Schools are feeling the pressure to help the growing number of homeless students. Photo: oldohioschools (flickr)

As families across the U.S. face job losses and foreclosures, there's new pressure on schools to serve a rapidly-growing homeless student population.

Many of these recently-homeless students come from large families where both parents have lost their jobs — situations where unemployment income or minimum-wage options don't come close to providing enough cash to feed their children. Foreclosures and evictions have forced families to split up among relatives and friends.

For some families, this is the first time they've needed to rely on government assistance to get by. A bulk of this burden is falling on schools to provide relief to homeless students, including meals, transportation and immunizations. But tight budgets and scarce federal funding have school districts scrambling to meet the growing demand for support services.

In many cases, the stigma of homelessness keeps parents and kids from acknowledging their status, preventing access to the help that is available. Homeless youth often fall behind grade level and are 50 percent less likely to graduate from high school than their peers, according to the National Center on Family Homelessness. Ellen Bassuk, the Center's president, shared her concerns with MSNBC:

Homeless children are confronted daily by extremely stressful and traumatic experiences that have profound effects on their cognitive development and ability to learn. They tend to have high rates of developmental delays, learning difficulties and emotional problems as a product of precarious living situations and extreme poverty.

Unfortunately, the rise in homelessness is a national trend. California has seen some of the highest numbers: In the Vista school district north of San Diego, homeless students make up nine percent of the population — 10 times what it was in 2007. In Chicago’s suburbs, the homeless student population has jumped 67 percent over the last two years. A Dallas school district saw its homeless student numbers soar 185 percent this year.

Educators and homeless advocates are holding out hope for the new federal stimulus package, which has budgeted $70 million in grants for state services for homeless youth.

As homeless students scrape by, some may continue to dream of one day finishing high school and going on to college but for now, their more immediate goal is clear: to have a house and a room of their own.

"Buy American." Photo: Wedingo (flickr)

The controversial "buy American" provision in the economic stimulus packages has added fuel to the firey protectionism debate and has the power to hurt Americans and the world alike.

The "buy American" provision requires all public works projects funded under the recently passed stimulus to use only American steel, iron, and manufactured goods. The clause also changes how the government awards contracts for these projects. Normally, contracts are given any company that can do the best job for the lowest price. But under the new clause, an American company will be awarded the contract if their bid is less than 25 percent higher than foreign companies.

What does all this mean? It means goods from countries like China, India, and 100 other developing countries cannot be used in infrastructure projects funded by the stimulus. Burton G. Malkiel, a professor of economics at the Princeton University, explains to China View why in the past "buy American" has resulted in a reduction in trade for the U.S. and the rest of the world:

In 1930, just as the world economy was sinking, the U.S. Congress passed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, which essentially shut off imports into the U.S., he recalled. "Our trading partners retaliated, and world trade plummeted," said Malkiel. "Most economic historians now conclude that the tariff contributed importantly to the severity of the world-wide Great Depression...Later, as one of his last acts, President Herbert Hoover made the situation even worse by signing a 'Buy America Act' requiring all federal government projects to use American materials."

British Prime Minister Gordan Brown joined the chorus, urging against the "buy American," arguing that:

The thing we know about protectionism is in the end it protects nobody, least of all the poor.... It would be short-sighted at this time to renege on promises we've made to the poor.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and numerous heads of state have come out in protest against the clause. Brazil is even planning to challenge the clause at the World Trade Organization.

Protectionism during recessions has been known as "beggar thy neighbor" policy, because in trying to protect ourselves we hurt others. In other words, if one country puts up trade barriers, their policies hurt their neighbors, which can prompt these neighboring countries to adopt the same harmful barriers. We are all a part of the global economic crisis, we can't get out of it alone. The New York Times Op-ed columnist Douglas Irwin explains why "buy American" could harm the U.S. economy in the future:

American manufacturers have ample capacity to fill the new orders that will come as a result of the fiscal stimulus [...other countries are] right to be concerned. Once we get through the current economic mess, China, India and other countries are likely to continue their large investments in building projects. If such countries also adopt our preferences for domestic producers, then America will be at a competitive disadvantage in bidding for those contracts.

The Chinese government wants to boost rural consumerism by offering rebates on home appliances. Photo: Cassandra Nelson/Mercy Corps

As China rings in the Year of the Ox, its government is encouraging rural residents to splurge — on TVs, washing machines, refrigerators and personal computers — through a new subsidy program aimed to boost domestic demand.

Using funds generally reserved for an ailing export market, the program guarantees Chinese buyers a 13 percent rebate on the purchase of home appliances. The discounts are available to the nearly 800 million people living in rural China, a relatively untapped market in a country that is the leading producer and exporter of household appliances, according to the China Daily.

