Human Rights Education: The 4th R
Educating for Economic Justice,
Vol. 9, No. 1, Spring 1998.

Cover Collage: Quotes and Facts


In 1989, of high school students living in households with incomes between $10,000 and $15,000, 4.4 percent used a computer at home; in $40,000 to $50,000 households that number was 27.7 percent.

National Center for Education Statistics, Youth Indicators, 1993

. . . equal opportunities for education should be given to all of our children regardless of race, color, or creed. They should have completely equal opportunities in school housing and in the quality of teachers. Any available advantages should be equal for all young people.

Eleanor Roosevelt

In 1993, 7.5 percent of high school students from families with incomes below $20,000 dropped out of high school, as compared to 1.5 percent of those from families with incomes of $40,000.

U.S. Census Bureau

Unfortunately, many Americans live on the outskirts of hope — some because of their poverty, some because of their color, and all too many because of both. Our task is to help replace their despair with opportunity.

President Lyndon B. Johnson,
First inaugural address, January 8, 1964

In 1991, an estimated 12 million children under the age of 18 (18.3 percent of   all children) were hungry.

Tufts Center on Hunger

Despite the existence of programs such as Medicaid and Medicare, 30.8 percent of the poor had no health insurance in 1996. Poor people comprise 27.0 percent of all uninsured people but make up 13.7 percent of the population.

U.S. Census Bureau

Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well–being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing, and medical care . . .

Article 25, Universal Declaration of Human Rights

The language [in the International Bill of Rights]—has the force of treaty law and directly empowers people. It tells people at the grassroots level that they have rights— rights to security, dignity, economic opportunity, and a better life for their children — not any vague and undefined entitlement to a favour of some kind, bestowed by a government or an international agency.

Mary Robinson, U.N. High Commissioner on Human Rights

Low-income children are two times more likely to die from birth defects, three times more likely to die from all causes combined, four times more likely to die in fires, five times more likely to die from infectious diseases and parasites, and six times more likely to die from other diseases than non-poor children.

Children’s Defense Fund, 1994

Surveys by city agencies in New York, Baltimore, and Hartford, Connecticut, have found that grocery stores in poor areas charge 9 percent to 15 percent more than their suburban counterparts.

Investor’s Business Daily, November 29, 1993

The proportion of Americans with full-time jobs whose incomes were too low to bring a family above the poverty level rose by 50 percent between 1979 and 1992, from 12 percent to 18 percent of all workers.

U.S. Census Bureau

In 1990, the poorest fifth of Americans received 3.7 of the nation’s total income, the lowest proportion since 1954. That same year, the richest fifth received over half the nation’s total income, the highest proportion on record.

Robert B. Reich, The Work of Nations

I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality, and freedom for their spirits.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

In 1990, one-third of the homeless were families with children.

A Status Report on Hunger and Homelessness in the United States, 1990

A hungry man is not a free man.

Adlai E. Stevenson

Widespread poverty and concentrated wealth cannot long endure side by side with democracy.

Thomas Jefferson

Everyone who works has the right to just and favorable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection.

Article 23, Universal Declaration of Human Rights