The future of children growing up in poverty is bleak in many ways. Such children are at risk for poor health, low educational achievement, teen pregnancy and remaining impoverished as adults.

Although their families may spend a greater portion of their income on housing, they are less likely than children from more affluent families to have safe, adequate housing, and they may move often. They also are likely to live in poorer neighborhoods and to be acquainted with fewer people who are economically stable.

In short, they face significant disadvantages, and those disadvantages can be tracked, although not neatly, along racial and ethnic lines.

According to the 2017 Kids Count report, 28.7 percent of Montezuma County‘s children live in poverty, compared to the statewide average of 14.8 percent. In Dolores County, the rate is 22.4 percent.

Kids Count is a publication of the Colorado Children’s Campaign, which tracks state- and county-level data on child wellbeing.

Children are not responsible for their economic circumstances, and they have little ability to rise above those limitations until they reach young adulthood themselves.

Enabling them to eat free lunches, while certainly important, does not necessarily help launch them into a brighter future. For that to happen, families and communities need to work together.

The puzzle has many pieces. Parents have to do much of the heavy lifting, but they depend on living-wage jobs, affordable housing, parenting education, high-quality affordable child care and early-childhood programs.

They also need support and encouragement for education, access to health care, fair law enforcement and judicial systems, opportunities for new experiences, tribal programs, scholarships for further education and other community resources. Strong schools are a front-line resource.

In Montezuma County, such agencies as the Pinon Project, Head Start, the Child Advocacy Center and others help lift children above circumstances that might otherwise limit them for the rest of their lives.

In a county where between a fourth and a third of children live in poverty, more is needed. The perpetuation of intergenerational poverty is harmful for the entire community.

We all benefit from helping to solve the problem.