Does the picture break your heart?
That’s what it’s supposed to do. So is the entire piece.
Am I being hard-hearted? Probably. I’ve been in the place of wondering how to put food in the cupboard. I still barely get by paycheck to paycheck. But, that’s my own problem and not the government’s.
Here’s an important fact buried deeply in the article:
Many of the working poor are single parents, and they often suffer in silence because they don’t want those around them to look down on them.
And, going a step further, how many welfare dependents are single parents? Parents whose spouses refuse to take responsibility for their offspring?
A 2014 study by the Pew Research Center found 52% of U.S. residents in their 60s—17.4 million people—are financially supporting either a parent or an adult child, up from 45% in 2005. Among them, about 1.2 million support both a parent and a child, more than double the number a decade earlier, according to an analysis of the Pew findings and census data. The squeeze is coming from both ends. With lifespans growing longer, the number of 60-somethings with living parents has more than doubled since 1998, to about 10 million, according to an Urban Institute analysis of University of Michigan data, and they are increasingly expensive to care for. At the same time, many boomers are helping their children deal with career or health problems, or are sharing the heavy burden of student loans.
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