Children in Ventura County’s most populated ZIP code need help

Socioeconomic profiles help us put human faces on communities and tell the life stories of their residents. We should be able to use the information to measure our potential losses and benefits in addressing or ignoring the needs of our communities. In most such cases, the benefits come from avoiding losses.

Losses come from disinvestments, which occur when investment in the life of a child, family or community is not made in timely manner. Diversity, equity and inclusion data for every ZIP code can tell us the economic and social life stories of its residents.

Below is a snapshot of socioeconomic indicators from the U.S. Census’ American Community Survey of 2019 for the most populated ZIP code in Ventura County — 93033. Located in Oxnard, it is home to around 10% of the entire county population.

• Some 18.1% of residents in 93033 live in poverty, meaning their household income falls below the federal poverty line. The rate of poverty among children under 18 years of age is 28.7%.
• Some 39.5% of residents are isolated by living in limited English-speaking households.
• Nearly 24% of households do not have either a computer or internet connection, and 18.9% of children under 18 have no internet connection.
• Some 22.4% of residents do not have health insurance.
• Of those aged 25 and older, 66.4% have a high school diploma or less.
• Nearly 47% of mothers who gave birth in the last 12 months haven’t earned a high school diploma. Some 43.8% of children aged 5 or younger live with their mothers alone, and almost 13% of these mothers are unemployed.
• About 19% of households receive food stamps.
• Nearly 40% of Ventura County’s agriculture, forestry and fishing workers live in this community.

This is not the story of this ZIP code alone. There are a number of other communities in Ventura County that have similar stories.

Let’s focus on the most vulnerable segment of the population — young children.

A significant proportion of them do not have access to early childhood education and live with single mothers. A large percentage of their mothers have limited education, are unemployed or suffer from the gender pay gap. These children suffer from food insecurity. Many of them are further isolated by the digital divide and were less likely to have been able to follow the educational instruction offered by schools during the COVID-19 lockdown than children of higher-income families.

For every aspect of human misery and deprivation, we have solutions. Humans create their problems, and they can solve them. There is actually an existing solution for the debilitating problems facing young children that has never has been implemented.

Both the federal and state governments offer financial assistance that is more than sufficient to cover the cost of high-quality preschool for children in low-income households. With the cost of childcare coming in at 105.5% of the family income for a single-parent household with two children living below the federal poverty line in 2019 and the government pegging affordable care at 7% of family income, these funds are greatly needed. Families below the poverty line are entitled to federal assistance, and families with income above the federal poverty line up to 85% of the state median income are entitled to the state’s support. If this was effectively implemented, 88% of 3- and 4-year-olds could have received federal or state support.

That means nearly 2,700 children living in the 93033 ZIP code in 2020 could have, and indeed should have, received a high-quality early childhood education that our federal and state governments promise to provide. This would be the best investment ever in the county. Yet the truth is that a low proportion of these entitlements are ever given. We need to know why so many are not claimed when the needs are so clearly visible. People are being deprived of what is rightfully theirs.

We need to stop just talking about our intentions and actually develop relevant public policies to address the problem and create the capacity to execute those policies or we will never move forward.

Jamshid Damooei is the executive director of the Center for Economics of Social Issues at California Lutheran University.