader while homeless, is now America's newest chess master — as a 10-year-old. nytimes.com/2021/05/08/opi… If it sounds like a movie, it will be! Paramount is developing a feature film that @Trevornoah will produce. And it could get better yet: Tani is progressing rapidly and next wants to become a grandmaster (the youngest ever). Don't bet against this kid.

For half a century, compared with other countries, the United States has underinvested in its people. Biden's proposals offer a chance to rectify that and forge a stronger and fairer America. My column: nyti.ms/3e9SY97 FDR's New Deal transformed my rural hometown in Oregon. Rural electrification boosted opportunity and productivity, and a $27,000 investment in 1935 employed 90 people to build my old high school, still in service. Broadband is today's equivalent of rural electrification.

I've been working for months on this piece about how some huge companies like XVideos—now the most visited porn site in the world—with help from Google and Paypal, profit from rape videos and illegal child sexual abuse material. They devastate kids' lives nyti.ms/3wUAf97 The article is accompanied by a video by a student who speaks directly to XVideos. At 14, she had a video of herself naked placed on XVideos, with her full name. She begged the company to remove it; instead, it added two more copies. No teenager should have to go through that.

The most exciting part of @JoeBiden's "America Rescue Plan" may be one that gets little attention: It's the most serious effort to reduce child poverty in at least 50 years. It would cut America's disgraceful levels of child poverty by half. My column: nyti.ms/35MEjME @JoeBiden Too often we think that child poverty or race gaps are inevitable. They're not. Tony Blair cut British child poverty in half, using child allowances, basically the same strategy as Biden proposes. What we lack isn't resources or methods, but will.

As Pres. Trump becomes the first president to be impeached twice, my column looks at why that's not enough and we also have to deal with the ecosystem (Fox News, I'm talking to you) that promotes lunacy: nyti.ms/39yTVnW As I was writing this column today, I had a call from a childhood friend who explained that Trump is just drawing out his critics so he can crack down on them and triumphantly serve his second term. I told him it was all a lie. He was startled that I could be so poorly informed.

My new column, just posted online, is blunt: "Trump Incites Terrorists" nytimes.com/2021/01/06/opi… "Trump & Co talk a good game about patriotism. They denounced President Obama for sometimes not wearing a flag lapel pin, criticized Colin Kaepernick for taking a knee during the national anthem — and then Trump incited a mob on Wednesday to invade the United States Capitol."

All 10 living former defense secretaries write a joint warning that involving the military in election disputes would cross into dangerous territory washingtonpost.com/opinions/10-fo… I wonder if this joint statement by former secretaries of defense is a response to rumors that Trump and acting SecDef Christopher Miller may be plotting something desperate. I believe that in a crisis, military officers would obey their oaths, not Trump.

Famine is back. The world made immense progress against poverty, hunger and illiteracy over the decades, but that progress is now unraveling in this pandemic -- partly because donor nations are disengaged. My new column explains why we're going backward: nyti.ms/385HcJS Starvation is agonizing and degrading. Your skin peels, your hair falls out, you lose control of your bowel. Your body cannibalizes itself. That's what happened to Abdo, who at age 4 weighed 14 pounds. But the problem isn't lack of food -- the world has never had so much food.

Today is a milestone at the @nytimes: Arthur O. Sulzberger, Jr., retires as chair of the board, after 42 years at The Times. So many other great newspapers have crumbled over the last 20 years, but The Times is stronger than ever. 1/6 @nytimes That’s because Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., crafted a new business model for The Times – twice! First, he turned it into a national newspaper with national advertising; then in recent years into a digital product financed by reader subscriptions. And we're going strong. 2/6