Some rural Chinese are taking advantage of the bargains. Mongolian herdsman Chaolu showed off his new 26-inch LCD television to a China Daily reporter. "With the money saved, I could buy more than 10kg of mutton. It looks as if the government has sent me a special gift for the Spring Festival."

But the long-term lure of the subsidies is questionable. A two-year pilot program in the rural Sichuan province originally helped boost appliance sales, but now farmers have little cash to pay for these luxury items, Mary Kay Magistad reports on PRI's The World.

Magistad says much of rural families' cash flow comes from migrant workers who've lost their jobs in a slow economy. And in rural communities where few people have access to good health care, retirement pensions and education, household appliances don't necessarily top the list of priorities.

High electricity costs are also a drawback when it comes to running appliances. "The cost is nothing to urban residents," farmer Yan Youqi told China Daily. "But we farmers have to think whether it is necessary to store so little food in refrigerators at such a cost."

Beijing economist Jua Du-Ming told The World that his country's government has good intentions, but needs to refocus its stimulus plan on meeting rural people's basic needs.

"The current economic crisis has really changed a lot of things. I can see that the Central government is … they are indeed trying to solve our problems, but all the conflict of interest is there. But when the general macroeconomic has changed in such a way … they have to do something."

Congratulations to Manasi in Portland, Ore., this week's winner of our weekly comment contest. Manasi's comment on What a Slowing GDP Means for China's Workforce earned her a $25 prize to keep or donate to a project of her choice at Global Giving.

China has come up with its own stimulus plan to deal with the global recession and rising unemployment, according to the International Herald Tribune. Unlike the U.S., China has few debts, a small budget deficit and therefore more funds to invest in new spending plans. In order to quickly create jobs for millions, China is planning to spend $88 billion this year on construction of intercity rail lines and improving roads and highways throughout almost every city, town and county across the country. This plan will not only create millions of jobs, but will also curb China's dependence on cars, foreign oil and reduce air pollution. The stimulus plan will also include environmental projects like water treatment plants.

Economists are arguing about the actual feasibility of this plan and how quickly it will be executed. But most experts say that China will move faster than the U.S. in implementing their stimulus plan. This is because the government controls large sectors of the economy and is able to seize private property when it wants without all the legal and environmental regulations the U.S. government has to deal with. China is also planning to spend $123 billion to provide universal health care within the next 2 years according to the Tribune.

In a country that has seen the fastest growing GDP in recent years, perhaps it will be able to pull off this larger than life plan — even in a recession!

Whether the Chinese government will be able to stem the deepening economic crisis remains to be seen — right now it is hitting China's workers hard.

Now that American taxpayers have bailed out Citigroup, AIG and Bank of America (along with a host of others) and are about to finance a massive economic stimulus bill, what about chipping in for a stimulus package that targets developing economies?

That's what Robert Zoellick, president of the World Bank, advocates in a recent New York Times op-ed. After all, why should the poor in developing countries have to pay the price for a crisis they didn't start?

The United States could begin by pledging some $6 billion of its own $825 billion stimulus package — just 4 percent of what was provided to American International Group. With this modest step, the United States would speed up global recovery, help the world’s poor and bolster its foreign policy influence.

Zoellick expects other countries to follow America's generous example; Britain, Saudi Arabia and others have already expressed interest.

Any global stimulus, Zoellick explains, should support investments in human capital, public-private partnerships to supply communities with basic services, small- and medium-sized businesses, and microfinance institutions that lend to the poor.

The current economic crisis has already pushed an additional 100 million people into poverty, reversing a 20-year trend toward poverty reduction. If a global stimulus package has the potential to boost incomes in the developing world — and attaining all benefits that go along with that, from lower disease rates to less crime — Americans would be smart to consider it.

Photo: *LJ*(flickr)

This weekend’s gathering of leaders of 20 of the world’s biggest economies didn’t yield a clear-cut solution to the global financial crisis. It did, however, signify a fundamental shift to a world where emerging economies like Brazil, India and China wield greater influence than ever before.

Of these, China is certainly the biggest. With $1.9 trillion in foreign exchange reserves, China is being courted to contribute funds to the International Monetary Fund to be used for emergency loans for struggling countries. China has made no promises yet, preferring instead to focus on its own economy with a $590 billion stimulus plan. Whether China agrees to contribute to the IMF or not, there’s no doubt that the country is poised to play a much larger role in global economic decision-making.

The breadth of China's role could depend on its ability to keep its own economy chugging along. A UN-sponsored report released over the weekend suggests China’s widening gulf between the country’s rich and poor threatens to undo recent economic gains by reducing consumer spending and productivity.

China’s stimulus package, with a focus on low-income housing and rural infrastructure, may help to shrink these growing inequalities. Since more than ever the world is looking to China to provide economic stability, they can’t afford to get this wrong.