SAN JUAN – The proportion of Puerto Rican children living in high-poverty areas stands at 84 percent, seven times the comparable figure for the continental United States, according to the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s KIDS COUNT® Data Book.Even so, the report documents an improvement in health and education indicators among Puerto Rico’s children.
“The economic outlook for Puerto Rican children continues to be worrisome, but it encourages us to see that in the areas of health and education more children are having a good start in life,” Nayda Rivera-Hernandez of the National Council of La Raza, which administers the projects of the Casey Foundation in Puerto Rico, told Efe.
More than half of Puerto Rico’s kids are part of single-parent households, she said.
Sixteen percent of high-school-age Puerto Ricans are neither in class or working, compared with 8 percent in the United States as a whole.
The Data Book emphasizes that 40 percent of young people here do not manage to graduate from high school in four years, placing Puerto Rico in last place among the U.S. jurisdictions along with the District of Columbia.
In addition, the rate of teen pregnancy – 51 for every 1,000 adolescent girls – is far above the average rate for the United States as a whole.
Regarding positive trends, although the percentage of low-birthweight babies continues to be high it has declined slightly to 12.6 percent.
Also, the percentage of children not attending preschool has declined from 51 percent to 47 percent.
“Children should grow up healthy and have a good education if they’re going to be the strong citizens, workers and leaders our country needs. Puerto Rico is moving forward in these areas and we hope that these advances continue,” Rivera-Hernandez said. EFE
Should criminals be in charge of correcting the wrong they inflicted?
ReplyDeletePuerto Ricans vote in elections every 4 years at an 80% level of participation. Puerto Rico has been a colony of the United States (US) government for the past 116 years. If the US government has the final say in what happens in Puerto Rico, what is the purpose of these elections? The purpose is to fool the world that Puerto Rico is a democracy.
The United Nations (UN) declared colonialism a crime against humanity in 1960. The UN has asked the US government 33 times to decolonize Puerto Rico immediately. The US government has refused. It says that Puerto Rico’s political relationship with the United States is none of the UN’s business. The US says that it is a domestic affair.
To appear that the US government wants to decolonize Puerto Rico, it promotes the use of plebiscites to determine what Puerto Ricans want. Doesn’t that sounds innocent and democratic? So what’s the problem?
To begin with, the international community already rendered its verdict and determined that colonialism is illegal. So to have a political status option in a plebiscite that favors maintaining Puerto Rico a colony of the United States is not permitted. To have a political status option of Puerto Rico becoming a state of the United States is also not permitted under international law. The problem goes back to the beginning of this article. In order to have free elections, the country must be free. So before these elections and plebiscite could be valid, Puerto Rico would have to first be an independent nation.
What people must realize is that Puerto Rico is a colony of the US because the US government wants it that way. That is why it has used terrorism to keep it that way. That is why it refuses to release the Puerto Rican political prisoner of 33 years Oscar López Rivera. That is also why it is ridiculous to believe that decolonization is a US internal matter in which the UN has no jurisdiction over. If we allow the US government to decolonize Puerto Rico, she will remain a colony of the United States forever!
José M López Sierra
www.TodosUnidosDescolonizarPR.blogspot.com