There was a lively exchange here over personal and social responsibility. While I don’t wish to diminish the importance of these issues in developing social policy it is often lost in these conversations that many of the consequences of the breakdown in both personal and social responsibility often fall upon the shoulders of children.

Today a series of reports on the well being of children and youth in Philadelphia’s neighborhoods were released by Philadelphia Safe and Sound. Here are links to the first three of the eleven planned reports, Bridesburg/Kensignton/Richmond , Lower North Philadelphia and West Philadelphia.

The reports are very rich and offer up a set of baseline measures of how children and youth are doing in various neighborhoods in Philadelphia.

One indicator that caught my attention was the percentage of low birthweight babies. Babies with a birthweight less than 5.5 pounds have a higher risk of health and developmental problems later in life. This statistic is also a measure of human development used by the United National Development Program. Here is table of the percentage of low birthweight babies for 170 countries plus the city of Philadelphia and the three neighborhoods tabulated by Philadelphia Safe and Sound.

It is a popular claim that these social problems are someone else’s responsibility i.e. the Suburb’s, the State’s or the Nation’s but it should never be lost that the consequences of not dealing with these problems while falling largely on the children themselves also spill over onto the City of Philadelphia both in tangible costs but also in lost human potential.

--Mark Price