As this nation assesses the progress we have made 50 years after President Johnson official declared a "war on poverty" and contemplate where we need to go, any honest and sober assessment must include a critical analysis of women and children.  Maria Kennedy Shriver has framed this analysis in a powerful and succinct way. Read her recent article "The Female Face of Poverty" in the Atlantic magazine here where she begins with the following:

"Let me state the obvious: I have never lived on the brink. I’ve never been in foreclosure, never applied for food stamps, never had to choose between feeding my children or paying the rent, and never feared I’d lose my paycheck when I had to take time off to care for a sick child or parent. I'm not thrown into crisis mode if I have to pay a parking ticket, or if the rent goes up. If my car breaks down, my life doesn’t descend into chaos.
But the fact is, one in three people in the United States do live with this kind of stress, struggle, and anxiety every day. More than 100 million Americans either live near the brink of poverty or churn in and out of it, and nearly 70 percent of these Americans are women and children." (Maria Kennedy Shriver)


The Female Face of Poverty