Credit: AP

When President Barak Obama recently made an impassioned plea to do something about the proliferation of gun violence in America, he drew upon the images of elementary school children gunned down in Newtown, Connecticut to engage our emotions.

“First graders,” he exclaimed, with tears coursing down his cheeks.

His reference to the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting seemed like a strong rhetorical tug that should spur citizens and lawmakers alike to take action to reduce gun deaths, especially deaths of children.

But do Americans really care all that much about children – other than their own?

Certainly, conversations with individual Americans still elicit lots of sentiment for the well-being of kids. But it’s increasingly harder to see that sentiment reflected in policy.

As the Southern Education Foundation revealed in a study a year ago, a majority of children attending the nation’s public schools now come from low-income families. And there are more homeless students in American schools than ever before. These developments have huge implications. The impact of poverty on the future well being […]