The United States is the wealthiest large economy in the world. Yet, for some reason, we can't seem to find a way to invest in our nation's children. 

A new UNICEF paper, Child Well-Being in Rich Countries, looks at how wealthy countries are raising their children. It examines "children’s well-being in terms of material conditions (related to household-income levels); health and safety; education; risky behavior (such as excessive alcohol consumption); and physical environment, including housing conditions."

According to a new report from Oxfam, the wealth and income that the world's richest people accumulated last year would be enough to eliminate world poverty four times over. Ben Phillips, a campaign director at Oxfam, said that extreme wealth is now one of the major obstacles to solving the problems of extreme poverty. The $240 billion the top 100 billionaires in the world made in 2012 would completely eliminate extreme poverty, the report concludes.

When you are at the very top, the middle must look higher than it really is, at least according to Mitt Romney’s latest financial optical illusion. In an interview today on ABC’s "Good Morning America," host George Stephanopoulos asked Romney how he would define middle-class income. “Is $100,000 middle income?’’ Stephanopoulos asked. Romney replied:

No, middle income is $200,000 to $250,000 and less.

Right-wing economic policies have failed working families. New U.S. Census Bureau figures show the share of income going to middle- and lower-middle-income households fell, while the share of income going to the top 5 percent went up 4.9 percent. The census report confirms the trend that the Economic Policy Institute shows in The State of Working America, 2012—falling incomes and growing inequality. Instead of coddling the richest 1%, America needs to return to the principles of “prosperity economics” that have historically enabled economic security for all and a growing middle class. 

One of the most fascinating parts of the fantastic new interactive chart on U.S. poverty from Demos is the timeline—move the marker from 1967 to 2010 and get a visual blast of just how poverty rates in this nation have shifted—ultimately, increasing—as the fruit of the nation’s growing economy has been sucked up by the top 1 percent.

In 1967, 14.5 percent of Americans were poor, living on less than $17,400 for a family of three. In 2010, the last year for which data are available, that percentage is 15.2—some 46.1 million Americans in poverty.

Oren M. Levin-Waldman is professor of public policy at the Metropolitan College of New York and the author of “Wage
Policy, Income Distribution, and Democratic Theory.”

Over the past four decades, the United States has seen middle-class wages stagnate and income inequality rise. Increasing income inequality is a problem because it reflects the decline of the middle class and the disappearance of middle-class jobs. But it also threatens the survival of a democratic society.

Thanks to the Institute for Policy Studies for this eye-opening chart showing how high child poverty is in the United States compared with other developed nations. The data is stunning—a U.S. child poverty rate of 23.1 percent, compared with 5.3 percent in Finland and 8.5 percent in Germany. Even the rate next worse to the United States—12.1 percent in the United Kingdom—is far lower. What really sets this chart apart, though, is the comparison with the percentage of those in the top 1%.

AFT and West Virginia Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin announced they are leading an unprecedented public-private partnership to improve educational opportunity and address complex social and economic problems in the Central Appalachia community of McDowell County, W.Va.

The following is by John August, executive director of the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions. Read the full version of his column is at L&M Partnership.

The U.S. Census Bureau released new measures of poverty in November. According to the New York Times, “All told 100 million people – one in three Americans – either live in poverty or in the fretful zone just above it.”

When the U.S. Census Bureau retooled its formula for determining the number of poor people living in the United States, the number the bureau estimated to be living in poverty shot up from 46.1 million to 49.1 million. Now that reformulation is shining a light on the vast numbers of people who appear to be middle class but who actually fall into a category called the “near poor.”