Childhood poverty and the "common good"

I want to say something about "common good, common values"-- since so much of the economic stimulus package goals has to do with recovering responsibility and laws for systems of accountability and oversight. There was an article in JAMA on 1/28/09, about "relative child poverty, income inequality, wealth and health." by Eric Emerson, PhD.
The article said that there is data that there is an association with adverse health outcomes, including:
"poorer overall child well-being, infant mortality, low birthweight, not having polio immunizations, child mortality due to inintentional injuries (in Paraguay, little toddlers would fall into the cooking fires and get burned), juvenile homicide, low education attainment, dropping out of school, nonparticipation in higher education, aspiring to low-skilled work, poorer peer relations, having been bullied, teenage birth rate, physical inactivity, childhood obesity, not eating breakfast, feeling lonely, and mental health problems."
In addition, "low socioeconomic means in childhood was associated with increased adult morbidity-- increase in "stomach, liver, and lung cancer, diabetes, coronary heart disease, stroke, respiratory diseases, nervous system conditions, diseases of the digestive tract, alcoholic cirrhosis, unintentional injuries, and homicide."
The article stresses that for these reasons it is logical for nations to center on helping to reduce the relative child poverty, as a way to increase the health of the nation, and also health between nations.

For most of us women, our lives and jobs have focused on helping children make it to adulthood, and to grow up in as healthy a way as possible, and so these are intuitive truths, which we are likely to agree with. But for the military and industrial systems and political persons, these goals may seem as nebulous as "apple pie". And there is still a disgruntled and strong undercurrent which I feel, that helping the poor is not the right thing to do with "my taxes". So I am mulling over this list, and thinking about the despair and helplessness of the women I know who are trying to raise children with too little income. Chronic exhaustion, working two jobs, up early and late trying to do housework around the main bread-winning jobs of the daytime hours, worrying about what the children are doing in school and after school, and feeling unable to stop the bad influences from the pornographic media, and stupid advertising for greed on tv, and altogether too few good role models in the daily lives of the children. So this article is an interesting "lens" for this problem. And makes me happy that the President seems to "get it" and want to help us with the structural systemic changes which are needed to correct it.